Awesome!

Hi everyone

First of all congratulations for your work, it is useful and educational at the same time.
I come from vb.net and I have seen things change a bit here, so I will do some silly question.

I have the impression q1ue the treatment of variables is a bit, shall we say, rigid.

Can you provide some flexibility, for example I can declare any variable and assign a value that I will use later.

I had readed you are working on OOP classes, (that's cool).
This means that I can write things like:

g_entity.SetTexture= ReplaceTexture('C:\Textures\blah')?

On the other hand I have understood that the reloaded version does not handle very well the old models of the classic version.
For example: I'm making a game using free FPS game creator version . If I install the reloaded version, can I continue working in my game using the same models, entities, etc..?
If not, you can add any tool to convert older models that are compatible with the new version?

Finally I think it might be appropriate to add a select case statment.

I apologize in advance if many of the things said above are not achievable.

regards
3com

Actually, you can declare and use variables the same (ok, similar) way you'd use them in any other programming language. Under Advanced >> Variables you'll find two blocks, one for declaring/setting a variable and one for referencing (reading) it's value. Take a look at this useless example below:







This will set variable test value to the value of e (that's entity that is running the script's unique integer/number identifier). As it is a number, you can use your variable with all blocks from "Math" category, but you can also use it to form text like in this example (LUA will automatically cast it to string).



Despite the fact you can not change object texture at runtime from LUA at this point, the g_Entity variable is a LUA table (or array/object, as named in most other languages). And because each script accepts entity identifier e, your code would most likely look like this:







But because earlier versions had possibility to have only two textures per object and only switch between them, it'll probably look like this:







At this point, I don't tend to encapsulate existing functions in my OOP framework, but instead I'm focusing on missing functions (like get distance between two entities in one line of code, get [nearest] entity/entities by name, etc....) so now it would look like this:







As a someone who have already written code before, it might be easier for you to go and write some LUA in good old plain text editor. This tool is made for absolute beginners who have never written a line of code (or hundred) in their life. I personally never use this tool as I'm way faster in writing code (and I can use my OOP framework that simplifies everything alot).



But if you need anything else regarding this, don't hesitate to ask.

That's cool, you can use this data let'a say, for starting dialeg between player and entity,
Having all the possible answers (entity) and questions (player), in a LUA Table (array).
Even change a bit the course of the game depending on what kind of questions the player ask.

If I code a dll, let's say, for animate water (some river,cascade,etc), may I run this dll from?, if so, how?.



I agree. But the way,your tool can give many clues to me, about how to's.I'm relly new with FPSC creator languaje script, and your tool can to be so useful to me, it can show me the right way to do whatever.

Very thank for your tool and your time and your tips.

3com

Thanks for your fantastic work on the Visual Lua as well as helping those folks.

So, in playing with this and creating a simple prompt message script, It says I needed vld_helpers? What and where is that?



NM, I found it. . . . . Over looked it 3 times )

@Avram : I agree with the community, this tool is awesome! I am curious if you have plans to add (a) saving the script to the local file system and (b) allowing scripts to be loaded back into the tool so you can carry on working on them? Maybe through som

way to go lee m8, this is a great idea

I agree, a great idea, I haven't got my head around LUA yet and this really helps.



A big thumbs up if it could interface with reloaded.

@Lee: While it's a great idea, I think it would be better if something like this was integrated into FPSC itself. Having it load a web based editor could pose problems if it's not kept up to date, something happens with the server / connection or may be t

That's cool and all, but can we get script editing integration just like you are proposing, but with a script editor of our choice? So that I can just launch Crimson Editor or Notepad, or whatever I want? I asked for this in Feature Creep. It would be very useful to even have it bring up a template script if you are clicking on this button for the first time. I wouldn't personally use a visual scripter like this myself. While the work done on it is stellar and it obviously has some value to some people, it's just cryptic and counter-intuitive to me since I'm an old-school C++ coder.

Hey Lee, I'm open for any type of improvements with this one. The only problem is this tool can not parse LUA code and make blocks out of it. Instead it can save AND load only XML (and export to LUA, as you can already see). I have already made something to store XML as a base64 encoded string as a LUA comment at the bottom of generated code, and when such file is loaded, it can look for that base64 encoded comment and load it back as set of blocks. Of course it would be easy to change code and leave that encoded XML intact and deceive users about script functionality, but we can easily add some hash check to the end of encoded XML that will not match (and will not load file in editor) if original LUA code is modified. We can also encode the LUA code too and have it all saved in custom (vlua?) format that Reloaded could load.

And for those concerned about using it offline - I guess most of us are online 24/7, or at least all the time we're sitting in front of our computers (and working with Reloaded), but as PHP 5.4+ comes with internal web server, I guess Reloaded could be shipped with PHP 5.4+ and have it run internal (and hidden) web server when started (for example it would be accessible on localhost port 37727 [fpscr]). Visual LUA Designer can work and generate code without PHP but, as far as I know, we can't load file in editor without PHP. In addition to that, as I remember when I was making desktop applications (mostly in Delphi, like 10 years ago :/), you can easily have embedded web browser within your applications (but it's a system web browser = IE), so Reloaded could have one which would load our http://localhost:37727/ where VLD is hosted, and users wouldn't even know it's web application. I can't see any other way to use this as a desktop application.

Sorry for my poor English, it's not my native language. PM me (or ask here) if you need any other info.

p.s. +1 for built-in editor (or ability to open script in desired editor from within FPSC). Actually, if you've ever used Game Maker their scripting system is cool: You can either write scripts from built-in editor (stored within saved level file) or load independent script from disk. So you can easily edit scripts while having ability to share script (stored in file) between multiple entities (like we already can in FPSC)

I totally agree with the above,I do not like web based apps.

I have been programming since Texas Instruments 994A and Commodore 64, with Machine Language, Delphi, and every type of Basic
in-between, and at my age I don't want to learn another Language. Therefore I think developing the Visual Designer sounds like
a great idea for Newbies, and lazy people like me.

I don't know if this has been said but : we can't place a custom script in a "User" folder for example ? do we ?

Because it throws "no function called for User/myscript"...

I doubt that is related to my Visual Designer, but you're right. You can't use slash (/) in function name so nope... at least not until TGC changes function naming convention.

But you can place helper .lua files in subfolders and then include/require them from your main entity script file.

Ok i got it thanks

This is really good. I can see myself putting this to good use!

news??

This tool might be the best way to get me into scripting for Reloaded.



In classic I used the FPE EDIT PAD tool which was pretty cool and provided some pretty good syntax scanning.



When I get the time I'll test this one out for sure as LUA is a bit scary to me :p

Funny, I found this now, And I was doing the exact same thing!!! Using blocky to make a visual editor for FPSCR. I think my job its done then!!! LOL!!! If you need help creating aditional blocks count on me!!!

Sure, why not we could team up and make this both online and offline tool? Send me a PM and we'll see who can work on what part of this.

I finally got my head around C# so I've started porting this to Windows, here's just a quick screencast that shows how opening new blank project works.



It's a long way to go, but I guess I'm on a good way

This is Great! An WIndows Application

Just a little sneak peek again (screenshot is attached).



hackinc 2000 joined me in developing this application and this new design is his work. He helped me a lot and gave me new strength to continue working on this.



We still have some issues which we will hopefully overcome soon so we might even finish this (relatively) soon

the new look is great and i hope you will continue with this awesome piece of software have a nice christmass !!

Really looking forward to this scripting software, will be happy to purchase

when it is developed. This will make ReLoaded unbeatable.

Nice to see people working together .

Dave

I've studied some of the scripts and I have a basic understanding of how they work, but have an hard time understand what's exposed to your own logic. For instance, lets say you have a mission to destroy 3 communication centers. I guess rather than look at the actual list of existing communication centers, you would simply have a counter, then as one is destroyed you add 1 to the counter, and have the other bit of logic that would use the counter to know you reached your objective. Or, you could add 1 to a 0 based counter for each com center that's init-ed, then subtract 1 for each 1 destroyed... Thinking out loud, and kind of created a solution for perhaps a different problem. In any case, I have a lot of learning how to access information from different entities from the game logic.

One thing I do need to learn is, operating a door on a building? Does the building need an animated door, or can you place a door model in an opening and control how and when it rotates, or are both options feasible?

You should contact rick to get this included with gameguru as standard!

It really fits the no programming style of gameguru and as a user of playmaker visual scripting for unity i can say i feel right at home here!

@Avram, are you still developing this product? I see there are no updates since December so I was just curious. This is a very amazing tool and a great contribution to the community.

Yes, we are definitely not quitting this, we're just a little short with free time these days, and we were waiting to see where the FPSCR will go with Steam release so we were on some kind of pause.

Glad to hear! I really wanna see this bear fruit. Even though I am learning Lua faster than I thought I would, this takes the concepts of GameGuru to the next level of helping everyone be able to make games.

Keen to see a visual editor as well!!

I haven't heard from hackinc 2000 in a while. Hope he is okay and will continue contributing to this. We've made some progress but it's stalled a bit lately. Guess if he doesn't come back soon I'll have to continue working on it alone. That would be a pity, as I barely have free time these days (real life problems)

You may have noticed that I'm not regularly visiting the forums anymore. Unfortunately some real-life problems need solving so I have no time to play with GG for now... however, I did hear from hackinc2000 (don't know if he is visiting forums regularly) and he has fixed some errors which were bothering us, added some functions and we're back on track.

The only issue is almost every update of GG brings new functions and we can't keep up with it, as we need to manually create all the blocks and the rules to translate them into LUA code. We are even considering making another piece of software which will scan LUA files for functions and create blocks for us

Hopefully GG will come to its stable phase soon (maybe it is stable even now, honestly I didn't have time to update/check it) so we can make all blocks/functions and release this as a stand-alone application. I need to contact Lee to see if he is still considering to make it bundled with GG.

Hi Avram

Lee actually mentioned this on twitch tonight ..... From what he said he is still keen to incorporate this ..
definitely get in touch with him .... its something many would like see in GameGuru

This move would greatly enhance the development of GameGuru for beginners
and also increase sales of the software. We need this programme ASAP

I really need it scripting is no easy for me

Is this Project still alive pls?

Any news on this. I just got back from the link in the first post to code.org. This visual/block type coding method is amazing. It will definitely be an asset to the Game Guru community if this is released.

Hi, I'm a programmer and I found this thread by google searching 'lua visual programming'. I was wondering about the technical aspects of this project. Was there an existing library used here, or was it completely coded from scratch? If existing libraries were used, could you please link them? I am interested in creating something like this for custom game developers of the game Dota 2.

Thank you!

Is the website down for anyone else? or am i missing something?

Heya guys, how y'all been doing?

As mentioned in another thread, I moved away from Windows, so I'm not even playing games anymore, let alone making them

Someone expressed interest for this today on one of my old GG youtube videos, so here it is. Should've done this way before, but better late than never. It's most likely very outdated, probably can't even compile, but I guess someone could take parts from it and make something beautiful

VLD source code: https://bitbucket.org/Avram/visual-lua-designer

I cloned it and compiled it.
After it is c# I could work on it. What kind of licence has it?

It's licensed under MIT license. I've added license file to the code.