Like the symbols and the VM functions this is data that is static from startup until shutdown and has no need to be subjected to garbage collection. All things combined this reduces the amount of GC-sensitive objects at startup from 9600 to 600.
Making this an object had little to no advantage, except being able to remove the deleter code. Now, with some of the class data already being allocated in a memory arena so that freeing it is easier, this can also be used for the drop item lists which makes it unnecessary to subject them to the GC. This also merges the memory arenas for VM functions and flat pointers because both get deleted at the same time so they can share the same one.
Now all actors have the same metaclass and therefore it will always be the same size which will finally allow some needed changes to the type system which couldn't be done because it was occasionally necessary to replace tentatively created classes due to size mismatches.
Symbols are very easy to manage once they are in a symbol table and there's lots of them so this reduces the amount of work the GC needs to do quite considerably.
After cleaning out compile-time-only symbols there will still be more than 2000 left, one for each function and one for each member variable of a class or struct.
This means more than 2000 object that won't need to tracked constantly by the garbage collector.
Note that loose fields which do occur during code generation will be GC'd just as before.
- removed all pointer declarations to types from the symbols. All types must be placed into the type table which means that they can be considered static.
As it stood, just compiling the internal ZScript code created more than 9000 DObjects, none of which really need to be subjected to garbage collection, aside from allowing lazy deallocation.
This puts an incredible drag on the garbage collector which often needs several minutes to finish processing before actual deletion can start.
The VM functions with roughly 1800 of these objects were by far the easiest to refactor so they are now. They also use a memory arena now which significantly reduces their memory footprint.
All non-actors now use PClass exclusively as their type descriptor.
Getting rid of these two classes already removes a lot of obtuse code from the type system, but there's still three more classes to go before a major cleanup can be undertaken.
Removing this variable is needed to remove PClassType and PClassClass as the next step to eliminate all of PClass's subclasses in order to clean up the type system.
- use a memory arena to store flat pointers so that the messed up cleanup can be avoided by deallocating this in bulk.
- added a new SO opcode to the VM to execute a write barrier. This is necessary for all objects that are not linked into one global table, i.e. everything except thinkers and class types.
- always use the cheaper LOS opcode for reading pointers to classes and defaults because these cannot be destroyed during normal operation.
- removed the pointless validation from String.Mid. If the values are read as unsigned the internal validation of FString::Mid will automatically ensure proper results.
If a later module reused an existing name for a different class or struct type, this new name would completely shadow the old one, even in the base files.
Changed it so that each compilation unit (i.e. each ZScript and DECORATE lump) get their own symbol table and can only see the symbol tables that got defined in lower numbered resource files so that later definitions do not pollute the available list of symbols when running the compiler backend and code generator - which happens after everything has been parsed.
Another effect of this is that a mod that reuses the name of an internal global constant will only see its own constant, again reducing the risk of potential errors in case the internal definitions add some new values.
Global constants are still discouraged from being used because what this does not and can not handle is the case that a mod defines a global constant with the same name as a class variable. In such a case the class variable will always take precedence for code inside that class.
Note that the internal struct String had to be renamed for this because the stricter checks did not let the type String pass on the left side of a '.' anymore.
- made PEnum inherit from PInt and not from PNamedType.
The old inheritance broke nearly every check for integer compatibility in the compiler, so this hopefully leads to a working enum implementation.
- ensure that actor defaults contain a valid virtual table and class pointer so that they can actually use virtual and class-dependent method functions. This is needed for retrieving script variables from them.
- support transient object member variables for information that does not need to be put in a savegame.
- fixed: special initialization of objects needs to pass the proper defaults along, otherwise the parent classes will use their own, inappropriate one.
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.
No need to maintain these clunky meta class for one single property. The overhead the mere existence of this class creates is far more than 100 spawned ammo items would cost.
There is no need to serialize AAmmo::DropAmount, this value has no meaning on an already spawned item.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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
This prevented any kind of error check on them.
Unfortunately, due to backwards compatibility needs, on DECORATE the missing class may not be fatal so a workaround had to be added to clear those bogus pointers later if they are discovered to be broken.
For ZScript, though, this will result in a compile error, which was the intention behind this change.
- 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.
- refactored state bitfield members into a flag word because the address of a bitfield cannot be taken, making such variables inaccessible to scripts.
- actually use PNativeStruct for representing native structs defined in a script.
