Oolite Bulletins

Thargoid wrote:

....any such ship would get swiftly removed from my ooniverse. There used to be another OXP ship (whose name I forget as it's a long while ago) which tended to become a cascade explosion when shot up, and it extremely quickly became frustrating as the clouds and devastation were too common and screwed with gameplay by destroying too much of the system infrastructure. It very quickly went into the bit-bucket...

Thargoid wrote:

You can see however that the second script (the worldScript) doesn't use that structure, hence the error that the function you're trying to set up isn't defined.

this.$selfDestructCountdown is not a function, but a global variable.. at least that's what I intended.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I understand that the cause for the error message
this.$selfDestructCountdown is undefined
is as follows:

• upon dying, the ship calls
  worldScripts.stardestroyer_worldscript.$starDestroyer_BigBang(this.ship.position, 5);
  This call succeeds, as you can see from the output
  05:58:22.015 [Star Destroyer]: starDestroyer_BigBang called: position(39892, -85261.1, 456021) / countdown: 5
• inside $starDestroyer_BigBang, the test if (countdown > 0) succeds, therefore
  this.$selfDestructCountdown = new Timer(this, $starDestroyer_BigBang(position, 0), countdown);
  is executed, meaning the variable is being assigned a new Timer.
• Mysteriously, the function specified inside the timer is called immediately and not, as I intended, after 5 seconds. You can see that from this output:
  05:58:22.015 [Star Destroyer]: starDestroyer_BigBang called: position(39892, -85261.1, 456021) / countdown: 0
  which shows that the timestamp is the same as the one from the previous call.
• this second call to $starDestroyer_BigBang has countdown == 0 as parameter, therefore the test fails and the else-branch is being executed. This includes the cleanUp for the timer:
  this.$selfDestructCountdown.stop(); this.$selfDestructCountdown.delete();
• then, for some other mysterious reason, a few moments later, something else tries to use the variable / the Timer, but it has already been deleted, which causes the error message
  this.$selfDestructCountdown is undefined

Thargoid wrote:

But anyway, you don't need the worldscript at all to do this. An energy bomb action is usually done via the AI command becomeEnergyBlast, so you need to either spawn a suitable entity (an energy bomb) or switch the ships AI to that of such a bomb.

Eric Walch wrote:

Thargoid wrote:

....any such ship would get swiftly removed from my ooniverse. There used to be another OXP ship (whose name I forget as it's a long while ago) which tended to become a cascade explosion when shot up, and it extremely quickly became frustrating as the clouds and devastation were too common and screwed with gameplay by destroying too much of the system infrastructure. It very quickly went into the bit-bucket...

Purple Haze probably. I removed the code lines from the script. Without knowing how to do, I probably would have eradicated the ship also from my universe. But, the main problem was there probably that there was no delay, so you has no chance of getting into safety. Yesterday, it just happened that a random hits target turned 'blue'. There I did escape and it stays fun. A good delay timer in combination with a warning (message or a blinking mine lolipop) may help to not delete the oxp a.s.a.p.

spara wrote:

I want to check if certain key exists in a descriptions.plist. At the moment I'm doing something like this:

Code: Select all

var key = expandDescription("[foo]");
if (key == "[foo]") 
//key not found

Not exactly a clean solution, as using expandDescription seems to thrown a JS warning. Is there some nice elegant way to do this check?

GGShinobi wrote:

this.$selfDestructCountdown is not a function, but a global variable.. at least that's what I intended.

this.$selfDestructCountdown = 0;
this.$selfDestructCountdown = false;
this.$selfDestructCountdown = "This is a string.";
this.$selfDestructCountdown = [125433.67, 86753242.44674, 1234234.367];

Commander McLane wrote:

Third, then your timer calls the function that defines itself. In other words, what your timer does is to define another new timer with the same name after countdown seconds, which then goes on to define another new timer with the same name after countdown seconds, which then goes on to define another new timer with the same name after countdown seconds, which then goes on to define another new timer with the same name after countdown seconds, ad infinitum. That doesn't make any sense at all.

Commander McLane wrote:

GGShinobi wrote:

this.$selfDestructCountdown is not a function, but a global variable.. at least that's what I intended.

First, simply typing a random combination of letters (even if it starts with "this.") into a script at some place doesn't turn that random combination of letters into a global variable. Assigning a value to it would turn it into a variable

Commander McLane wrote:

Second, why would you even need a global variable in the first place? It doesn't serve any discernible purpose. You're (re-)defining it a couple of lines later as a timer (which is something else than a variable) anyway.

Commander McLane wrote:

Third, then your timer calls the function that defines itself. In other words, what your timer does is to define another new timer with the same name after countdown seconds, which then goes on to define another new timer with the same name after countdown seconds, which then goes on to define another new timer with the same name after countdown seconds, which then goes on to define another new timer with the same name after countdown seconds, ad infinitum. That doesn't make any sense at all.

this.$selfDestructCountdown = new Timer(this, $starDestroyer_BigBang(position, 0), countdown);