This required splitting A_CallSpecial into a direct wrapper around P_ExecuteSpecial and implementing itself as a script function calling ExecuteSpecial so that this special case can use a version of the function that can be used without an activator.
This also means that the remaining scriptification of the menu is on hold. The player menu would require even more access to critical game data, which is a no-go, and the other remaining menus offer little benefit from getting scriptified.
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.
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.
- improved the class pointer to string cast to print the actual type it describes and not the class pointer's own type.
- fixed: The 'is' operator created non-working code when checking the inheritance of a class pointer, it only worked for objects.
The entire setup was quite broken with each item using its own activation result and the ones of the subsequent items in the list as the return value.
This rendered the STANDSTILL check in the main function totally unpredictable because the value it depended on could come from any item in the list.
Changed it so that the main dispatcher function is part of sector_t and does the stepping through the list iteratively instead of letting each item recursively call its successor and let this function decide for each item alone whether it should be removed.
The broken setup also had the effect that any MusicChanger would trigger all following SecActEnter specials right on msp start.
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.
- cleaned up the virtual function interface of APlayerPawn which still had many virtual declarations from old times when class properties were handled through virtual overrides. None of this makes sense these days anymore.
- 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.
- made '->' a single token. Although ZScript does not use it, the parser tends to get confused and fatally chokes on leftover arrows so this ensures more robust error handling.
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.
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...
- Took the opportunity and fixed the logic for the Skull Rod's rain spawner. The old code which was part of the 3D floor submission was unable to work with portals at all. The new approach no longer tries to hide the dead projectile in the ceiling, it leaves it where it is and changes a few flags, so that its z-position can be used as reference to get the actual ceiling. This works for line portals, but for sector portals still requires some changes to sector_t::NextHighestCeilingAt to work, but at least this can be made to work unlike the old code.
- added names for the player-related translations to A_SetTranslation.
- fixed: Failure to resolve a function argument was checked for, too late.
- made the parameter for A_SetTranslation a name instead of a string, because it is more efficient. We do not need full strings here.
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
- scriptified all Effect functions of Fastprojectile's children
- implemented access to class meta data.
- added a VM instruction to retrieve the class metadata, to eliminate the overhead of the function call that would otherwise be needed.
- made GetClass() a builtin so that it can use the new instruction
Important note about this commit: Scriptifying CFlameMissile::Effect revealed a problem with the virtual function interface: In order to work, this needs to be explicitly enabled for each single native class that may be used as a base for a scripted class. Needless to say, this will end up way too much work, as there are over 100 native classes, excluding those which will be scriptified. But in order to fix the problem this partially broken state needs to be committed first.
- 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 DActorIterator class.
- fixed: It was not possible to have functions of the same name in two different classes because the name they were searched for was not qualified by the class. Changed so that the class name is included now, but to avoid renaming several hundreds of functions all at once, if the search fails, it will repeat with 'Actor' as class name.
This commit contains preparations for scriptifying Hexen's Dragon, but that doesn't work yet so it's not included.
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.
- added an 'exact' parameter to FThinkerIterator's Next function. This is mainly for scripting which allows to do a lot more checks natively when running the iterator while looking for one specific class.
- 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.
- fixed: FxMinusSign trashed local variables that were used with negation.
- fixed: FxConditional only handled ints and floats, but not pointers and strings.
- fixed: A 'no states in non-actors' error was triggered, even for classes without any states.
