by Chacal » Wed Nov 28, 2012 12:57 pm
It is a little more complex than that.
This is what I observed, feel free to correct me because my memory is often wobbly:
In most cases, if there is both a .bin and a .xml, the system will read the .xml and not the .bin.
It may check the dates and use the latest one, I haven't tested that.
Many games that have scripting capabilities do this (for instance, the numerous games that use Python scripting).
Usually the official scripts will be compiled or archived (.bin for RSC content, .pak for games using Python) for performance reasons, and the user can decompile/decompress the content and make modifications, and then the game will automatically use the modified content in preference to the original.
In short, your blueprints should reference only .xml files, and you may compile your .xml files into .bins or not, at your convenience. The game will decide what file to use.
Over the hill and gathering speed