HELP WANTED: ZScript

[Major Cooke]

It's not the old stuff that's a concern. It's the new.

What you need is D4D which uses the latest and greatest in DECORATE innovations, or ARGENT for that matter.

[Kinsie]

It's not the old stuff that's a concern. It's the new.

MetaDoom is new enough to have had engine features it's using get stripped out mid-development. I figured it was at least worth kicking around to see if you hadn't managed an encore performance. And Samsara's code, to put it politely, is crimes. If anything was going to break due to under-the-hood changes, it'd be the horrifying Duke weapon code.

What you need is D4D which uses the latest and greatest in DECORATE innovations

Do you want testers, or a medal?

[Major Cooke]

Do you want testers, or a medal?

Can the crap. I mentioned Argent, did I not?

[InsanityBringer]

You do not need to dive in. What's most important right now is to ensure that DECORATE code still compiles and works. And if people just 'wait' they'll be struck with it when it's too late.

at the same time graf did say this. I'd say this old stuff is a good stress test of whether or not that a good sample of "DECORATE code still compiles and works"

getting a massive project using the old game logic like DRLA working in the zscript branch without actually porting the project (since that would probably be a massive bitch and a half at the moment) would be a good way to ensure that the legacy stuff hasn't been broken in any way

[Ryan Cordell]

getting a massive project using the old game logic like DRLA working in the zscript branch without actually porting the project (since that would probably be a massive bitch and a half at the moment) would be a good way to ensure that the legacy stuff hasn't been broken in any way

yeah, there is a fuckton of checking and nightmare logic going on just about every which where which would require a joint effort between me and Yholl for that, just for conversion.

on that note though, trying it with the latest build that has zscript active and so far DRLA seems to be working fine, without any alterations

[Xaser]

re: lack of adoption, have some durn patience D:. It's been four days since this announcement, and folks aren't going to flock to zscript in droves until there's some "killer app" out there which shows off its capabilities well. That's still in the works at present.

That, and I still haven't a clue what this is capable of due to the lack of documentation, so I'm gonna wait until this matures a little before diving in head-first.

This wiki article is the best resource at present. It's not quite a spec but is adequate (to me) for describing how it all works. For the most part, it's "DECORATE with semicolons".

Still though, waiting before converting everything over is wise unless you have a good way of doing parallel development (e.g. branches with git; this works great for doom mods, not even kidding), since zscript itself is in flux and may make breaking changes before release.

[Major Cooke]

getting a massive project using the old game logic like DRLA working in the zscript branch without actually porting the project (since that would probably be a massive bitch and a half at the moment) would be a good way to ensure that the legacy stuff hasn't been broken in any way

yeah, there is a fuckton of checking and nightmare logic going on just about every which where which would require a joint effort between me and Yholl for that, just for conversion.

on that note though, trying it with the latest build that has zscript active and so far DRLA seems to be working fine, without any alterations

I can attest. It took me at least four days to convert D4D. First I started with all the simple things, using notepad++ to find and replace everything that could be. If it's meant to be an actor, itm must inherit from actor or from something that is an actor. Inheriting from things like (custom)inventory haven't changed.

The next big 'gotcha' is: constants and local vars go outside of the Default { } block. For user vars, just do a straight up search for 'var ' (space included) and replace it with nothing. For constants, do a mass search for 'const int' and 'const float' and replace it with just 'const'. AFTER THAT, and ONLY after that, do a search for 'float' and convert it to 'double', unless Graf changed it so flat means double as well.

Everything that doesn't add new properties needs a Default { } block. Everything that has a name (sans constants/names of vars) needs to be encapsulated by "" or '', depending. I've only found one case where '' is used so far but graf changed it, so it's not worth mentioning. I.e. RenderStyle Add -> "Add"

A_ChangeFlag should be replaced with b<NameOfFlagHere> = <boolean>;. A_ChangeLinkFlags must be used for NOBLOCKMAP and NOSECTOR, however. A_ChangeCountFlags needs to be used for COUNT<KILL/ITEM/SECRET>.

Powerup.Type no longer automatically includes the term "Power" prefixed to it. You must supply it yourself from now on which I think is an excellent move.

Access to direct x/y/z is now 'deprecated'. Instead, you get them by using the actor's 'pos' and 'vel' vectors. I.e. pos.x, pos.y, pos.z, etc. (I need to document that...)

See here for more information.

[Major Cooke]

Pushed an update to D4D.pk3. This one's actually pretty big, mainly fixing a few bugs for starters.

The monster item dropping system was chucked into a struct, not only cleaning up all the various death states, but also handling them much more easily. See ZScript/D4D/MonsterBase.txt's AbstractMonster for details.

So this will give folks an idea on how structs work within ZScript.

Also, the only reason I have so many for loops is because constant arrays don't work with Class<Actor> (yet, if they're planned).

[Nash]

So this will give folks an idea on how structs work within ZScript.

Can you add the struct example into the wiki, please? For those who cannot download your project for whatever reason (time, bandwidth, just want a tldr straight clearcut example without having to sift through large projects etc)

[Major Cooke]

There already is one.

[Rachael]

New version will be up soon. This one simply has dynamic lights finally converted to ZScript.

[Rachael]

The build with virtual functions that were just put in is now available. Have fun! ~

[Graf Zahl]

Better not. That build may crash on syntax errors. I just pushed the fix which I did after running into the bug when scriptifying the next source file.

[Rachael]

I'll pull it then and make a new build.

[Edward-san]

... and of course there are new build errors for linux. I'll make a new report ASAP.