The Diabolical Scripter Project

[blackhole12]

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[The GoldFish]

You're quite welcome to use the actual commands.txt or a derivative of it if you like. (edited to BE THE RIGHT DAMN FILE >_>)

Plus, I'm aware that VB won't read stuff in if the whitespace is wrong using the normal commands, hence why I coded my own whitespace reader for it, so there's actually no problem telling the VB scripter to pull information out of any Darwinia file. The only ones it has issues with are xander's insurrection, since I'm using line read and it being stupid and windows thinking doesn't stop at the non "windows" line ends, and honestly I'm not that fussed about that - it could certainly be fixed to work right with VB still, it would just be more coding.

Plus I considered using a list and then just one set of controls - I didn't like the idea so much mainly because it invovled more clicking. I'm happy to live with the loading times it has currently, those don't bother me, since you can get on and do things while it's loading anyway. What exactly is your beef with the 100 item populated list? The memory usage, the CPU time involved placing all the strings in linearly whenever you load a mod or change the strings, or what? The main reason I used it was that it worked and wasn't much fuss. There's nothing stopping it functioning in exactly the way you just described, though - although it is pretty much hardcoded to the interface rather than seperately like it ought to be. The array for it *exists*, it just isn't being used.

And out of curiosity, tell me why you think it has "bad coding" - I mean, I know it's horrible, I've said so from the start, I just want your take on it. I wanted to code it in C and you have no idea how much I cursed at VB for being so obtuse about things, but, I've never done any gui stuff in anything else and decided 'screw it, I'll make something which *works*, because *no one else ever has*'.

If, ultimately, this inspires you to go on and make a nice functional userfriendly and not horribly bloated mess of a program, then it's purpose has been served.

[blackhole12]

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[The GoldFish]

It's not that much easier to manage, really - or do you mean in terms of code? - since most scripts aren't longer than 20 lines anyway, it made more sense just to have all the information available from the off, if you CAN display all the information at once, I'd say you really ought to - it's rare I'm ever working on a large area of a script all at once as well. Having all the immence control spam was just easier from the way it worked before, rather than having only 20 controls and shifting what they showed from memory.

I don't care really if it's bad practice or not - I was coding something I would actually like/wouldn't mind using. It is in fact deliberately excessive, since it's VB 6.0 and afaik you can't reallocate memory or anything helpful like that, so I have to specifiy the size of everything in advance and be excessive or else it won't be enough in the future - some of my largest scripts have about 70 lines max although a lot of them are empty and are actually about 50-55 lines. So really if you're using VB 6.0, I'd say it's really quite good practice - unfortunately that's moot, since, you're using VB 6.0! Heh...

It would be a small recode of the file open operations since *currently* all the end of line detection stuff is in the hands of VBcore, so I'd need to change it so it loaded the whole file into memory, and poked around with it there. Like I say, I'm aware of how to fix it, I just don't really care. C# is almost definately the right language to be using. I've no expierience with it however, so didn't want to be learning new languages just for some basic scripter. The only reason I know C is I do Electronics, for going on ICs, and even then I prefer asm.

Also I'd outsource the research item names... otherwise it looks good - although, I certainly think that the scripting side of things is the biggest design target, since comparitively most people are ok with the fundamentals of game.txt editing, they just don't know how to edit it to do crazy stuff like in-game map changes and that sort of thing.

[blackhole12]

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[blackhole12]

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[The GoldFish]

I'd be more concerned with it working and doing what people want than flashy graphics

How's it all going by the way? I had a thought that maybe you ought to make it have a work file seperate from game.txt, and have it 'compile' a game.txt on command, or perhaps simply create some sort of smart back up. Mainly because if Darwinia resaves your mod's game.txt when you've started scripting, it wipes out all your comments, and as it's already run your 'always true' event, you later have to re-add that too. You could also add in a game_unclockall generator or something. Also the 'type' variable in global buildings isn't actaully used for anything, so you can just make that -1 or whatever.

The main reason I didn't touch game.txt support is that I knew it was going to be a fairly complicated thing to do and I was probably better off managing it all myself.

[blackhole12]

Its going well - my application stores all changes in memory until you hit the save button - you can either hit the big save button which saves all the files or save them individually. It also manages all of your files allowing you to either not include them, create them, or import them from other locations. It'll also have one click mass backup functions. If everything goes as planned, of course. I'm not planning on posting many updates until the program is relatively finished.

My flashy graphics took around 5 min in photoshop to make

[The GoldFish]

That's 5 minutes you could have spent coding...

or THINKING about coding!

You might like to include preferences support... and maybe pointers about having a game_unlockall.txt, start cameras in missions, a readme of some sort maybe. You might also like to make some sort of build into mod button which could take a working directory and copy it all into a new folder with [modname]_[version]

[blackhole12]

i'm letting you automatically create/switch between game.txt, game_debug.txt, and game_unlockall.txt, Possibly a readme, all the other features i'll probably include but mostly just because your asking for them i'm kinda waiting for the big beta test to determine just what features peeps want.

[The GoldFish]

Well, what I'm getting at here is some pointers for people who might be releasing a mod so that they don't release something without basic minimum things like a game_unlockall and a readme.

[blackhole12]

.... i've only been modding for like... 2 days, technically. I don't nkow whats supposed to go in a mod release, only how to mod.

[xander]

Well, what I'm getting at here is some pointers for people who might be releasing a mod so that they don't release something without basic minimum things like a game_unlockall and a readme.

*cough*martin*cough*

xander

[blackhole12]

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[The GoldFish]

Would you be able to release your code, even if it is broken? Maybe someone somewhere will be able to make use of it some day.