Radiant Virtuoso Q1 Gamepack ver 2.many

[MadGypsy]

This project will definitely be completed. I've wanted to make this for a long time but I always got stuck on the most critical parts due to flash not supporting it. I'm way way past all of that and already have a working proof of concept from one end to the other and back. Only thing left is to build the switch/value system and some simple UI's like dropdown boxes, buttons etc. Of course with the way I work those wont be the only things left, but they are the bare minimum to complete my vision.

[Dutch]

Good to know. I'm still a long ways off from mapping, but I'm pretty stoked to see what this brings

[MadGypsy]

Ive been quiet about this for days but, I haven't stopped working on it. I'm working on the switch selection system right now. I still can't capture stdOut but I put that on a backburner for now. It's not absolutely necessary so, I will revisit it after I get the necessities complete.

[MadGypsy]

well I got another 3 hours. That's something I guess. Technically I slept 7 hours last night. Now if I could get that all in one shot I might actually feel human again.

[Dutch]

Sweet. Given your attention to detail and unwillingness to let things be 'good' and not 'great' by your personal expectations, I have a feeling you'll be back at stdOut before long. I've kind of gotten that impression of you. Lol. Hope you get some sleep man.

[MadGypsy]

Since I couldnt sleep I decided to play with the shell some more. I still can't figure out how to capture stdOut. It just does nothing, no errors, no data, no fun. I did however clean the entire project, and now there is an cfg file that allows almost every visible property of the shell to be set, even down to the padding of the title within the shell caption.

I think Im done with the shell but it's bugging me that I can't capture stdOut. I don't know if Im going to give up on that since it's not mandatory or if I'm going to find a way whatever it takes. If I could harness stdOut I could include some fancier stuff in my build menu.

random info: stdOut means standard output and it's the stream that carries all the output data from an executable. So, like, all that info that map compilers spit out into the cmd shell would be the data I'm trying to catch...stdOut and so am I

[MadGypsy]

ya, well, this is why Im so tired. <4 hours ago I went to sleep on the verge of a coma, and pop, just like that Im fully awake again but still dead tired. I want to cry. I could try to go back to sleep but Ive already spent the last 20 mins facing the reality that it aint gonna happen.

[Dutch]

Ok this is starting to make sense little bit at a time.

@Sloppy: you type better on a phone dead tired than I do wide awake. Lol.

[MadGypsy]

Since I work thur - sun, I always treat these days like interim days regarding my projects. There just isn't enough hours when I get home to get deeply involved and generally I just want to veg out after work anyway. That being said, I decided to look at what I already completed and determine if I wanted to change anything, and I did.

Getting the shell UI from an external swf was too clunky so, instead of grabbing the graphical assets that way, I sat down and redrew the assets with code directly in the main shell project. As tedious as thst sounds it wasn't a very big deal. The downfall to this method is, there us no way to customize the shell without changing and rebuilding the source. I think I'm fine with that. Tomorrow I think I'm going to go over it one last time.

For now though I am going to bed. I haven't slept proper in days. Im so tired I can hear beings from alternate dimensions whispering to me and I can see every microscopic particle in the air that surrounds me. Another hour or 2 and I will turn into light. Im not on drugs. Im the kind of tired that can kill you.

sorry if sloppy my hands are too clumsy for phone typing.

[MadGypsy]

Im at work rereading this and thinking cause, it's really slow, and I realized I forgot to say

you're welcome @JD

[MadGypsy]

1 executable - you can't, it wont be that. Certainly there will be a main file that kicks it all off but it wont be an exe. For my particular program it goes like this:

The hta file is basically just html that has an extension which tells windows to open it as an app. For real this is basically just a web page in a explorer shell. Css and VBScript are legitimate languages to use in an html. You only have to know the 3 layers of web page development to understand it.

content - html
appearance - css
behavior - javascript/vbscript/jscript

flash players run in a browser so, for me to write the main app in as3 and simply embed it in the webpage is totally legit. After all, thats all this is... a webpage. Where I break out of browser functionality is 2 fold. 1 im using an hta extension so now my webpage has filesystem access. 2 using flash's ExternalInterface I'm able to utilize VBScripts "native" commands with flash as the proxy.

For instance, I can write a VBScript that will start a program or cmd shell but make flash the object that will actually call that VBS. It's all just a bunch of layering. I utilize a wrapper and its partner languages to add functionality to flash which it does not naturally possess. VBScript is good at accomplishing simple filesystem tasks and gathering data that flash cannot access but, flash is far more powerful as an overall scripting language and quite excels at producing graphics that possess behavior.

I mean, just look at flash quake. You know what that actually is? Thats the real quake source for an engine compiled with adobe tools into a nativeExtension. In lamans terms flash is running c(flavor). Flash Is a hell of a lot more than a banner and shitty one day game creator. Unfortunately, I would have to learn some kind of c and make my own nativeExtension in order to make my current project in just flash. That's too much bullshit for this especially when I've already coded a method that works.

[Dutch]

Alrighty. When you incorporate several languages via parsing information, how is this compiled into one executable? Are specific files spit out by a compiler for each set of code and then referenced by the executable, sort of how a quake engine references a progs.dat file to interpret qc?

[MadGypsy]

ask all the questions you want...for real. Personally, I like projects that involve multiple languages. This project for instance will be 6 languages... vbscript,html,css,as3,batch & my object notation. Granted the css is just one line that removes padding and margin from the body and embedded flash object but hey, it's in there

[Dutch]

Yeah that is more clear, thanks. I won't load you with a shit ton of questions, but when you post up your progress it gives me an idea of what to look into, so thanks for that and keep it up. I'm getting drawn to things more technical than QC, I don't know how or what I will dig into but seeing little projects like this is cool shit.

[MadGypsy]

Maybe if I told you something else it would make what is happening here clear. Let's use this Object as an example:

light:
{
	soft:
	{
		selected:false,
		docs:"some description of what this does"
	}
	sunlight:
	{
		selected:false,
		value:"number",	//number is a string because it is to be displayed in the input box as a hint
		connect:"sunmangle",
		docs:"some description of what this does"
	}
	sunmangle:
	{
		selected:false,
		value:"num, num"
		docs:"you get the idea"
	}
}

My whole parsing delimiters project from forever ago would take that above code and convert it into an Object that flash recognizes. In that, I can do stuff like this.

if(light.soft.selected)
	commandLine += " -soft";

however there is no way I'm gonna write a conditional for every damn switch so I would handle that more like this

for(var switch:String in light)
	if(light[switch].selected)
		commandLine += " -"+switch;

actually, that's exactly how I'm going to do it. Which means I cannot use the sun array. If I did I would end up with errors cause, light.sun.selected does not exist and "-sun" is also not a switch.