Actually I think you are both right in a sense. IF you are a programmer, added fuctions would actually make TWX easier to block and easier for a programmer to come back to at a later date and understand what's going on. However if these functions were used improperly by someone that doesn't have good programming skills, it could pose serious issues such as stacks, memory leaks, and system crashes.

Personally I think the biggest issue with newer people learning TWX is that it involves work. Sorry but thats my honest opinion, we live and play in a period where if it's not easy it's not worth doing. Ive been off and on learning TWX for quite awhile and sometimes I still dont get it all. That doesnt mean its the scripting languages fault, as someone who had limited prior experiance with languages some concepts were harder than others to grasp (BFS, Array's). But in the end dilegence and perseverance paid off and I understand them enough to incorporate them into scripts. Scripts are work, they take time/thought and patience to complete, something in my opinion allot of the newer and some older players lack.

I have some really short bits of BFS code that even I don't understand how they work anymore. Actually, I have quite a bit of code where I know what it does, but I'm not sure I understand it anymore. I was making changes to MoveHelper recently and basically had to start from scratch in a few places because it was easier to start over than figure out what I was doing in the first place. The advantage of doing that was that I was able to use some of the new stuff that EP put in.

My point is, you only get back what you put into it.

Jackalope, if you want to help EP, I'm sure he would welcome it. People have offered to help in the past too. But you have to understand that most TW players are flakes and once they realized the work involved, they bailed on him. Or they had their own vision for it and it conflicted with the direction EP was going. But you need to be serious, and you need to have a good grasp of the code.

If you really want to help, why not pick one or two of the changes yourself in the existing code and show it to EP. THAT would get his attention and show you were serious. Otherwise, you're all talk.

I have a lot to say about this subject (imagine that), but the long and short of it is this: I didn't understand why Xide limited TWX when I was a scipter, but I've come to see his vision since I took over, and I agree with it and perpetuate it. To understand what his vision was, you have to understand what makes TWX the helper of choice - scripts. Now understand what makes it the script engine of choice - simplicity. Now understand what makes it simple - goto statements and labels, and the lack of complex structures. How many of us know what this line of code does?
v.erase(remove_if(v.begin(), v.end(), [x, y](int n) { return x < n && n < y; }), v.end());

Exactly none of us. Sure, it would take 100 lines of TWX code to reproduce a C++ lambda function, but you'd be able to understand what was going on without 10 years of programming experience. And that is the point. No scripting language is trivial, but TWX is as simple as possible, so that non-programmers can write scripts. As evidence, I submit that more than 90% of the scripts on Grimy were written by non-programmers.

There has not been written a simpler scripting language to automate TradeWars play. If you'd like, I'd be happy to tell you the 20 most important TWX commands to learn, and that alone would give you the ability to write some basic scripts.

What TWX lacks is good documentation and tutorials. Instead of people getting on the bandwagon for TWX development, let someone spearhead a TWX documentation project, and make me one of the editors (to weed out misinformation). That would do far more for TWX and those trying to learn scripting than additional developers.

+EP+

I 100% agree with that, would save the headache of allways asking/answering the same questions all the time. If it wasnt for people in the forum I would never have made the progress with TWX I did due to the lack of docs.

While working on a script tonight I realized one command that could clean up some scripts. A format for numbers that places the commas in the correct position. This would eliminate writing the insert procedure and also the kludge on how we have to swap values.

Currently it goes something like:

setVar $formatString $numberValue
gosub :formatNum
setVar $numberValueFormatted $formatString
...
...

echo $numberValueFormatted
echo $nextNumberFormat

:formatNum
....
return

A clean way of doing it would be something like: formatNumber $numberFormat $numberValue
where $numberValue (30000) is formatted to (30,000).

If there is a good way to to it now, I am open for suggestions. The above example on the current way I am doing it is pretty basic, but when you deal with 10 or more values to be formatted, it gets messy.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Cant you just use

GetLengt and MergeText

I know it may get a little complicated , but you of all people
probly could pull this off with a few lines of code

but as an added command , it might be nice to see number shown
with the commas if you like .... sometimes.

I just striptext the commas out, and never bother to put them back in.

But yeh, u could just gettext in reverse, from length to 0, in 3 char increments.

Hehe. Maybe that should be the next coding challenge.

in just about every script I write:

Great Job LS

k, now add 10 more vars that have to be formatted correctly with the output and you will see what I am talking about in regard to a mess.

The generic format I use works well, but I still have to do the setVar to a temp Var, gosub to format, set original to new formatted value and repeat for the next Var.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

This is the generic format I use for numbers:



Output:

Input Var: 9  Output Var: 9
Input Var: 10  Output Var: 10
Input Var: 123  Output Var: 123
Input Var: 1234  Output Var: 1,234
Input Var: 12345  Output Var: 12,345
Input Var: 123456  Output Var: 123,456
Input Var: 1234567  Output Var: 1,234,567
Input Var: 12345678  Output Var: 12,345,678
Input Var: 123456789  Output Var: 123,456,789
Input Var: 1234567890  Output Var: 1,234,567,890
Input Var: abracadabra  Output Var: ab,rac,ada,bra
Input Var: 1234567899876543210  Output Var: 1,234,567,899,876,543,210

Yeah, I should have formatted a right pad on the $inputVar to make it in pretty columns.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

You got me... dead-bang. Actually, I think you're suffering from a bit of tunnel vision. I mean, my little routine is not meant for



Not seeing the mess. But then again this is how every function-call is made(?) The Working parameter is either 'Destructive' or it isn't. Adding the comma's is for display purposes anyways.. if you want to perform some numeric function on the variable latter on.. you'd have to make sure you use the StripTExt Command and remove "," again because TWXProxy doesn't know how to perform math on:

"1" + "1,000" ='s "Script Terminated '1,000' is not a decimal number"


what is that anways: 1.2 Quintillion-Trillion-Zillion-Billion? I've can't even count that high..

LS, I should have identified a bit more of what I am doing with the formatting. Basically it is to output into a TWX window, and/or a text file in an easier (for me anyway) format to read. The numeric vars are usually left alone so I don't end up with a crash.

The "mess" as I call it comes from:

setVar $inputVar $credits
gosub :genFormat
setVar $creditsDisp $outPutVar

setVar $inputVar $citTreasury
gosub :getFormat
setVar $citTreasuryDisp $outPutVar

... and this continues until everything is formatted and then output ...

I think I could clean up this part a little by simply creating a var such as $display and adding the text as I go instead of a seperate var, but I still end up with goSubs i.e.,

setVar $inputVar $credits
gosub :genFormat
setVar $display "*Credits: " & $outputVar

setVar $inputVar $citXfer
gosub :getFormat
setVar $display $display & " Cit Xfer: " & $outputVar "*"
....
setWindowContents xyz $display
write GAMENAME & "info.txt" $display

If there was a number formatting command within TWX, then the goSubs would be eliminated. A couple of others might be lPad and rPad to pad a string either left or right. Easy to write but still have the goSubs.

.. and I can't even begin to tell you what that last number is in my earlier example's output.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

I would love to know the 20 most important TWX commands.

Helix