This was done to ensure it can be properly overridden in scripts without causing problems when called during engine shutdown for the type and symbol objects the VM needs to work and to have the scripted version always run first.
Since the scripted OnDestroy method never calls the native version - the native one is run after the scripted one - this can be simply skipped over during shutdown.
There are a few which require explicit native construction or destruction that need to be exported to the VM, e.g. FCheckPosition.
The VM cannot handle this directly, it needs two special functions to be attached to handle such elements.
- created script exports for all relevant functions with all integral types.
- created script side definitions for the underlying data types.
- added a void pointer type so that the prototype for the pointer array can use a generic type every pointer can be assigned to.
- added a String class to allow attaching methods to the builtin string type. This works by checking if the left side of the member accessor is a string and just replacing the tyoe in this one place, all the rest is automatic.
Needless to say, this is simply too volatile and would require constant active maintenance, not to mention a huge amount of work up front to get going.
It also hid a nasty problem with the Destroy method. Due to the way the garbage collector works, Destroy cannot be exposed to scripts as-is. It may be called from scripts but it may not be overridden from scripts because the garbage collector can call this function after all data needed for calling a scripted override has already been destroyed because if that data is also being collected there is no guarantee that proper order of destruction is observed. So for now Destroy is just a normal native method to scripted classes
- added new VARF_Transient flag so that the decision whether to serialize a field does not depend solely on its native status. It may actually make a lot of sense to use the auto-serializer for native fields, too, as this would eliminate a lot of maintenance code.
- defined (u)int8/16 as aliases to the byte and short types (Can't we not just get rid of this naming convention already...?)
- exporting the fields of Actor revealed a few name clashes between them and some global types, so Actor.Sector was renamed to CurSector and Actor.Inventory was renamed to Actor.Inv.
- added a new type 'NativeStruct'. This will be used for types that cannot be instantiated, and is also needed to cleanly handle many internal types that only can exist as reference.
- changed Dehacked weapon function lookup to check the symbol table instead of directly referencing the VM functions. Once scriptified these pointers will no longer be available.
- removed all special ATAGs from the VM. While well intentioned any pointer tagged with them is basically unusable because it'd trigger asserts all over the place.
- scriptified A_Punch for testing pass-by-reference parameters and stack variables.
- instead add a list of SpecialInits to VMScriptFunction so this can be done transparently when setting up and popping the stack frame. The only drawback is that this requires permanent allocation of stack objects for the entire lifetime of a function but this is a relatively small tradeoff for significantly reduced maintenance work throughout.
- removed most #include "vm.h", because nearly all files already pull this in through dobject.h.
This could cause problems with functions that take states as parameters but use them to set them internally instead of passing them through the A_Jump interface back to the caller, like A_Chase or A_LookEx.
This required some quite significant refactoring because the entire state resolution logic had been baked into the compiler which turned out to be a major maintenance problem.
Fixed this by adding a new builtin type 'statelabel'. This is an opaque identifier representing a state, with the actual data either directly encoded into the number for single label state or an index into a state information table.
The state resolution is now the task of the called function as it should always have remained. Note, that this required giving back the 'action' qualifier to most state jumping functions.
- refactored most A_Jump checkers to a two stage setup with a pure checker that returns a boolean and a scripted A_Jump wrapper, for some simpler checks the checker function was entirely omitted and calculated inline in the A_Jump function. It is strongly recommended to use the boolean checkers unless using an inline function invocation in a state as they lead to vastly clearer code and offer more flexibility.
- let Min() and Max() use the OP_MIN and OP_MAX opcodes. Although these were present, these function were implemented using some grossly inefficient branching tests.
- the DECORATE 'state' cast kludge will now actually call ResolveState because a state label is not a state and needs conversion.
The proper setup for such classes was only done in CreateDerivedClass, but not in FindClassTentative itself. This extends CreateDerivedClass to allow it to create a class without fully initializing it.
Syntax-wise I chose to make it as strict as possible to reduce the chance of errors: Virtual base functions must be declared with the 'virtual' keyword, and overrides in child classes with the 'override' keyword. This way any mismatch in parameters that otherwise would cause silent failure will outright produce a compile error.
- made 'DamageMultiply' an actor property and moved the initialization of ConversationRoot to the property handler for the compiler to get this stuff out of the type classes.
- consolidate default initialization into one function which performs all the required setup. The original implementation did this when adding the fields but that cannot work because at that time no defaults have been created yet.
- fixed: When deriving a class the child class's defaults also must initialize the copied parent fields with special initialization. This part was completely missing.
- removed DECORATE code for parsing native classes because it's no longer needed.
* use the function build list instead of the function to pass the info. The function is permanent so not the best place for compile-time info.
* pass along the current state index which is needed to calculate the target state.
- added support for global variables to the code generator - not the compiler, though. For the handful of entries this is needed for it may just as well be done manually. So far FLevelLocals level is the only one being exported.
- fixed: The VM disassembler truncated 64 bit pointers to 15 digits because the output buffer was too small.
- resolve entire FxSequences instead of aborting on the first failed entry. This allows to output all errors at once.
- exported thinker iterator and drop item chain to scripting. Unlike its native counterpart the script-side iterator is wrapped into a DObject to allow proper handling for memory management.
- fixed: The VMFunctionBuilder only distinguished between member and action functions but failed on static ones.
- fixed: FxAssign did not add all needed type casts. Except for purely numeric types it will now wrap the expression in an FxTypeCast. Numeric handling remains unchanged for both performance reasons and not altering semantics for DECORATE.
- exported all internal flags as variables to scripting. They still cannot be used in an actor definition.
- make ATAG_STATE the same as ATAG_GENERIC. Since state pointers exist as actual variables they can take both values which on occasion can trigger some asserts.
- gave PClass a bExported flag, so that scripts cannot see purely internal classes. Especially the types like PInt can cause problems.
Todo: we need readonly references to safely expose the actor defaults. Right now some badly behaving code could overwrite them.
- synthesize PField entries from the flag list for AActor. This intentionally excludes the bounce flags for now.
- allow deprecated flags that do not call the deprecated flag handler.
- disallow constructs like (a = b) = c by not allowing an address request on an assignment operation.
- restrict modify/assign on boolean variables to the bit operators. Everything else needs to promote the result to an integer to make sense so it should be disallowed.
- added master and tracer to the list of exported variables.
- fixed: 'none' as class type must map to the real null pointer so that it won't get rejected by the stricter type checks.
- added handling for member function calls to zcc_compile.cpp.
- fixed: FxMemberFunctionCall may not delete the self expression if it gets passed on to the actual function call.
Ironically this only requires a very minor change in the calling code and an added member for the VMFunction to tell that code how many parameters to pass.
This change will allow to turn the vast majority of action functions into regular members, the only ones that still need to be an action function are the few that actually use the pointers.
- added a descriptive name to all types for error messages.
- added a generic type cast node to the code generator.
- added a few more cast operations to the 'cast' VM instruction.
- extended FxClassTypeCast to handle all possible input that can be cast to a class pointer, not just names.
ZDoom only uses these types in a very few isolated places, and even those can be removed without problems, so it's very doubtful that having support for these types is of any benefit - on the other hand, having them will most likely introduce more code than is saved in the data by using them...
* explicitly require passing the owning class when creating it.
* extract self pointer class when adding a variant.
* put the flags on the single variants, we can not fully rule out that they will be 100% identical, if variants ever get allowed.
* Allow PFunction to work without a VMFunction being attached.
* The Variant for a function must store the prototype itself instead of relying on the VMFunction it points to. Otherwise it would not be possible to reference a prototype during compilation of the function because it does not exist yet.
* Give the variant a list of the function's argument's names, because these are also needed to compile the function.
* create an anonymous function symbol when the function gets registered to the builder. At this point we have all the needed information to set it up correctly, but later this is no longer the case. This is the most convenient info to have here because it contains everything that's needed to compile the function in the proper context, so it has to be present when starting compilation.
* added some preparations to implement special handling for weapons and custom inventory items, which can run action functions in another actor's context. This part is not active yet but the basics are present in SetImplicitArgs.
* everything related to scripting is now placed in a subdirectory 'scripting', which itself is separated into DECORATE, ZSCRIPT, the VM and code generation.
* a few items have been moved to different headers so that the DECORATE parser definitions can mostly be kept local. The only exception at the moment is the flags interface on which 3 source files depend.
- switched the types of the internal 'self' and 'stateowner' parameters so that they get assigned correctly. I can't tell if this will error out if fields get accessed from the caller with the wrong class, but for actual scripting to work these must be correct.
The committed 'actor.txt' can be parsed successfully, with the exception of a few subclass references that cannot be resolved yet.
- added checks for duplicate field names.
- moved the tree node symbol tables out of PSymbolTreeNode to the worker data. That symbol is a bad location because it restricts the usefulness of the symbol class which is also needed for variables which use different AST structs.
- fixed some memory management issues with the work classes for the compiler that became apparent after moving the symbol tables in there. In several places these were copied around, possibly losing data.
