Rocks'n'Diamonds

For the past few days, I've been working a lot with a CE Scripter. And today is a big breakthrough - IT WORKS
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? )

It has to support interaction with playfield.

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.

The CE scripter sounds great!!! However, I don't have any special ideas for it.

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.)

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...

I'm very glad to hear such news! Hope it will be released very soon, it sounds really useful.

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*

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?)

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 ...

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 ...

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).

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

Daniel H. wrote:What operating system(s) will CE Scripter run on when it is first released?

Windows and Linux (: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.

That's wonderful!

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