Re: lua state

[Jamie Webb <j@...>]

On Friday 07 May 2004 09:01, Krzysztof Jakubowski wrote:
> Let's say we have functions defined in C:
>     Say(txt, speech)    -- play sound file 'speech' and show message 'txt'
> on the screen. Then stop lua until the message is finished
>     Wait(time)    -- stop lua for some time
>
> look at this:

How about this syntax, which can be acheived directly in Lua:

script = Sequence "script_name" {
    Say("Hey Fox Four, any hot women out there in Aldebaran?", "1.ogg");
    Say("I don't think I want to meet any women they got out there.", 
"2.ogg");
    Say("You don't like women with four legs and two heads? Man -", "3.ogg");
    Say("One more word and you two are gone from my flight.", "4.ogg");
    Wait(5);
    Say("Freedom to all, GE electronic countermeasures detected.", "5.ogg");
    Say("Right boys, it's gonna get warm in a minute. No sleeping, no 
schlepping.", "6.ogg");
    Say("Roger.", "7.ogg");
    Wait(3);
    CreateSomeEnemyObjects(...);
    Say("Freedom to all, strong group signature growing fast at eighty 
degrees, ETA forty.", "8.ogg");
    Say("Copy. Sounds like you could use a radical radar upgrade there.", 
"9.ogg");
}

Now the Say and Wait functions return closures which actually do the saying or 
waiting. The Sequence function combines all those closures into a state 
machine. You keep your variables in a table which is passed among the 
closures and can be serialised to save the game state. You can define 
additional operations on these sequence machines which allows them to be 
composed in more complex ways, variations on the machine structure designed 
for dialog, etc. The key here is to think declaratively rather than 
procedurally. You get a lot more flexibility that way.

-- Jamie Webb