User:Demolishun

What I am working on...

I am working on a plugin for OBSE. It will allow UDP communication between Oblivion and an external app. The plugin will allow for data to be converted to and from JSON messages that will convert to and from oblivion objects. It will also have the ability to launch an external app to connect to the engine and handle more advanced processes like databases, remote resources, and other tasks. The plugin will just be a transport. That will be the scope of the interface. This should allow modders to add significant functionality to the engine without extraneous features.

I am using the boost framework to get a reliable networking code base. I am also using a very mature JSON library to handle parsing of data both to and from the engine. I have just finished the parser and am testing it. I have simple UDP up and running in a thread and I can send and receive data to the engine.

Notes: In order to convert a FormID or RefID number I needed to build a TESForm and set the ID against it. So this is the code needed to do so if you have the ID:

UInt32 tref;
g_serialization->ResolveRefID(tint,&tref);
TESForm *formref = LookupFormByID((UInt32)tref);

Demolishun 16:32, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Wild ideas:

May 9th 2010

Ooh! Had a wild idea. Make a mod that allows you to vandalize things in the game. Paint, smashing things, etc. Can anyone say, "Life of Brian"? Of course it would be better if you could recruit some rowdy teenagers to do the dirty work.

Current feature being worked on:

June 14th 2012

Finally getting around to developing a plugin for external communication to Oblivion. It will allow access to any resources of the computer. It will definitely add more capabilities for tweaking the game from within and outside the game.

May 29th 2010

Okay, I implemented the parser because it was not that bad. I made decision to not pre-compile the functions, but I may need to gain speed. Right now the parser interprets each string every time an expression is evaluated. This may cause slow downs later. I also made it so the parser only runs once every 5 seconds. That should reduce the load quite a bit. I have tried to make things event based as much as possible, but the parser really needs to be run to catch things the events can't.

Another feature was detecting a murder of an NPC. The code I had written did not work properly. Now I finally got it nailed down. One issue is that a script on a weapon will not show the NPC in battle if the current strike killed the NPC. If that happens then it looked like to the code the NPC had been attacked when it was not in battle. This made it so I was getting murder increments when fighting bandits. Although, it is possible to murder a bandit (for my code anyway) if they are attacked when not explicitly in battle. This does not affect the game murder tally, but it does show a character trait of the main character. I wanted to track the character's honor. I decided to go this route and if it bothers players I may add a switch to change the behavior to never be able to murder those from evil factions.

May 8th 2010

I am making the decision to bag the parser and use variables to set features on specific effects. I will document on how to add a new effect by creating a mod. I will also show how to add the function call for the new feature into the original mod so that extensions can be made without messing with the original mod. This gives us the full power of scripting and keeps me from doing a ton of work on a crappy parser. For now I will store variables so the existing features can be tweaked. I will also allow for storing variables for add on mods too. This should satisfy anyone's need to expand while not making it unbearable to code.

Along with these changes I am making the decision to make this mod require Pluggy version 125. This is because I am lazy, the plugin makes it so much better, and it satisfies a need to make persistence across game characters. I really like the idea that some things in a new game will be influenced by past actions in a different life so to speak. Expect weapons and NPCs to be affected. Won't say how, but they will.

Past features:

May 1st 2010

Wow, learned a lot about Pluggy and what can and can't be done. I also learned something about what can and can't be done is OBSE. One thing that threw me was you can't convert a Pluggy string to an OBSE string in the 125 version of Pluggy. To get around this I used StringSetName from Pluggy to set the name on an object. Then I used GetName to turn it into an OBSE string. This allows me to get a string with a maximum length of 255 characters out of an INI file. Good enough for what I need.

April 24th 2010

The main feature currently being worked on is running a 'script' of sorts from a setting in a Pluggy INI file. What I am planning on now is creating a stack processor. This will allow me to create finite stack commands stored in the INI file to manipulate a value. Here is an example:

; in OBSE:
let attackValue += baseAttack + (weaponHits/1000)

Okay, that code makes some assumptions like variables being there and stuff. I can store that string in the INI file, but I cannot execute it. So to do that I create a stack:

; stored in INI file
script0="get#weaponHits"
script1="/#1000"
script2="+#baseAttack"
script3="+=#attackValue"

Now the code to parse that and generate an output will take some work. It will be stored in an array. The array will be parsed at the appropriate place in the mod script and applied to values stored in StringMaps. Not as quick as script, but doable to have simple code embedded in an INI file. The main goal is extensibility and uniformity of implementing features in the mod. It forces everything to be organized and consistent leading to better more extensible code. At least that is what I tell myself when getting the brain damage to implement this.

April 17th 2010

Equip and unequip modification of the weapon. Drop the weapon and it looks normal. Pick it up and it is "tweaked". For this to work the weapon has a script attached to it. I also developed a spell that will add this script to any weapon. I was inspired by the OBSE AddScript command, but followed the directions to use a base weapon with the script already, make a clone, and copy the attributes of the weapon to be copied. So no actual usage of the AddScript command. OBSE 18 has been instrumental for the features needed to accomplish this. My favorite feature of this equip/unequip tweak is the 'stack' I implemented to allow detection of what was previously equipped. I will be creating an article on this later.

Mostly just learning to script in Oblivion and lamenting that the language is not: C, C++, Perl, Python, Basic, etc. Really, I am over it, but still.

Things I would like to see in OBSE 19

The ability to run an external command line application like you can when you run 'cmd' in the 'Run' command under Windows. The ability to parse what is returned could be excellent for interfacing to a huge amount of external tools. For instance, sqlite, which is a file based database that can be run from the command line. The interface would be simple: command to run plus args, return whatever the tool sent to stdin in a string_var.