Grimrock

lol, i completed computer programminf 101, I learned Qbasic and I was being introduced to C++ but i had to drop out of college for reasons beyond my control.
I never went back to programming again.
the structure of lua scripting is very familiar to me.
I understand the flow of it and the logic.
it's just all the little words and commands and the period and semicolons and parentheses that i'm having to learn all over again.
I've mainly just been looking at other peoples scripts and copy pasting what I need, but if I'm not understanding what I am copy pasting then it is pointless.

when I first saw like "v, i" I did not know it meant "variable, integer"

i know i can type the id of an object and then put a period to access..."the components?" and the the colon allows me to execute a command like "activate" or "setHealth" and the the parentheses is where I put the info like for a hudPrint or for a health value.

but now i'm getting into "if, then else" structure for combination locks and specific items in alcoves, and I understand the logic of it, but I don't know all the words and commands so I've mainly been copy pasting what people say to put.


i'm finally taking the time to watch skuggsaveinns tutorials all the way through lol, before I was just skipping through to the parts that seemed relevant to what I wanted to do..

it's tough when you have to do your own independent study rather than a formal teaching structure with an instructor that can help you work it out when you get stumped by something.

FeMaiden wrote: in the end. I got the assets I wanted so, i'm moving on. my mod has been at an almost complete standstill for 3 days.

I thought this would be easy, just paint a tile map, place monsters and objects, do some light scripting and BAM I have a custom dungeon.
I didn't realize I was gonna need a masters degree in computer science, theoretical physics and advanced mathematics

I spent for example two days just with editing ONE custom item. Or a week with editing custom party scripting. Etc. I mean - you can make dungeon even without ONE script. Yes it is possible. It is only up to you how heavily you want script it or which ideas you want to realize. And of course - the more you want, the more scripting you will need and more you want to learn.
Thing is, there were many many people on the forum passing by similar to you, some of them know scripting better than we all together, some of them just contributed with some fancy things and then dissapeared forever. Only few stays. So believe me, this is more about the persistance and if you WANT do it, because if not, what is the sense then ?

Drakkan wrote:

FeMaiden wrote: in the end. I got the assets I wanted so, i'm moving on. my mod has been at an almost complete standstill for 3 days.

I thought this would be easy, just paint a tile map, place monsters and objects, do some light scripting and BAM I have a custom dungeon.
I didn't realize I was gonna need a masters degree in computer science, theoretical physics and advanced mathematics

I spent for example two days just with editing ONE custom item. Or a week with editing custom party scripting. Etc. I mean - you can make dungeon even without ONE script. Yes it is possible. It is only up to you how heavily you want script it or which ideas you want to realize. And of course - the more you want, the more scripting you will need and more you want to learn.
Thing is, there were many many people on the forum passing by similar to you, some of them know scripting better than we all together, some of them just contributed with some fancy things and then dissapeared forever. Only few stays. So believe me, this is more about the persistance and if you WANT do it, because if not, what is the sense then ?

the point is, i did WANT to. I had a vision I wanted to make it come to life and share it. but i'm having to do a crash course on how to use the tools. someone said "i've only ever seen one dungeon worth a damn that didn't use scripting" and so I'm trying to learn the scripting. and there ARE things I wanted to do in my mod, that can't be done without scripting, so i need to learn the scripting.

FeMaiden wrote:lol, i completed computer programminf 101, I learned Qbasic and I was being introduced to C++ but i had to drop out of college for reasons beyond my control.
I never went back to programming again.
the structure of lua scripting is very familiar to me.
I understand the flow of it and the logic.

FeMaiden wrote:i know i can type the id of an object and then put a period to access..."the components?" and the the colon allows me to execute a command like "activate" or "setHealth" and the the parentheses is where I put the info like for a hudPrint or for a health value.

...You know QBasic, but you aren't familiar with the concept of a subroutine?

I believe the following is sufficient for the programming involved in Grimrock mods:
- familiarity with imperative object-oriented programming
- familiarity with Lua's syntax, scope rules, type rules, string type/library, and table type/library
- testing your code
- referring to the scripting reference and asset definitions whenever you don't know exactly what a function does or what an object consists of

QBasic isn't object-oriented, but it is imperative, structural, and typed.

minmay wrote:

FeMaiden wrote:lol, i completed computer programminf 101, I learned Qbasic and I was being introduced to C++ but i had to drop out of college for reasons beyond my control.
I never went back to programming again.
the structure of lua scripting is very familiar to me.
I understand the flow of it and the logic.

FeMaiden wrote:i know i can type the id of an object and then put a period to access..."the components?" and the the colon allows me to execute a command like "activate" or "setHealth" and the the parentheses is where I put the info like for a hudPrint or for a health value.

...You know QBasic, but you aren't familiar with the concept of a subroutine?

I believe the following is sufficient for the programming involved in Grimrock mods:
- familiarity with imperative object-oriented programming
- familiarity with Lua's syntax, scope rules, type rules, string type/library, and table type/library
- testing your code
- referring to the scripting reference and asset definitions whenever you don't know exactly what a function does or what an object consists of

QBasic isn't object-oriented, but it is imperative, structural, and typed.

I never said I don't understand subroutines.


it's "familiarity with Lua's syntax, scope rules, type rules, string type/library, and table type/library"
that i'm having trouble with

I don't remember the name of the language but I did learn an "object oriented language" in high school on the macintosh. Lua seems very similar to that language which is why I can sort of puzzle out Lua.
I had never even hear dof Lua before playing Grimrock 1.
like I said someplace else, I had to drop out of college for reasons beyond my control, and have not looked at computer programming languages in over 15 years.


edit : update.

just thought I should mention, I did a little googling and the "object oriented language" I learned in college was Visual Basic. , not QBASIC, although I think I did learn that too. I had it confused with hypercard which I learned in highschool and that's not even used anymore, I guess I reveal my age...

Lua looks very similar to Visual Basic in it's structure, with the lines and the indents and the order of operations and the functions and the "end" commands.
so my background in visual basic is allowing me to puzzle my way through Lua, but I don't know all the words and symbols that Lua uses.

and yeah, I don't think i'll ever know how to script a trap to spew out eyetopus blindness balls in parabolic arcs onto random tiles, but I suppose I won't need to?


the irony here is that after more digging and comparing, it seems that 80% of people who have scripted in both visual basic and Lua hold the opinion that they prefer Lua over visual basic, and they get less frustrated and angry while coding in lua than they do with visual basic...

so I dunno why i'm having a hard time with this. maybe 35 is too old to be learning a new language? I bet a 13 year old could script better than me lol