Things for a CE Scripter

Discussion about Rocks'n'Diamonds, Boulder Dash, Supaplex, Emerald Mine and any other BD hybrid.

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Zomis
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Things for a CE Scripter

Post by Zomis »

For the past few days, I've been working a lot with a CE Scripter. And today is a big breakthrough - IT WORKS :D
Now I just wonder what you'd like to have in a CE Scripter - and I don't mean exact scripting commands, you can modify a level in all the ways possible using object-oriented programming (or well... not exactly object oriented but structure-oriented).

I just wonder if you'd like to have anything else in this... I can't really say what... so give me an idea and I'll see what I can do (or I can tell you if it's already possible ;))

The scripting will be in Pascal-style, but I don't think that's much of a problem to learn for most people. I'll try to give you as much help documents as possible ;) (But we all know about the relationship between RnD-stuff and documentation, don't we? :roll:)
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Post by Tomi »

It has to support interaction with playfield.
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Post by Zomis »

Tomi wrote:It has to support interaction with playfield.
Done :) Interaction with both playfield, custom elements, group elements, and other level properties (name, emeralds needed, etc...) is working :) All things hasn't been tested though, but I'm 99% sure they all work.
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Post by Daniel H. »

The CE scripter sounds great!!! :D However, I don't have any special ideas for it.
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Post by Tomi »

It should have non-GUI mode which accepts level file, script file and anything else needed as command-line arguments.

Maybe it could be open-source. (For this particular project, I can't see any advantages of being closed-source.)
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Post by Zomis »

Tomi wrote:It should have non-GUI mode which accepts level file, script file and anything else needed as command-line arguments.

Maybe it could be open-source. (For this particular project, I can't see any advantages of being closed-source.)
Good idea with non-GUI mode!

And yes, I also think it should be open-source. Even though it's Pascal/Delphi/Lazarus type of code, those who understand programming can probably understand most of it...
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Post by Francesco »

I'm very glad to hear such news! Hope it will be released very soon, it sounds really useful.
Anyway, by the way, have fun!
Francesco
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Post by Zomis »

I also hope so. I've encountered a problem with strings, pchars, array of chars and other string types... a very typical problem. We'll see how I'll solve this. Right now I'm a bit sick of all these error messages and programming... *sigh*
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Post by Tomi »

By the way, could you please answer my question posted in Programmer's Corner? (It seems that Holger is currently away from the forum for a while.) It's critical for my design and while I'm not sure, I can't continue on my MicroChunks implementation. Is xx_num_contents always 1? (Or I'll ask more specific way: can I assume that reading from it always returns 1?)
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Post by Jannik »

A CE-Scripter? How does it work? Is it just a tool to create a .level file with many CEs or will it communicate with rocksndiamonds.exe and run the scripts during runtime? That would be really great ...
Can't wait for a public beta ... :wink:
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Post by Zomis »

Tomi wrote:By the way, could you please answer my question posted in Programmer's Corner? (It seems that Holger is currently away from the forum for a while.) It's critical for my design and while I'm not sure, I can't continue on my MicroChunks implementation. Is xx_num_contents always 1? (Or I'll ask more specific way: can I assume that reading from it always returns 1?)
Just answered :) Good luck with those MicroChunks, they're a pain to implement but once you got those working - the rest is quite easy :)
Jannik wrote:A CE-Scripter? How does it work? Is it just a tool to create a .level file with many CEs or will it communicate with rocksndiamonds.exe and run the scripts during runtime? That would be really great ...
Can't wait for a public beta ... :wink:
It will work like this: You load a level, you load/write a script, you run the script, you save the level.

It will not communicate directly with the executable. So if you're running a script on the level you're currently working with in RnD you will need to reload the level (which is quite simple by re-entering the editor, or changing the level number back and forth).
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Post by Daniel H. »

What operating system(s) will CE Scripter run on when it is first released?
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Post by Zomis »

Daniel H. wrote:What operating system(s) will CE Scripter run on when it is first released?
Windows and Linux (:D :D :D)
I'm actually doing the most developing and debugging in Linux

If there's demand for it, I'll try cross-compiling for MacOS as well.
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Re: Windows and Linux

Post by Daniel H. »

That's wonderful!
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Re: Windows and Linux

Post by Zomis »

Daniel H. wrote:That's wonderful!
Thank you :) I feel the same way. No utilities for RnD has been developed for Linux (as far as I know), so it's a big step.

I just tested running a script to modify one room (that is, 25 change pages) at once of The World Making Challenge, worked fine :) (The World Making Challenge was actually the main reason behind the decision to continue working on this utility)

I just have a couple of things left to fix and check and then we'll see if I can release at least a beta-release :)

By the way: Suggestions about graphical user interface are welcomed :) As some of you probably know, that's not my best side when it comes to programming :roll:
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