Mastodawn

what?

Return of the Obra Dinn saves your game as .txt files
containing XML
which contain a date and a <data> element that's a base64 encoded string.

that sounds like binary with extra steps

@foone no shit, there was a serialization pipeline that turned out base64-encoded binary embedded as a stream of xml <char>0</char><char>A</char>…etc

@hanlsp @foone ok this makes me feel a bit better ahout Pope's auteur status

@danhon @foone to be clear this was something I encountered in heavy-duty commercial gamedev, not Obra Dinn