Xindaris
Level: Smitemaster

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I recently learned, from a bug report of all things, a really neat trick to use very relatively few lines of code to have a character move in the direction it's oriented toward. It's demonstrated in this loop and works because of cool math, and is way more efficient than my old way of having a Label for each individual direction I want a character to be able to move in:


This got me curious, what other neat scripting tricks are there that aren't too well-known, or at least not mentioned in prominent places? Have you figured out any nifty script shortcuts that do things faster than the more obvious way?

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averagemoe
Level: Smiter

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I try to cram all NPCs that will never speak or be visible into the northwest corner of the room, all facing northwest. This keeps the numbers relating to their position as small as possible.

Also, if your hold has custom characters and a global script for something like a multi-room acheivement, hide that global script in the default script for your custom character, instead of making a character with a name like "Acheivement tracker 1". For instance, if I was charge of TSS, I would've had the script for managing the overmap be the default script for the Critic.

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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averagemoe wrote:
Also, if your hold has custom characters and a global script for something like a multi-room acheivement, hide that global script in the default script for your custom character, instead of making a character with a name like "Acheivement tracker 1". For instance, if I was charge of TSS, I would've had the script for managing the overmap be the default script for the Critic.

Why? I think multiple scripts broken into multiple characters are much easier to manage and, potentially, fix.

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hyperme
Level: Smitemaster

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I think it's an attempt to save on memory use?

Which is a terrible trade off. In the end, it's much better to put things where they belong, because someone might have to use them. Also ints take up the same amount of memory regardless of their value, so the 'keep numbers small' thing won't really help.

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averagemoe
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skell wrote: Why? I think multiple scripts broken into multiple characters are much easier to manage and, potentially, fix.

I mean giving the script an avatar and sprite that can be used as an actor in the hold, so that the list of custom characters isn't cluttered with things whose only purpose is to run a script.

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skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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averagemoe wrote:
I mean giving the script an avatar and sprite that can be used as an actor in the hold, so that the list of custom characters isn't cluttered with things whose only purpose is to run a script.

I still say it's perfectly fine to have custom characters whose only purpose is to run a script. There are only two cons to this:
1. Your list of characters is bigger (which is not a problem because a few additional characters, properly named, don't make a difference).
2. There are more characters running in the room at the same time (which again is not a problem because you'd need to add a few thousand of them to experience any performance issues)

which aren't real problems. On the other hand if you go this way you ensure to have better separation of concerns which increases readability of your scripts both for yourself (if you ever need to come back to the project or it's a hold with a long development period) or people who might be curious how things works. Additionally you don't have to worry if you can place a given visible NPC in a room because you know their script is either missing or will never have side effects.

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Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

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5.1 adds the "Natural target" feature, which allows custom monsters to behave like normal monsters around decoys, stalwarts and soldiers*, and timeclones, and to respect player stealth and invisibility. The following script shows how to use this feature to get your monster moving:

  Imperative 3
  Imperative 7
Label loop
  Get natural target Regular monster
  If ... 
        Wait until var "_ReturnX" = _MyX
     If ... 
           Wait until var "_ReturnY" = _MyY
        Wait 0
     If End 
  If End 
  Set var "_MyScriptX" = _ReturnX
  Set var "_MyScriptY" = _ReturnY
  Move to 0,0,0,1
  Set var "_MyScriptX" = -9999
  Set var "_MyScriptY" = -9999
  Go to loop

*However, stalwarts and soliders still won't target custom monsters!

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[Last edited by Nuntar at 11-27-2018 12:30 AM]