I'm currently working on some interpreter improvements so that we can
add script "hooks", where the engine calls a script in "immediate
mode" and receives the script's return value. In immediate mode a
script may not do anything that causes a wait or other user
interaction such as opening a menu. It's debatable exactly what should
be allowed; commands like walkhero should perhaps not be. Examples of
hooks will be ones to allow people to customise the levelup experience
requirement, the stat increasing formula, and an attack's damage (I
assume we would also have regular triggers attachable to attacks,
which can continue running in-battle).
So exactly what script hooks should we add? Almost everywhere where we
could use them there's a choice of how much to move into the script, a
trade off between complexity and flexibility.
For example for attack damage we could have a hook for the base
damage, for attack minus defense (and we still hadn't made 'blunt',
'sharp' and 'normal' damage more customisable), for applying elemental
bonuses, for the aim math, for total damage after taking into account
the whole huge pile of factors, or at an even more general level where
the script handles all of aim math, damage, damage bounds, revenge,
damage display... . I would lean towards having a couple, but
certainly not all, of these. For these sort of scripts we should
provide script commands to access builtin functions/formulae, where
the command calls a lower-level script hook if defined.
Another example which we were discussing in IRC; here's the current
code to update stats at levelup:
FOR o as integer = 0 TO 11
n0 = her.Lev0.sta(o)
nMax = her.LevMax.sta(o)
gam.hero(hero_slot).stat.max.sta(o) +=
(atlevel(gam.hero(hero_slot).lev, n0, nMax) -
atlevel(gam.hero(hero_slot).lev - gam.hero(hero_slot).lev_gain, n0,
nMax))
'...simulate ancient levelup bug and apply stat caps ...
NEXT o
One option is to add a hook to replace the 'atlevel' function. A
script to replicate the current function would look like this
(imagining we support floating point):
script, atlevel hook, level, at 0, at 99, hero id, stat number, begin
if (level >= 0) then (
return ((.8 + level / 50) * level * ((at 99 -- at 0) / 275.222) + at 0 + .1)
)
end
(Note that we pass the hero id, not the hero slot, because you're not
meant to depend on the hero's actual stats. The formula is independent
of hero and stat)
Another is to add a hook to replace the block of FB code above that
calls atlevel. That way you can do much more customisation, like
adding half of a hero's constitution stat to their HP stat every
levelup. Thinking about it I think it silly to not allow that sort of
thing, unless we insisted that people stick to the old way (writing an
afterbattle script). However, the atlevel function is also used to
compute a new hero's stats when they're added to the party, so would
have to provide both hooks.
What about other hooks I haven't mentioned? I can't think of many
more. A lot of things like enemy AI should probably be handled with
regular script threads (once implemented) rather than a "next attack
ID" hook, for example.
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