Of ZScript And Delay()

[Kinsie]

In all of my past mods, I've committed the cardinal sin of doing elaborate gameplay mechanic things in the map scripting language, ACS. In the past this has been due to ZScript not, you know, existing, but now I don't really have much of an excuse anymore... except for one. Delay().

I use Delay() a shit-ton in my ACS game mode stuff, whether for pulling off looping timers like in Reelism or FauxDM or having events or information-presentation occur in a not-all-at-once fashion (think Reelism and its gradual revealing of and activation of the slots at the start of each round). ZScript does not have this, because it's more of an actual programming language than ACS, which is understandable, but damned if it doesn't drive me mad when I want to make mods with sane array handling and not having to run a compiler every time I make a change.

Earlier tonight TheZombieKiller threw together a proof of concept for doing something akin to delay() in ZScript, by way of a switch-case statement. Given that a.) someone else might have the same problem or b.) someone else might have a better idea on doing this, I thought I'd post this here on the forums to try and discuss how to do things like this in a form that I can read when it's not nearly 4am.

I can probably do some cool stuff with this, but if someone knows a better way, or a way that can be better handled by someone who's as bad a programmer as I am, I'm all ears

[Graf Zahl]

That's probably the best you can get. The ZScript VM is really more like a virtual CPU (or a real one when JITed) and you cannot simply halt that. What ACS does behind the scenes of Delay is actually very similar - it stores the script's execution pointer and resumes execution once the timer has elapsed.

I have to say that this Coroutine class is actually very clever and solves the most unpleasant part of halting event driven code quite nicely.

[The Zombie Killer]

The ZScript compiler could potentially emit something similar behind the scenes for an async/await feature, but I'm unfamiliar with most of the ZScript compiler code and assume that would be a tall order at present.

I have to say that this Coroutine class is actually very clever and solves the most unpleasant part of halting event driven code quite nicely.

It was somewhat inspired by how async/await is handled by the C# compiler, combined with the language's concept of 'iterator methods'. It does indeed work rather nicely in the absence of compiler support.

[m8f]

I've used a different approach to delayed actions: https://github.com/mmaulwurff/m_gizmos/ ... mg_junk.zs

[MFG38]

I've found myself grieving at the lack of a Delay function in ZScript as well. But that coroutine should come in handy.