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.
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.
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.
- 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...
- 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.
- 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.
- fixed: FxAssignSelf did not the correct number of registers for vector operations.
- fixed a few asserts in vector2 instructions.
- turned the virtual AActor::HitFloor method into a flag MF7_SMASHABLE. The only use of this function was to kill Hexen's pottery when they hit the floor, and this looks like something that can be exposed to modders less clumsily.
- 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.
- fixed flag CVAR access. As it turned out, OP_LBIT is a bit messy to set up properly when accessing integers that may or may not be big endian, so it now uses a shift and bit masking to do its work.
- used the SpawnPlayerMissile call in A_FireBFG to test named arguments.
- fixed: The code generator had no good safeguards for exceeding the maximum amount of registers.
All there was was a handful of pitiful asserts which in production code do nothing at all but generate broken output.
Even worse, the VM was hardwired to at most 255 constants per type per function by storing the constant count in a byte! This has been extended to 65535, but since many instructions only have a byte available for the constant index, a workaround had to be added to do a two-instruction setup if larger indices are needed.
- added new VM instructions to access the constant tables with a variable index.
- refactored VMFunctionBuilder's constant tables so that they are not limited to one entry per value. While this works fine for single values, it makes it impossible to store constant arrays in here.
- implemented method calls from struct instances.
- optimized disassembly of VM call instructions to print the function's name at the end where it is more visible and does not need to be truncated. Also use the printable name for script functions here.
- implemented multiple-return-value assignment. Due to some grammar conflicts the originally intended Lua-inspired syntax of 'a, b = Function()' could not be done, so it's '[a, b] = Function()'
- made APlayerPawn::PlayAttacking(2) virtual script functions so that mods have better control over player animations. Note that these have no native base so they skip the templated interface for managing virtual functions.
- 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.
- gave OP_CONCAT some sane semantics. The way this was defined, by specifying the source operands as a range of registers instead of a pair like everything else made it completely useless for the task at hand.
- changed formatting for floats to %.5f which for normal output in a game makes more sense. For special cases there should be a special formatting function for ints and floats that can do more specialized conversions.
- make the pointer to string cast a bit more useful by using the actual object's type rather than 'Object' which can be a great asset when debugging.
- fixed a few bad asserts.
