[ZAZ]

If you want to show your appreciation for Dutchy & PatrickW's Mission Coding for Dummies! and/or Mission Coding for Pro's threads, then post in here rather than in those topic, so Dutchy and Patrick can add tutorials if needed. Also questions and suggestions belong here.

Cheers - Ottae



Wuah.. a really complete mission coding tutorial
my friend you won the award a again


This post has been edited by Dutchy3010 on Sunday, May 3 2009, 18:57

[goin-god]

Damn. This is the best tutorial i have ever seen.

Your tutorial is awesome, good work Dutchy!

[bammargera]

wow Dutchy, everytime i see a new topic with your name on it i always wonder what can she do next, its amazing nice work, i might even try and learn mission coding now

[Seemann]

Please, dont give direct links to the Sanny Builder installer (your very first post contains it). Link to the download page instead. The reason is that direct links become broken eventually (as that your link to SB 3.03) thus useless.

And as I already said you - great tutorials, I like them.

[Dutchy3010]

Fixed, it links to the download page now.

Thanks for all the compliments. ^^ If someone wants to have a tutorial about anything that is useful for making missions, just give me a pm and I will see what I can do.

[Seemann]

I would make the table of content as reference links (linking to the same page, with # sign before), so you dont need to reload the page to read a specific tutorial. Like this:

• Before you begin
• Basics of coding (coding structures)

etc

[NTAuthority]

Hmm, it seems like I have read almost the exact same guide somewhere before... don't remember where, may be that the same person posted it there too. Even if I did know it, the updates done to a lot of parts make it an even better guide

[goin-god]

QUOTE (NTAuthority @ Mar 27 2009, 05:22)

Hmm, it seems like I have read almost the exact same guide somewhere before... don't remember where, may be that the same person posted it there too. Even if I did know it, the updates done to a lot of parts make it an even better guide

She originally wrote it in dutch i think.

[ThaGTAGamer]

Yeah... COOL tutorial, but it is for SA. Does it same with VC or GTA III???

[goin-god]

QUOTE (ThaGTAGamer @ Apr 4 2009, 08:44)

Yeah... COOL tutorial, but it is for SA. Does it same with VC or GTA III???

Well, Dutchy used Advanced coding, which i dont know if its supported in Vice. But the basics are almsot the same thing.

[Sicologikal]

Excellent work this will come in handy for my mod!

Thanks a million!



This post has been edited by Sicologikal on Wednesday, Apr 29 2009, 01:06

[Dutchy3010]

Mission Coding for Pro's!

From now on, this is a reaction topic for Mission Coding for Dummies and Mission Coding for Pro's. It is a project of PatrickW and myself. Good luck with all the tutorials.

[goin-god]

I lol'd

Awesome work guys

This post has been edited by goin-god on Sunday, May 3 2009, 20:33

[Aschratt]

QUOTE (Dutchy3010 @ May 3 2009, 19:47)

Mission Coding for Pro's! From now on, this is a reaction topic for Mission Coding for Dummies and Mission Coding for Pro's. It is a project of PatrickW and myself. Good luck with all the tutorials.

Great work!

I'd enjoyed reading the tutorials (espacially the last one). To write coding style guidelines it requires alot of knowledge and practical experience. While reading both tutorials you realy feel that both of the authors got it.

Anyway I'd got something to add. However those guidelines are great (Although I personally prefer the opcode-param notation... it is just a personal oppinion of myself since the "High-Level" representations are only synonyms for the opcodes in most cases), but you will get lost in huge code-files anyway. So I am talking about using SannyBuilder's directives, especially {$INCLUDE } which is a pretty usefull tool if you are working on complex scripts (Like a storyline or something in this way). $INCLUDE does nothing else than adding a predefined file to the position the directive is located. The content of this file of course needs to be SannyBuilder compatible plain text source code. As simple as this directive seems it has much power in readability of huge source. By splitting your script into multiple files and giving the files strong names descriping the content of the file in one or two words it drasticly reduces the time spent into searching for some special code.

For example I am using $INCLUDE for each thread I am creating in my script file. So what I did (remember - we are talking about big sources!) was creating a file corresponding to some kind of interface. It does nothing else than including all threads. So everything I had to do was including this file right below the main-routine in my main source file. The only thing you have to be aware is that you have opened the main tab in SB before compiling the script. Otherwise you could cause errors because of missing variable declarations or something in this way. As I said the directive is rudimentary and SB only knows sequential code, so it is not able to search for references of this file. Another weak point of course is that there is no way to prevent a multiple includes of one and the same file, but this would lead to errors during compile progress because of label redeclarations usualy. At least if you have created a label there... if not you should because of the reason descriped above... The behaviour can be compared to "#pragma once" from C/C++ then.

Another thing which could be improved is the part handling constant declares. For people switched over to SCM from C, Pascal or Java constants may be interprated as kinds of objects. For example have a look at this pseudo C-Code:

CODE

const int myVar = 0; if(myVar == 0) {    printf("%d", myVar); }

(Yes I know it does not make many sense at all - it is just an example - but in an similar way this could be used to create some kind of compile-time polymorphism which means that I can define code sequences which are only executed if an constant has an certain value. If it hasn't - the code can be seen as "waste" )
Now let's try to translate this code to SCM using const..end notation:

CODE

const myVar = 0 end :MY_PSEUDO_CODE 00D6: if 0038:   myVar == 0                     // ERROR! 004D: jump_if_false @SOMEWHERE_ELSE 045A: draw_text_1number 2.0 2.0 GXT 'NUMBER' number myVar 0002: jump @SOMEWHERE_ELSE

So the line marked as error does compile, but crash as soon as the game reaches this code segment, while the text-draw line (045A) does not crash. The reason is simple. Constants are no objects! They are just aliases. During compilation they are searched and replaced by their values. This can be strings, numbers or other constants (as the documentation of SB sais), where the other constants would cause some kind of recursion. Anyway now the compiler would get

CODE

0038:   0 == 0

which is valid since we have specified that the first value must be an global variable. But global variables are nothing else than numbers (something like addresses... for more info see an SCM documentation). So now the game reaches there and crashes, because 0 is no valid variable. I don't know what happens if you initialize "myVar" with something else than 0, but I guess it would crash or at least end in undefined behaviour - so do not do this!

That's all. As told above those are just points where I think they are worth to be mentioned. Especially the $INCLUDE directive is a great tool for readable code.

So far... greetings and thank's for the nice tutorial!
Keep it up,
- Aschratt.

This post has been edited by Aschratt on Friday, May 22 2009, 14:08

[billy7877]

Thank you very much for the tutorial!!

[KornEL[HUN]]

the custom save pickup doesnt work or i have f*cked up anything

i want to make a new save pickup at theese coordinates:

X 2335.42
Y -1141.08
Z 1053.80

can u help me?

(the new game starts but the save is not on its place)

there is the code what i ve used:

thread "SAVE"
$SAVE_X = 2335.42
$SAVE_Y = -1141.08
$SAVE_Z = 1053.8

:SAVE_38
0395: clear_area 1 at $SAVE_X $SAVE_Y $SAVE_Z radius 1.0
$SAVE_PICKUP = Pickup.Create(#PICKUPSAVE, 3, $SAVE_X, $SAVE_Y, $SAVE_Z)

:SAVE_74
wait 100
Pickup.Picked_up($SAVE_PICKUP)
else_jump @SAVE_74
$ONMISSION = 1
Player.CanMove($PLAYER_CHAR) = False
03D8: show_save_screen

:SAVE_106
wait 100
03D9: save_done
else_jump @SAVE_106
Pickup.Destroy($SAVE_PICKUP)

:SAVE_124
wait 100
Player.Defined($PLAYER_CHAR)
else_jump @SAVE_124
Camera.Restore_WithJumpCut
Camera.SetBehindPlayer
Player.CanMove($PLAYER_CHAR) = True
$ONMISSION = 0

:SAVE_158
wait 0
80EC: not actor $PLAYER_ACTOR 0 near_point 2310.32 -1141.08 radius 1053.8 2.0
else_jump @SAVE_158
jump @SAVE_38
end_thread

sorry for my bad english !

[Dutchy3010]

I hope you are trying to create a pickup in an interior? Else the z-value is way too big.

You have to give some more information. Does the game crash? Can't you see the pickup? Where did you put that code?

[trickstar34]

How come you only mentioned mission start text style and don't show how to use it? I tried researching the main but the only thing I found was this and it didn't work. When I use it nothing happens.

CODE

054C: use_GXT_table 'CASIN10'

[Dutchy3010]

CODE

00BA: show_text_styled GXT 'BEEFY' time 3000 style 1

When you use 2 instead of 1 after style, you have the begin mission text. I explained that in the tutorial...

[KornEL[HUN]]

1yes its in an interior
2do not crash
3where need i put it???(MAIN.scm)

thx for the answer