This can see some heavy use in iterators where saving several hundreds of function calls can be achieved. In these cases, using a function to do the job will become a significant time waster.
* It will now use #include, just like most other definition formats and can be mixed with regular definitions. However, due to how the Lemon-generated parser works this will not recursively pull in all files, but store them in a list and process them sequentially. Functionally this shouldn't make a difference, because ZScript is mostly order-independent - the only thing where order is important is native classes, but these are completely internal to zdoom.pk3 where proper order is observed.
Note that this only applies if both are in the same block. Just like in C++, it is perfectly legal to have the same variable name in two different nested scopes.
The original implementation just printed a mostly information-free message and then went on as if nothing has happened, making it ridiculously easy to write broken code and release it. Changed it to:
* Any VMAbortException will now terminate the game session and go back to the console.
* It will also print a VM stack trace with all open functions, including source file and line numbers pointing to the problem spots. For this the relevant information had to be added to the VMScriptFunction class.
An interesting effect here was that just throwing the exception object increased the VM's Exec function's stack size from 900 bytes to 70kb, because the compiler allocates a separate local buffer for every single instance of the exception object.
The obvious solution was to put this part into a subfunction so that it won't pollute the Exec function's own stack frame. Interesting side effect of this: Exec's stack requirement went down from 900 bytes to 600 bytes. This is still on the high side but already a lot better.
- fixed PARAM_ACTION_PROLOGUE to assign correct types to the implicit pointers. It gave the actual class to the wrong one, which until now did not matter because all functions were using 'Actor', regardless of actual class association.
- fixed the definition of IceChunk and removed some redundant code here. Since A_FreezeDeathChunks already calls SetState, which in turn calls the state's action function, there is no need to call it again explicitly.
- throw a useful exception when a VM abort occurs, the simple enum was incapable of reporting anything more than the barest minimum, which at least for array index out of bounds errors was insufficient.
The current exception mechanism is still insufficient. It really has to report a proper crash location and print a stack trace to the maximum extent possible. Instead it just prints a message and happily goes on. This is not a good solution.
Although this already helps a lot with the messed up code generated for comparisons it's not really a solution for this - it still needs a proper implementation to generate efficient code.
- fixed: When replacing a tentative class, the pointers in the morph objects were not replaced. Instead of adding more ReplaceClassRef methods I chose to integrate this part into the PointerSubstitution mechanism and delete ReplaceClassRef entirely. The code had some oversights anyway that would have caused problems, now that non-actors can be created.
It is utterly pointless to require every function that wants to make a VM call to allocate a new stack first. The allocation overhead doubles the time to set up the call.
With one stack, previously allocated memory can be reused. The only important thing is, if this ever gets used in a multithreaded environment to have the stack being declared as thread_local, although for ZDoom this is of no consequence.
- eliminated all cases where native code was calling other native code through the VM interface. After scriptifying the game code, only 5 places were left which were quickly eliminated. This was mostly to ensure that the native VM function parameters do not need to be propagated further than absolutely necessary.
- moved health items to their own file.
- scriptified ScoreItem and MapRevealer whose entire functionality was a small TryPickup method.
- fixed: bit fields in global variables were not correctly written.
This should conclude the inventory cleanup. It is now possible again to find things in there.
- Changed the glass shards so that they do not have to override FloorBounceMissile. It was the only place where this was virtually overridden and provided little usefulness.
- made 'out' variables work.
- fixed virtual call handling for HandlePickup.
- 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.
- merged the FrontBlock searcher for the Bloodscourge into RoughMonsterSearch. This also fixes the bug that the searcher was not initialized properly for the MageBoss.
A few notes:
* this accesses the lines array in sector_t which effectively is a pointer to an array of pointers - a type the parser can not represent. The compiler has no problems with it, so for now it is defined internally.
* array sizes were limited to 65536 entries because the 'bound' instruction only existed as an immediate version with no provisions for larger values. For the static map arrays 65536 is not sufficient so now there are alternative instructions for these cases.
* despite the above, at the moment there is no proper bounds checking for arrays that have no fixed size. To do this, a lot more work is needed. The type system as-is is not prepared for such a scenario.
- fixed: Assignment from a readonly to a read-allowed pointer must be an error.
- made GetDefaultByType a builtin so that it can do proper type assignment to the result, which for a function would be problematic in this case, even if automatic type deduction was implemented. Since this returns the class defaults which are not a real object, the result cannot be subjected to a type cast.
- error out if a type cast of a readonly pointer is attempted.
- fixed: FxBooleanNot could clobber a local variable because it used the source register to manipulate the result.
- fixed issues with the refactoring of the recent commits. This one starts again.
- added builtins for TextureID.
Note about builtins: Currently they are just hacked into the compiler backend. They really should be made part of the respective types to keep matters clean and allow more widespread use of builtins to create more efficient code.
Two reasons for this:
1. if this has to be routed through the VM each recursion will cost 1000 bytes of stack space which simply is not good.
2. having the virtual function only care about the item itself but not the entire inventory chain is a lot less error prone for scripting.
Since the scripting interface needs a separate caller function anyway this seemed like a good time to change it. The same will be done for the other chained inventory handlers as well.
- allow switch/case with names.
- fixed break jump target handling for switch/case. This only worked when the break was in the outermost compound statement, those in inner ones were missed.
Interesting tidbit: The damage calculation in P_MinotaurSlam had been incorrect for the Heretic version since the friendly Hexen Dark Servant was added, but nobody ever noticed in 14 years...
