Should I use XML as a format for my configuration files?

[sihnfahl]

I think the first question that should be asked is: is this game going to have an online component? If so, you'll either want to encode the values and obfuscate the tag names in some way. Or use another format. Cause ... things like particle emitters that could be seen as obscuring view (like smoke grenades) would be rendered useless if you rely solely on the on-HD copy and don't do tamper checking.

Or if you have some achievements for what under normal rules would be difficult to achieve, but a breeze if you, say, set damage to 99999 and enemy hp to 1.

Edit: The recent BattleTech game is an example. Just about -everything- about the game was defined in JSON across directories. Weapons, mechs, mech components, planets, etc.

Players could edit the files, no problem, to use a different ruleset. Or tweak the planets. Difficulty. Tech availability.

Eventually, though, the devs decided that they'd have to do some validation checks after folks talked about how to do it. So they'd validate the JSONs against the originals and revert changes. I forget the exact reason why (It's been a while since I played that game thanks to some friends getting me into some survival horror...), but it's in my memory.