mod_development

[tough oxide]

For me - a 700+ line file is insane

Good for indie but not for me

[willow tulip]

Im porting a 260 line function. I hate it lol

if they had broken it down into smaller useful functions I wouldn't have to -_-

[tough oxide]

And I’m happy to hear why I’m wrong

[willow tulip]

700 lines isn't too bad... but yea I start feeling like iv done something wrong when files exceed 1000 lines

[frank elbow]

I'm not sure there is a right or wrong to that sort of thing, more appropriately "advisable for X reasons" and "inadvisable for X reasons"

[willow tulip]

Good development enviroments also make large files easier to handle

[tough oxide]

Sure - if you load files - cache it but otherwise break it up unless it creates a lot of method/function calls

[grizzled fulcrum]

large files are unavoidable for pz UI

or at least b41 ui

[tough oxide]

Basic C says don’t call functions in a loop

[grizzled fulcrum]

this was me for carwanna but instead I just decided to rewrite the entire mod because it irked me so bad

[willow tulip]

so much boilerplate

[bronze yoke]

i've come to believe that rewrites might be more valuable than refactors in a lot of cases

[tough oxide]

Not gonna lie - I wanna rename files and functions but I feel like I need to own it

[bronze yoke]

if you know how to do something better the old structure is quite likely to hold you back

with the horse mod we kind of ended up in a spiral for a bit where we would refactor things we already refactored because it still wasn't good enough

[grizzled fulcrum]

half the time programming is just redoing things over and over as you get more insight

[bronze yoke]

whereas the ground-up rewrite modules have stayed pretty solid

[tough oxide]

I’m gonna give the original mod credit forever - I think it’s the right thing to do

If they didn’t do the thing they did I wouldn’t have done the thing I did

[bronze yoke]

there's no downside to thanking someone, even if a mod was purely inspiration it's the nice thing to do

[tough oxide]

I haven’t put it on the workshop yet but I’ve already put the link in the code

Beyond nice - in my core it feels like the right thing

Speaking of such - I asked myself why there are so many iso objects

ISO means something different for me then I realized ‘Indie Stone Object’

[grizzled fulcrum]

Isometric

[tough oxide]

The actual game style

[grizzled fulcrum]

yes but i think its ISOmetric

i cant see why they would name it Indie Stone Object when their package name contains their unique stuff

[tough oxide]

Okay - I’m new here but (inserts opinion)

They seem to really want people to understand why you should name things with your own prefix

I have to imagine there are a huge amount of mods created by people who don’t know the word “instantiating”

But they still created something cool because the entry level was low

[bronze yoke]

it's definitely Isometric but i think some of the people they hired on didn't know that and it ended up assigned to a lot of nonsense

for their lua classes, IS stands for Indie Stone, but most mods name their classes IS.. too 😅

[tough oxide]

I’ll fight you over this

The IS prefix is just for Indie Stone

Isometric isn’t part of that

/me punches limp plastic bag

[grizzled fulcrum]

IS is yeah

like ISObject or ISPanel, thats to avoid collisions with their loading the lua files

which you can avoid totally by just putting your lua files in a subfolder with your mod name

[tough oxide]

I’m still not sold on lua unless you have a bunch of automation tools

[grizzled fulcrum]

its one of the best and easiest ways to sandbox

[tough oxide]

Also they seemed to, I’m new, give a ton of access via lua

[grizzled fulcrum]

b42 made a lot of more things exposed

but its still controlled relatively

[tough oxide]

There’s a part of me that wants to deep dive that

[grizzled fulcrum]

for example you can't use most of the os things in lua, or any debug things

[tough oxide]

Just to open source and expose

[grizzled fulcrum]

and you cant just call some java function to get remote code execution on the player's computer

not to mention how easy lua is on a level of just pure language

of course I mean that as in, not exploiting any TIS provided functions

[tough oxide]

I haven’t seen an eval or whatever yet

[frank elbow]

I enjoy using Lua*, especially with type annotations. Much quicker and less boilerplate involved (coming from someone who's written a lot of C#, before top level statements were a thing)

*except for the lack of continue

[tough oxide]

Dotnet 10 has been fun

[grizzled fulcrum]

I think typescript could be a worthy contender (something Jab realised too) but to each language has its downsides

[tough oxide]

And I’m coming in fresh

[frank elbow]

I enjoy TS but I'm not entirely sold on transpiling it to Lua, for my own use anyway

[tough oxide]

As much as I’d like to see some version of ecma - just stay with lua

[frank elbow]

I think if people want to do it or even just experiment then they certainly should

But I personally agree

[tough oxide]

I mean the ecosystem out of the box

Imagine people debating over preact for the ui stuff

[frank elbow]

To clarify, the TypeScript thing isn't a suggestion for what the devs would move to—it was/is a project for transpiling TypeScript to Lua for PZ mods

[bronze yoke]

i'm very fond of lua

[frank elbow]

I recall a friend who hasn't touched it asking me whether I like it or tolerate it & I came to the same conclusion

[tough oxide]

Legit Omar - that actually gave me some inspiration

I just don’t want to go from lua to ts

But ts to lua

[bronze yoke]

there's a couple things i definitely don't like about it (how globals work, lack of typing) but overall i find it quite easy to work with and very flexible

[grizzled fulcrum]

I didnt mean TS stuff for implementation stuff, but javascript is easy to sandbox and typescript provides a good type system (i didnt mean transpiling but if TIS could go back, I mean)

[tough oxide]

Globals should die

[frank elbow]

Oh I guess it was the thing I said it wasn't lol

I think at the time they added mod support TS must have still been fairly new

[tough oxide]

It’s the worst thing someone new to programming should learn or see

[frank elbow]

I think it's just something misunderstood in many languages, although in many still the usual wisdom is “typically, don't”

[tough oxide]

Global should be an exception

[bronze yoke]

lua 5.5 introduces a keyword that lets you remove globals from a scope entirely (lexically) but it's still global by default

and of course we'll never be using lua 5.5 in pz

[winter bolt]

i swear as soon as you mod a game once its like cursed forever and almost impossible to play again

ive been getting into deadlock again but all i can think about it making custom skins now whenever i play it

[mellow frigate]

you're cooked

[tough oxide]

There should never be a variable in scope that you didn’t know about or intend (corporate mind) but I understand games are more fun in that way

[frank elbow]

The joy of creation just seems to beat the joy of play every time (but man, really need to make some time to play eventually... one more mod change)

[bronze yoke]

i'm strict 'no globals' too, i've just accepted it as an avoidable flaw of the language

you can have language servers tell you off for writing globals which usually catches accidental usages

but i do find the design of 'global by default, local with a keyword' absolutely baffling

[tough oxide]

I got bit in my early dev life with “change at* a distance”*

[mellow frigate]

no global on other mods makes it very difficult to patch / alter

[bronze yoke]

if they use modules it's fine

[tough oxide]

I’ve already made modules when I decided I’m taking it over

[bronze yoke]

i'm admittedly guilty of not including plenty of my variables in the module though but if i were using a global instead i'd do exactly the same thing

[tough oxide]

Lua accessors?

[mellow frigate]

I may have a gap with modules, I never know when I'm isntanciating new stuff and when I'm accessing the instance I want

[grizzled fulcrum]

modules dont need to have an instantiation structure

you can just use modules like any other

[tough oxide]

You should toy with that until you understand

I took over a mod that’s most important part was a lua table and I broke all of that out into its own file

If it changes again I hope to fix one small file and move on

[frank elbow]

Simpler than it may seem:

-- ModuleA.lua
local ModuleA = {}

function ModuleA.doThing()
    print('did the thing')
end

return ModuleA


-- ModuleB.lua
local ModuleA = require 'ModuleA'

ModuleA.doThing()

[tough oxide]

Literally what I did

[mellow frigate]

so is it one instance of ModuleA for each require ? Or is it a "singleton" ?

[frank elbow]

Instances aren't really a thing here

If there's no metatables or otherwise faked “classes” involved it's just a table

[tough oxide]

I was gonna say assigning is the instance

[frank elbow]

Oh I misunderstood the question because I read the word instance lol

Yes it's a singleton in that sense

[tough oxide]

As far as accessing and garbage collection it seems to be handled nearly the same

Unless you say local - it’s a god object

[frank elbow]

But that's more a question about how require works—once it's called once it'll reuse the return value of the first require (details excluded in this simplified explanation, and the details are also different for Kahlua)

[tough oxide]

Which is a great feature

And everyone should read that

It’s important

That was literally my low hanging fruit when I was bringing this mod up to date

[bronze yoke]

require does two things:

1. run the file if it hasn't been run already
2. return whatever the file returned whenever it ran

since tables are always passed by reference in lua, a file that returns a table always returns the same table to all requires

[tough oxide]

local details = require(“structuredTable.lua)

Didn’t even think about point 1

Cause my file just returns

But another solid point

Also in a game are we thinking about the filesystem that much after it loads?

Generally the file system is just reload state and then* we doing it live

[bronze yoke]

because lua files are functions, load order can be more important than it intuitively should be, and require can be used to manipulate that

[tough oxide]

Sure - you got an exploit in mind? Otherwise it’s base game then mods - which seems to allow monkey patching - totally cool - then whatever user is the *
running *the gui

I run a server in a container so i refuse to care as much as I should

[frank elbow]

I imagine it was “manipulate” in the sense of “control,” without the negative connotation—so not something to exploit, necessarily, just something to use to affect the load order

That was my interpretation, anyway

[brittle spruce]

...Outfits are tricky. Am struggling a bit with getting them to 'stick' on a spawned zombie.

Half the time they seem to revert back to randomised attire.

[willow tulip]

Oh.. so im not supposed to name all my UI files with IS?

and.. timed actions?

Well.. shit.

Anyway, spices now work for my new cooking menu, yay.

now to rewrite how happiness actually works when cooking...

Make it actually based on cooking skill and time spent cooking instead of... how many random ingredients you managed to cram into one meal

Anyway, Good day 1 development of mod.

Now more or less processes cooking like vanilla does.

(though I suspect adding poison is broken since its a private function to addpoision and I have to port that to LUA too but meh)

<player tries to troll other players by poisoning food, gets trolled instead because I never got around to fixing that>

Also, hu at the math for extra items...

                local changer = 0;
        local extraItems = baseItem:getExtraItems()
                if extraItems ~= nil then
                    for i = 0, extraItems:size()-1 do
                        if (extraItems:get(i) == usedItem:getFullType()) then
                            changer = changer + 1;
                        end
                    end
                end
                if extraItems ~= nil and extraItems:size() - 2 > cookingLvl then
                    changer = changer + extraItems:size() - 2 - cookingLvl * 3;
                end
                ...
                baseItem:setUnhappyChange(food:getUnhappyChangeUnmodified() - (5 - changer * 5));
                if baseItem:getUnhappyChange() > 25.0 then
                    baseItem:setUnhappyChange(25.0);
                end

Im... Honestly confused by the intent of the middle part.

if extraItems ~= nil and extraItems:size() - 2 > cookingLvl then
    changer = changer + extraItems:size() - 2 - cookingLvl * 3;
end

seems to suggest it would increase the penality at very low cooking level... but maybe decrease it at certain higher levels but not if your too high?

like I feel they forgot to math.max(0, extraItems:size() - 2 - cookingLvl * 3)

also, TIL there is: local nutritionBoost = cookingLvl / 15.0 + 1.0;

so in vanilla, level 10 cooking gives you.. 75% more calories?

[bronze yoke]

no

the amount of food you take is also reduced and both multipliers are applied to the nutrition added

it does increase but not nearly as much as that would suggest

at level 10, the amount of nutrition actually goes down from level 9 (by an incredibly insignificant amount)

[willow tulip]

oh its part of the dumb math where a good cook uses LESS of an ingredient so you STILL HAVE TO CLICK AS MANY TIMES?

balanced out (not perfectly) by

local realUsedHunger = usedHunger - 3 * cookingLvl / 100.0 * usedHunger;
local percentageUsed = math.abs(realUsedHunger / usedItemFood:getHungChange());

[bronze yoke]

you still get 75% more nutrition out of a whole food item but the amount you add to the meal each time is more like +30% iirc

at level 10, which nobody would ever be because cooking is pointless 😅

[willow tulip]

no you add less of an ingredient as you level up

like the UI says you use 10 hunger right?

[bronze yoke]

yeah that's what i'm saying?

[willow tulip]

but at level 10 you only use 6 or whatever!!

AND ITS CURSED

because you'll have this stupid 4 leftover!

so your like cool, I'll use the 4

[bronze yoke]

you get more nutrition but you add less so the amount of nutrition compared to base is not as high as the base nutrition multiplier

[willow tulip]

NOPE now you have a 1 leftover because it 'saved' you 25%

[bronze yoke]

but after you've used the whole thing you will have had the full multiplier's worth of nutrition, it's just divided into more portions than base

[willow tulip]

and then you just rewrite the entire code from scratch in a fit of rage.

Like I just hate the idea that a good cook can get 'more' nutrition... Except by maybe like, not wasting so much when cutting vegis up? but that'd be like a cooking 0~3 skill issue.

it should be: a good cook can chop shit fast, without giving you food poisoning by chopping his finger off into your food in the process.

[bronze yoke]

you might as well just remove the cooking skill is the issue

[willow tulip]

Nah, im going to keep cooking, but it will be tied to happyness of meals, and how long it takes to you to safely chop up stuff.

And.. chance of food poisoning, along with how clean you are

Like imagine: an actual reason to wash yourself/your clothing besides RP/looks.

Or change clothing when you get home -_-

[bronze yoke]

the problem is the game doesn't have a real health system so i'm not sure if there's a point to that either

either it kills you (dumb and annoying) or does nothing

[willow tulip]

Im thinking that, at low cooking skill, especially if you 'rush' things, you'll have a chance of basically ruining a meal at making it add unhappyness instead of cure it. But thats still calories... So do you eat it, or dump it?

[willow tulip]

Sure, it will definately need some tweaking so it only makes you a bit sick and is like, an annoyance

maybe its own moodle?

thats drops your max HP/speed or something?

[bronze yoke]

it'd have to be it's own thing, being sick doesn't do anything except kill you

[willow tulip]

Yea thats annoying as hell TBH -_-

good, good, good, dead.

theres no like.. oh im sick, I move slower, puke sometimes, etc.

[bronze yoke]

i mean it bugs me too but when i think about it, it just doesn't make sense for this game to have a health system

[willow tulip]

It doesn't so much need a health system as just some of the intermediate moodles doing some speed/attack/etc debuffs and maybe drop your max health like being over carry weight does.

and like.... just a BIT at first.. unlike tireness/exhaustion....

I don't want -50% at first tier moodle lol, -20% is fine plz

-20% you can feel but isn't a death sentence... -50% outta nowhere is basically a death sentence since exhaustion per swing stays the same -_-

But id also be Ok with more moodles having debuffs.. Like why not give hunger/thrist some 10/20/30% debuffs to speed/attack.

[normal moth]

Can I use the model parameters to rotate the models in game?

I have some time today, and I was planning on tackling this.

I assume I just tweak the rotate value right for attachment points?

Do I need to add a different attachment point for hand slots vs hip slots or back slots??

[tranquil kindle]

You can tweak most of those in B42, but you actually might need to adjust the back/hipslots too. Now if you were to make it correctly in blender, you don't need any of those

[normal moth]

How do I tweak the back and hip slots? I didn't make these models in blender.

They were made by stalh who died. His mod was no longer working, and I started maintaining the rebuilt mod.

I'll need to learn the 3d model flow too. I wanted to add new armors, but the old armors are not working at the moment.

[tranquil kindle]

⁨```
model G11Rifle
{
mesh = HKG11K2/G11Rifle,
texture = HKG11K2/G11Rifle,

    attachment muzzle
    {
        offset = 0.0000 0.2655 0.0302,
        rotate = -90.0000 0.0560 -180.0000,
    }

    attachment rifle_back
    {
        offset = 0.0000 0.0767 0.0394,
        rotate = 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000,
    }

    attachment rifle_back_bag
    {
        offset = 0.0000 0.0810 -0.0066,
        rotate = 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000,
    }
}

Here is example of what i did with Rifle. You find attachment name/bone and adjust it with numbers or attachment editor

I'd recommend searching for vanila model scripts inside game files and see if any of the weapon models have something similar

Honestly i don't recommend doing it this way most of the cases

[full flame]

my gpt chat says that the id in mod.info should match the name of the mod folder, is this true?

[devout breach]

It seems that 42.13.2 introduced an issue where mod data gets reset. I don’t know what triggers it. Maybe this is already known, but if anyone has more information, I’d really appreciate it.

[ivory gyro]

Hey, someone know what that mean ?

    craftRecipe CraftBarrelEmptyBiofuel
    {
        time = 600,
        SkillRequired = Metalworking:2,
        NeedToBeLearn = true,
        timedAction = MakingHammer_Surface,
        xpAward = Metalworking:100,
        AutoLearnAll = Metalworking:10,
        Tags = Biofuel,
        category = Tools,
        inputs
        {
            item 10 [Base.Plank],
            item 4 [Base.Nails],
        }
        outputs
        {
            item 1 Base.EmptyBarrelBiofuel
        }
    }

[mellow frigate]

this looks more like a broken mod behavior than vanilla behavior.

[devout breach]

I’ve seen many reports across different mods over the past few weeks. Even a mod I haven’t changed since December has started getting reports. In my experience, it also happens with mod data—for example, I have to set mod custom keybinds again or reapply mod's sandbox options after a few sessions.

Are you playing lately?

[mellow frigate]

afaik, custom keybinds are not related to mod data. same for sandbox options.

[mellow frigate]

yes and since I have reports of problems that I do not reproduce on my mods, I check player mod data a lot and I have seen nothing of the sort.

[bronze yoke]

yeah that's probably not anything to do with you

that would be three separate systems failing at once, somehow all caused by you

[mellow frigate]

Yeah, but I also mean it seems unlikely to be a single global vanilla problem.

[bright fog]

Use the documentation

https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Mod_structure

[bronze yoke]

servers just don't handle mods that well currently and also the average server host has always been kind of stupid so i tend to wait for reproduction before i even consider a bug real

[tough oxide]

damn it. my mod worked perfectly fine on my computer, but now that i put it on the workshop.. nothing...

[devout breach]

I apologize for assuming it was something general. I’m probably mixing my own experience (where I clearly have an installation issue) with the reports I’ve been receiving in my mods.

I work as a designer, not as a programmer, so I don’t always know how to handle reports when I receive them.

[ebon chasm]

guys how hard would it be for me to get into making a MP compatible mod that adds bone structures thought I should ask before I leap into the rabbit hole

it should be a pretty simple thing unless I want to add new functionality assuming I spend the time to make textures, right?

[tough oxide]

i think the bone structures are currently disabled for mp

[ebon chasm]

wait they exist?

[bronze yoke]

what do you mean by bone structures? like constructions made of bones?

[ebon chasm]

like walls and stuff

[tough oxide]

ooooh

i was thinking about the stuff they added for ragdoll

[bronze yoke]

yeah that should be fine, shouldn't even need any networking code

[ebon chasm]

I added a mod to my game that lets me get bones from zombies but I'm swimming in bones now and want to make or obtain a mod that lets me make bone walls and stuff

Going full primitive

might need to throw in a skull throne while im at it

[tough oxide]

turns out it was the stupid case thing - made the file lower case instead of camel case and it loaded just fine

[paper ibex]

if you cannot craft, check the /module/ because only Base is working atm

[marble marten]

hey guys, have an issue with the ZomboidSounds.bank file that is the last roadblock hindering me from releasing my mod

I extract the .wav files using the FMOD Bank Tools application --> I replace the sound files with the ones I want to play in-game and made sure to rename my modded sounds in place of the default noises --> Rebuild the Zomboidsounds.bank file and put it back where it's supposed to go and yet surprisingly enough I go ingame and the zombies don't use my modded sound files, they use the ones that I thought were completely gone and replaced.

I think the issue is stemming from the rebuilding of the .bank file but I'm at a total loss. Any and all help would be appreciated.

If I can't figure out the issue I'll probably just release my mod without the reworked zombie noises so it's not critical that it gets fixed but I'd definitely prefer it.

[willow tulip]

Sure you replaced the correct files? And grabbed the correct .bank file after the rebuild?

I say this because for every sound zomboid has like 5~10 files -_-

[marble marten]

I can tell you the noises I replaced one second

I replaced all of the zombie_sprinter_male_vocal_A and B aggro/death/idle sounds, same with the female versions.

Someone was saying sprinters also have a vocal_C but when I searched the folder there was no vocal_C variant

[willow tulip]

Ok, so whats the modified date on the .bank file you moved back over?

some of those .bank programs put their output in.. wierd places

Make sure it has changed size(?) or at least date

[marble marten]

I should've mentioned that too, the rebuilt .bank that is supposed to contain my new sounds is the exact size, down to the byte, as the original .bank

I can check the modified date hold on.

[dusky quiver]

which mod data? global mod data or of individual objects?

[marble marten]

Okay I'm a fucking idiot, I was looking in the bank folder and not the build folder, the audio is good in-game and works as intended. Thank you for the help @willow tulip

[willow tulip]

NP 🙂 suspected it was something like that.

[rugged trail]

Hello!

I have a question about modding policy: does implementing a fix/file replacement via my mod on other author's mod that is "On Lockdown" violate mod permissions, if I post it for public (and if not for public, then by link only)? It's just I haven't found any clear information about that anywhere, yet I saw a lot of mods that do stuff like that. Don't really wanna barge in breaking the rules.

[tranquil kindle]

I think most modders are completly fine if you create addons/patch to their mods AS long as you still require actuall mod as dependency and not straight up copy/paste whole mod with your change. At least thats how i feel about it, but just to be sure i'd suggest contacting authors as it might be casebycase

[rugged trail]

I see, thanks for answering. Yeah, it might be casebycase as you said, so I'll contact the mod author then 🙏

[jagged fulcrum]

• if the fix is just a hook, no problem
• If the fix is the whole mod/code with just few edited lines to comply with a specific PZ version you need author consent

(not to mention your not supposed to use anything without consent, even thumbnail, icons etc if not from the base game or explicitly granted

[tranquil kindle]

I personally don't mind any patches, if my original mod is required and i kinda feel honored, if someone uses my stuff for Screenshots/videos but i do appreciate credits

[woeful osprey]

Sorry this is super late response but geez that's sick. Are you ever gonna release it the public because I would love to play a 28 years later inspired mod pacjk

[analog mesa]

Can't for the life of me get this mod to show up in the menu, it was on there for a bit but seems to have disappeared sometime after I put EmmyLua extension on(probably not actually related). It's got a common folder, I replaced the fields in the root mod.info and the mod.info in the 42 folder its just refusing to work

Oh I see theres a third mfing folder called mods

[bronze yoke]

should be in ⁨%UserProfile%/Zomboid/Workshop⁩ not the steam folder

[small topaz]

I am testing one of my mods in multiplayer and get the following error in the coop-console.txt:
⁨ERROR: General f:9, t:1769896494815, st:1,517,785> GameServer.mainLoopDealWithNetData > Error with packet of type: GameCharacterAttachedItem for 1769896054173276 ERROR: General f:9, t:1769896494816, st:1,517,786> GameServer.mainLoopDealWithNetData> Exception thrown java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "zombie.characters.IsoPlayer.getInventory()" because the return value of "zombie.network.fields.character.PlayerID.getPlayer()" is null at ContainerID.findObject(ContainerID.java:390). Message: Stack trace: zombie.network.fields.ContainerID.findObject(ContainerID.java:390) zombie.network.fields.ContainerID.parse(ContainerID.java:316) zombie.network.packets.GameCharacterAttachedItemPacket.parse(GameCharacterAttachedItemPacket.java:83) zombie.network.packets.INetworkPacket.parseServer(INetworkPacket.java:55) zombie.network.PacketTypes$PacketType.onServerPacket(PacketTypes.java:923) zombie.network.GameServer.mainLoopDealWithNetData(GameServer.java:1593) zombie.network.GameServer.main(GameServer.java:897)⁩
Problem is that the error message does not show whether it is triggered by my code and if it is, what line of my code causes the problem. Any idea where this error might come from?

[bronze yoke]

an item that does not exist on the server is being sent to a timed action's constructor

this may be to do with an attached item update rather than a timed action actually

[small topaz]

I am indeed manually attaching items (gun to holster) but only on client-side. Maybe that causes the problem (although the gun is created before on server). Strange thing is that vanilla code also does this only client-side from what I've seen (and they even call syncItemFields() on client-side afterwards). But I'll just try doing the same in my code and see what happens...

[analog mesa]

Do you know where I can find the documentation on CharacterProfessionDefinition? I'm trying to see what other ways I can grab a profession then GetType() which, i'm not entirely sure what type is referring to.
Comes up with nothing when I search it on https://demiurgequantified.github.io/ProjectZomboidLuaDocs/classCharacterCreationProfession.html#ae0c695fdf93b151166af6875817f9bbe

[bronze yoke]

https://demiurgequantified.github.io/ProjectZomboidJavaDocs/zombie/characters/professions/CharacterProfessionDefinition.html

[analog mesa]

Is there more steps to adding an occupation then defining it then registering it?
Its not showing up

Made a translation page for the text name/desc as well

[marble folio]

I haven't messed with then yet but since yours is in a custom module maybe it requires imports base?

[analog mesa]

Doesn't really seem like it, this is one of the mods i'm using for reference

[bright fog]

imports are useless

What I would test rn

• have your registries references in the scripts to lowercase (I've yet to confirm it matters, I think it doesn't as the game puts them in lowercase)
• put your profession definition in the Base module instead

[bronze yoke]

while we recommend custom modules generally, the module a profession is in doesn't matter whatsoever

[small topaz]

Is there a known issue when adding a mod to an existing multiplayer game? Just editing the server settings doesn't work for me.

[outer crypt]

on a server, is there a time after the mods and moddata is loaded that I can have it run a function? Would that be OnServerStarted()? Answered it myself in testing, this function works fine for pulling moddata as the server is ready for clients. 🙂

[small topaz]

I just detected that the game in multiplayer doesn't detect my mod at all when I try it via subscription on steam! It works fine singleplayer and in multiplayer when I manually put it into my Zomboid/mods folder! But not in multiplayer via a regular steam subscription! What's going on here?

Is there a known issue in 42.13.2?? Maybe linux related?

[willow tulip]

Rename all your files to lowercase(maybe), also make sure all your main folders have the proper capitilization

[small topaz]

Oh no! what did they do to linux??

[willow tulip]

Horrible things. but mainly you need to be extra case sensative on linux

like, if your \common folder is \Common, KABOOM.

that and stuff like mod.info may need to be all lowercase(?)

and shared/client/server/etc etc

[small topaz]

That should be always correct in my case. Only thing is that some folders and lua files have capital letters in it. Not the the standard folders like server/client/shared but some custom files and folders...

[willow tulip]

I think those are OK so long as they are not XML files (Someone else will know better)

some mod authors have just lowercased their entire mod -_-;

[small topaz]

works fine in singleplayer btw and when I have the mod in my Zomboids/mods folder

[willow tulip]

you add it to BOTH places in MP right?

the 'used mods' and the 'used steam workshop items'?

and any mods its dependant on?

(to both)

(Iv made that mistake lol)

[small topaz]

Only happens when I try to run it via the steam subscription. (In this case, I do not have it in Zomboid/mods or Zomboid/workshop folder ofc).

No, no dependency in my case.

[willow tulip]

Ok so you went into the server settings editor right?

[small topaz]

Yes.

[willow tulip]

did you your mod to the mod menu, and then, after hitting next (And it lagging for awhile), add it again to the 'steam workshop' list?

on the menu that you'd think is just sandbox settings

It works 'locally' without the 2nd step, but not if your trying to use the steam workshop version/let other people join.

[analog mesa]

No luck

Currently I only have that registries.lua file and the professions.txt one, is there some sort of file structure or another file I might need that I missed? I'm just tearing apart professionmods that I found that working

[small topaz]

Many thanks! That fixed my issue!

So is the common way to enable mods for players? First adding it "normally" and then again in the "steam workshop" list when hosting a game?

[willow tulip]

Yep!

it has to know what 'workshop items' to use for a mod because.. its apparently too dumb to figure that out from the 1st step like every other game.

[small topaz]

Lol! Maybe I write a little extra function which puts it there automatically cause the current situation is not super user friendly I'd say...

[willow tulip]

Right? would save a lot of time and weirdness

I had one where I didn't add the mod it was dependent on to steam workshop

and then it wouldn't load the other mod, but it would show me all it sandbox settings like it WAS loaded

but they would reset every time I loaded the server and I had no idea why this mods sandbox settings wouldn't save!

[paper ibex]

Can this work as a linter? Somehow, when I miss entering a newline before {, the game does not load the script correctly.

[bright fog]

Yes

Not every syntax mistakes are implemented in the tool yet tho

As for newline before { it really depends what's before {

[paper ibex]

for my case

Items { not work
but
Items
{

cost me hours to solve the single newline break

[bright fog]

Items ?

[paper ibex]

oh sorry, i mean
item ItemName {
model ModelName {

[bright fog]

That does work

[paper ibex]

hmmm not for me from my end, doesnt load, let me open computer and give screenshot

[paper ibex]

https://gist.github.com/hashtafak/b2b212ff4441091425b5952213c37e95#file-clue-md

not work for me, it can load, but it does not show in the Script Manager

[bright fog]

Keep a single space before { ?

[paper ibex]

sure, i keep 4 spaces, now back to 1 space, no

LOG : Lua f:2054, t:1769913698547> ISStringListView -> parsing error. out of bounds.

[bright fog]

It's usually something pretty obvious

[paper ibex]

yes, it is so hard to pinpoint which one is causing the errors.

[bright fog]

Can always try my extension

And tbh I suggest using it eitherway

Moving over to VSCode is better to manage your project and with all the tools available for PZ dev

[paper ibex]

Yes, im using VSCode and sticking with it. I also use EmmyLua and ZedScript and pzstudio. But no formatter yet for scripts

[bright fog]

Wdym by formatter for scripts ?

[paper ibex]

omg, my bad. The old extension from @asledgehammer for b41 has formatter errors.
Your version is better, up to date, and correctly formats on save.

[bright fog]

Yea

[paper ibex]

but it again cannot detect the script when i use this: module Base { item RubberChicken_Small {

[bright fog]

Tho the format is not something I usually use and it's from the old extension (PZ Script Support)

[paper ibex]

also cannot detect item RubberChicken_Small {
the { same line cause format for that block on save/format

[paper ibex]

Haha, I kept searching for PZ stuff on github and used the repo with the most stars before i joined the Discord channel. My bad

[bright fog]

The formatter is not up-to-date in the extension, don't trust it

[bright fog]

Yea that's fair, my extension is recent so not yet used by that many people

[paper ibex]

You now have my support.

[bright fog]

I've got plans for it haha

[paper ibex]

https://tenor.com/view/kermitthefrog-dance-dancing-goingwild-crazy-gif-5023883256888097815

[ivory gyro]

Hey, someone know why i dont have my output item in my recipe ?

[bright fog]

Missing comma

Suggest you use ZedScripts

https://pzwiki.net/wiki/ZedScripts

[ivory gyro]

Oh fuck

Thanks you men

(3 hour for resolve it)

[dull moss]

hey, so I got question regarding this.

Yea this doesnt work, got any idea why?

registries.lua :

ETWRegistry = ETWRegistry or {}

ETWRegistry.traits = {
    GYM_RAT = CharacterTrait.register("ETW:GymRat"),
}

local UNFIT = CharacterTraitDefinition.getCharacterTraitDefinition(CharacterTrait.UNFIT)
-- what I tried
UNFIT:getMutuallyExclusiveTraits():add(ETWRegistry.traits.GYM_RAT)
UNFIT:addMutuallyExclusiveTrait(ETWRegistry.traits.GYM_RAT)

I double-checked https://demiurgequantified.github.io/ProjectZomboidJavaDocs/zombie/characters/traits/CharacterTraitDefinition.html

however when launching the game I get error that

ERROR: General      f:0, t:1769918302334> ExceptionLogger.logException> Exception thrown
    java.lang.RuntimeException: attempted index: addMutuallyExclusiveTrait of non-table: null at KahluaThread.tableget(KahluaThread.java:1447).

So yea idk where to go from here

According to docs UNFIT:addMutuallyExclusiveTrait(ETWRegistry.traits.GYM_RAT) should work

[halcyon frost]

I am trying to add a hotkey or a mod click on on an item in the loot panel. I cant seem to find any on hover like commands in the api docs.

I am creating a mod for Set Unwanted and am trying to create a faster way to perform the action so you do not have to right click the item each time and go to the right click menu option.

[bronze yoke]

i don't know why you're getting that error, but i would prefer to use ⁨CharacterTraitDefinition.setMutualExclusive(CharacterTrait.UNFIT, ETWRegistry.traits.GYM_RAT)⁩

oh i do know actually

don't do it in ⁨registries.lua⁩, that's way too early

do it in a regular lua file in shared

[dull moss]

ah

[bronze yoke]

⁨registries.lua⁩'s job is to create registries for scripts to be able to reference, so the scripts which add those definitions haven't been loaded yet so trying to get the definitions returns null

[dull moss]

fair. I had assumption that it might be too early and thats why it returns null but for some reason I was mistakenly confident that I have to do this in registries.lua

[bronze yoke]

the only thing you have to do in registries.lua is register registries, everything else should be fine later (until we inevitably find some exploit from the fact that registries is crazy early in load order compared to other lua files)

[dull moss]

Ye, that fixes it, thanks. Interestingly enough

local ETWRegistries = require ("ETWRegistry")
local ETWTraitsRegistry = ETWRegistries.traits

local UNFIT = CharacterTraitDefinition.getCharacterTraitDefinition(CharacterTrait.UNFIT)
UNFIT:addMutuallyExclusiveTrait(ETWTraitsRegistry.GYM_RAT)

still doesn't work, while

CharacterTraitDefinition.setMutualExclusive(CharacterTrait.UNFIT, ETWTraitsRegistry.GYM_RAT)

works just fine

regardless, setMutualExclusive works so that's good enough for me

[torn igloo]

⁨⁨⁨getUsedDelta⁩⁩⁩ doesn't seem to work for b42. Any way I can get the ratio of the drainable item?

[ivory gyro]

Hey, someone know how to add fluid to my Base.Pot in the outputs of my recipe ?

    craftRecipe MakeMashedVegetable
    {
        time = 120,
        NeedToBeLearn = true,
        timedAction = MakingHammer_Surface,
        category = Tools,
        tags = Distiller_Bench,
        inputs
        {
            item 5 [Base.Potato;Base.Corn;Base.Carrots;Base.Cabbage;Base.Pumpkin;Base.Apple;Base.Tomato;Base.Peach;Base.BerryBlack],
            item 1 [Base.Pot] mode:keep,
            item 1 [Base.MortarPestle] mode:keep,
        }
        outputs
        {
            item 1 Base.Pot, 
        }
    }

[analog mesa]

Anyone know where the professions icons are stored? I can only find the tailoring one thats sitting in media/textures alone for whatever reason

[ivory gyro]

Inside tiles pack

\ProjectZomboid\medianewtiledefinitions.tiles

[analog mesa]

Is it actually accessible? Doesn't seem to open for a code editor

Found the raw images online

[lost kite]

At your output, there needs to be a ',' at the end of the item line

[lost kite]

I did not found a solution, how to add a fluid to an existing container and so I defined a new item as fluid container which contains the fluid and gives the pot if it is empty. E.g. Pot with XY. In the item definition it is possible to define the behaviour. May look into my code. My mod id is XantjiRecycleEverything. The item is bottle with lye.

[mellow frigate]

this is how I add fluid component to the Moats at creation time ⁨```lua
if isoObj and not isoObj:getFluidContainer() then
local f = ComponentType.FluidContainer:CreateComponent();
f:setCapacity(waterMax);
GameEntityFactory.AddComponent(isoObj, true, f);
end

or maybe this works in the craftRecipe: ⁨⁨```
OnCreate = RecipeCodeOnCreate.yourModdedFunction,

[lost kite]

Pretty nice, thanks. I need to get into lua scripting first. At the moment I just defined some items and recipes. So I did it this way:
⁨⁨```
item LyeBottle
{
DisplayCategory = Household,
ItemType = base:normal,
Weight = 1.0,
Icon = GlassBottle,
IconFluidMask = GlassBottle_Mask,
WorldStaticModel = BottleCrafted_Ground,
FillFromDispenserSound = GetWaterFromDispenserGlass,
FillFromLakeSound = GetWaterFromLakeBottle,
FillFromTapSound = GetWaterFromTapGlass,
FillFromToiletSound = GetWaterFromToilet,
Tags = base:glass;base:glassbottle,
component FluidContainer
{
ContainerName = Bottle,
Capacity = 1.0,
CustomDrinkSound = DrinkingFromBottleGlass,
Fluids
{
fluid = Lye:1.0,
}
}
}

Then I use a glass bottle as one of the inputs and my bottle as output.
⁩
But your way is much smarter 😉

[quick harbor]

hi there, im working on a mod that requires a fake player to be made and since isoplayers dont render in build 42, does anybody know what could be a workaround on giving player states or how to convert player states to a isozombie compatible state? the bandits mod could do it and i want to know how i could do that for my mod

[tough oxide]

Anyone considered wrapping the games lua functions and calls to specific game objects?

At least the few you might use in your own mod?

[bright fog]

Wdym ?

Do you have an example ?

[tough oxide]

yeah, im working on one now that isn't really that beneficial, but a good test

local PzNative = {}

function PzNative.getText(string)
    return getText(string)
end

return PzNative

im more interested*, for my purposes, to wrap something like player:getStats():get(CharacterStat.HUNGER)

as that was broken from 41 to 42

and having this wrapper makes it easy to fix or version

the big benefit i have is helping my IDE not complain constantly

at the moment

but

[bright fog]

Complain about what ?

[bright fog]

Jeez don't do that

[tough oxide]

it doesnt know what getText() is as an example

yeah, thats why i was asking

[bright fog]

Because you don't use Umbrella ?

[tough oxide]

i do have umbrella, but i probably need to toy with it

[bright fog]

https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Umbrella_(modding)

[bright fog]

You didn't properly activate it if it screams at getText

[tough oxide]

yeah

is it a performance concern with wrapping the calls? basically increasing the number of method/function calls per loop

[bright fog]

Yes

It is and just makes your code messy

For things that require multiple function calls, like sure yea you can do that, there's a point

But when it's a function call doing a single function call ... that sounds fucking stupid lmao

Also it technically doesn't remove the problem that your code has no idea what it's fiddling with

[tough oxide]

sure, in my mind it just makes it easier to deal with broken calls when the api changes

[bright fog]

Eh

[tough oxide]

cause you change it in one place and you're good to go

[bright fog]

That's probably the only advantage to it, but Umbrella already does that

Because if Umbrella screams at you: you fix it

And when the API changes, Umbrella updates and Umbrella screams at you for broken functions

So a properly managed code already handles that

[tough oxide]

damn it

i need to fix umbrella

this is why i asked cause i figured i was being a bit niave and i could see how it can create overhead depending on where and what im calling

[bright fog]

The ONLY advantage related to that is not having to change stuff everywhere in the code I suppose, so you only need to change a single function rather than many, but that really doesn't outweight the problems that come with:

• having to constantly check what that function calls to know what API elements it involves
• makes it messy to manage
• adds extra functions calls

[tough oxide]

Alright - I think I have it working and it’s complaining a lot about existing code so now the fun part is figuring out how much is actually a problem

[ivory gyro]

Yeah I make the same

[ebon chasm]

ok I remember someone saying there's a special plugin or something I should get from visual studio code other than the ones on the wiki?

[bright fog]

There's two important ones:

• EmmyLua
• ZedScripts

[ebon chasm]

I ended up giving up for now 😅 umbrella wouldnt show up and my github was being wonky so I couldn't clone the repository. I'll try again in a couple days probably

thank you though!

I'd forgotten how much of a pain it is to set up your first environment when modding a game

[bright fog]

Don't worry it's not that bad

EmmyLua needs to be reloaded when you've set up your configuration file

[tough oxide]

yeah, its not a complete pain but be sure to read through everything and clone the repo

i only say clone cause it should be easier to grab updates

for the umbrella stuff

also make sure you get the right plugin - theres a few clones

[pearl prism]

Guys, do you have a more practical method for writing descriptions for the mods you publish? I do everything by hand and the result is disastrous.

[small topaz]

⁨⁨⁨getType()⁩⁩⁩ can be applied to a ⁨⁨⁨CharacterProfessionDefinition⁩⁩⁩ object and yields the corresponding ⁨⁨⁨CharacterProfession⁩⁩⁩ object (the latter are the things you denote by ⁨⁨⁨CharacterProfession.BURGER_FLIPPER⁩⁩⁩ for example). The ⁨⁨⁨CharacterProfessionDefinition⁩⁩⁩ objects can come by using
⁨⁨⁨local professionList = CharacterProfessionDefinition.getProfessions(); for i = 0, professionList:size() - 1 do local profession = professionList:get(i) -- this is a CharacterProfessionDefinition object end⁩⁩⁩
So to get the ⁨⁨⁨CharacterProfession⁩⁩⁩ from the above, you need to use ⁨⁨⁨profession:getType()⁩⁩⁩ command to get smth like ⁨⁨⁨CharacterProfession.BURGER_FLIPPER⁩⁩⁩ which is what you will need most of the time when working on a profession mod.

[small topaz]

you mean the description in the steam workshop?

[analog mesa]

My main problem was trying to use getType on custom occupations since they wont have a constant like burger_flipper

[small topaz]

When defining your new professions in your mod's registry, you also assign them a constant. However, ⁨getType()⁩ can only be applied to the ⁨CharacterProfessionDefinition⁩ object, not to the ⁨CharacterProfession⁩ object and the latter is the object which you denote by the constants.

[pearl prism]

yes

[analog mesa]

There a simple way to change/remove the default clothes you can pick from the editor when making a character? I need to make sure players on the server show up in crafted clothes

[small topaz]

In the vanilla game, there is a lua table in shared/Definitions/ClothingSelectionDefinitions.lua. This table defines which professions get which clothes.

[upbeat turtle]

tbh, I started just using a custom template for them. it rlly streamlines things a lot! all of the formatting stuff can take some trial & error until it looks nice enough, but once it’s down for one mod, it can be easily replicated… copy/paste then re-writing stuff to fit for the new mod

i’ve got my workshop descriptions saved as backups too just in case of steam wonkiness Xd

[pearl prism]

I think that must be the best method. It's a shame there's no online converter for these things 🙁

At least I don't know any

[willow tulip]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1415460498001891479/1467647683383787563/image.png?ex=698124eb&is=697fd36b&hm=32be04ff15df72d4e39531ba1f23c9d01de3dab8dbb92d6eedb4a9b483ed0e21&

[willow tulip]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1415460498001891479/1467652983348265187/image.png?ex=698129da&is=697fd85a&hm=af946a8cbe042e11e2ab7fc1ccd6e4e5044dcb4fe88752fa839be807d6f4711e&

Imagine: Actually knowing how much food you have at a glance

(looks at every accessible container from where your standing)

Actually I guess this only shows ingredients of certian meals atm.. I could have an overview mode though I guess.

Other cursed ideas include: allowing anything to be an evolved recipe ingredient. Add chips to your roast? why not. Gummy bears in your sandwich? Sure.

[bronze yoke]

i've adopted the trick of 'write as little as possible or else nobody will actually read it' which saves a lot of time writing descriptions

[willow tulip]

yea, by time your mod gets really complex you need a steam guide for it anyway.

You can put all the details there if you feel the need 😉

[bronze yoke]

i'd just host a wiki or something on pages at that point

[willow tulip]

that seems like more work then I want lol

[bronze yoke]

it's shockingly easy

[dull moss]

In a process of updating my mod I came across func that I used to set player carry weight and it made me sad cuz on my side I have to add all possible weight changes that might come from other mods. So I was thinking about maybe making like a mini-framework that can be used to merge all weight changes from multiple mods without having mod authors do all that extra stuff and that way existing mods don't have to keep adding support for other mods and instead can just say "go tell this other mod that sets weight limit to use the framework"

Base version would be say few tables like
⁨```
baseWeightModifiers = {} -- here ppl can insert changes to base weight, say "-2" or "*1.5"
weightAfterStrModifiers = {} -- same as before but applied to carry weight after str is accounted for

and maybe some form of priority in the tables, so you could make your jacket increase carry weight by +1 before some trait, for example, applies carry weight multiplier of 1.1

Thoughts?

Cuz currently any carry weight changes are just overwritten by whoever fires their set weight func on every tick

[bronze yoke]

sounds cool, that system is annoying enough that mods just don't really touch it

[dull moss]

You'd think so but I have 4 mods referenced in my weight limit func cuz ppl were reporting other mods not working (cuz both mods were fighting for setting carry weight)

[paper ibex]

maybe pzstudio is a good starter kit for you ?

[tough oxide]

ill check it out, but im having a reasonably good time with Emmy plugin

ive been fixing and refactoring a mod that was apparently made from a mod

so ive been pulling out parts of the original mod that it was derived from that arent needed and trying to pull together this 1000 line file into something more reasonable

[merry osprey]

Anyone know of a working more that allows the creation of engine parts?

[paper ibex]

well incase you want to try the alpha version of vscode extension, it create the skeleton for your need, also suggest emmylua, zedscript , stylua ext for you

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=escapepz.pzstudio

[tough oxide]

yeah, im running the emmylua extension and got it configured

zedscript i disabled for now because i dont have a need yet

[analog mesa]

Thanks for the help, no more modern clothes

[tough oxide]

any one mess around with modding using PipeWrench?

nevermind

it looks abandoned

[analog mesa]

Does chance actually do anything when it comes to starting clothes? I've never really noticed a difference in what I can pick besides clothes provided by the professions

[tough oxide]

am i reading correctly - i should set custom properties prior to setmetadata?

[bronze yoke]

it's not what you can pick, it's what you randomly get picked

[tough oxide]

when deriving

[bronze yoke]

so when i select that profession the initial clothing is based on the chances, and i think hitting the randomise button uses it too, but all clothing is always available

[tough oxide]

im used to OOP so im trying to merge those ideas with lua so im pretty green

[bronze yoke]

⁨setmetatable⁩? it usually doesn't matter

[tough oxide]

cause its just a pointer?

ill figure it out - just fighting with some IDE complaints - everything works fine but if it can be better..

[bronze yoke]

you usually need to ignore language server complaints about constructors, they just aren't represented very well

[tough oxide]

Nice - the metatable stuff is a bunch fun magic

[sour island]

PSA / Looking for modders: I updated Error Magnifier to include per mod error logging, and for good measure added a custom debug report API. You can include useful information along with any errors tied to your mod for an easier time when people report things to you. If this sounds interesting lmk what you think / if you find issues / have ideas, etc.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2896041179 👍

example output for Skill Recovery Journal:
⁨⁨⁨```
[SkillRecoveryJournal - Mod Report]
Version = "42.13.1 1267173a2044ba62aa3d0a0e9899b15e9057de5c 2025-12-18 10:34:47 (ZB) (Steam)"
Mode = "SINGLE PLAYER"
SANDBOX = {
RecoveryPercentage = 100
TranscribeSpeed = 1
ReadTimeSpeed = 1
RecoverProfessionAndTraitsBonuses = false
TranscribeTVXP = false
RecoverPassiveSkills = 0
RecoverPhysicalCategorySkills = -1
RecoverCombatSkills = -1
RecoverFirearmSkills = -1
RecoverCraftingSkills = -1
RecoverSurvivalistSkills = -1
RecoverFarmingCategorySkills = -1
KillsTrack = 0
RecoverRecipes = true
RecoveryJournalUsed = false
SecurityFeatures = 1
CraftRecipeNeedLearn = false
CraftRecipe = ""
ModDataTrack = ""
}
CHARACTER = "NONE"
JOURNALS = "NONE"

[willow tulip]

Mmm cursed sandwich

[willow tulip]

But yea, iv now got it using multiple ingredients on a single click, yay.

.. without making killer sandwiches

Next step: the 'add water' command for pots, and... Timed actions I guess.

I noticed that all of the cooking things don't work in vanilla if the item isn't in your inventory...

I assume something goes on when the inventory transaction occurs? Like the qued event loses the reference to the food because it moved containers?

[willow tulip]

... Random mod thought: Calcium oxide (Heated limestone) + carbon (charcoal) = calcium carbonate + water = acetylene.. Renewable welding torch refill method?

[silent zealot]

A use for glassmaking, to make the glassware to do chemisty?

[umbral totem]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3658756227

Just finished up the first version of this nearby animal UI if anyone fancies a look!

[tough oxide]

should i use mouseDown or mouseUp for typical click events? i feel like ive always used up

thats a nice UI - maybe in the future you can skill gate some of the stats

or its accuracy

[sour island]

There's debates about this, mouse down is good for responsiveness

[bronze yoke]

i feel like most things use up

[sour island]

99% of the time yeah

But I saw a video interview with a really old school game dev and he went off the rails about it and its sat with me

I think it depends on the action if it's for gameplay

Shooting a bow and arrow feels right to have it on Up

(immersive to feel like you're holding the pull)

But shooting or swinging feels like it would be mouse down unless there's a similar wind up mechanic

The interview was about menus though 😅

[tough oxide]

yeah, i just took a break and talked myself into Up - i feel like i only used down for like.. selecting items?

[bronze yoke]

attacking would typically be mouse down you're right

[tough oxide]

but if im gonna be popping out a menu - i think Up is better for "feel"

[sour island]

It was John Carmack of Doom

He has a few tweets about it 😅

[tough oxide]

wasnt he also the one that came up with the constant that allowed 3d games to be written on that old hardware?

[small topaz]

In multiplayer B42, is there a command to check whether a building has been claimed by some player?

[tough oxide]

it was some vertices calculation or something

[sour island]

No clue, old school game devs were basically wizards

[tough oxide]

actually true

[sour island]

They abused consoles and PCs to do so much lol

Reminds me more of us modders breaking PZ over and over

[tough oxide]

im just getting my feet wet at this point

so i keep seeing return true on these click events to prevent propagation (for UI elements) - is that a thing?

[sour island]

More often than not those events are fed back up the chain with the derived UI "classes" (Lua doesn't have classes in the truest sense)

[frank elbow]

The return value prevents propagation in some contexts, idk about all of them

[tough oxide]

not sure - im looking through some of the code to see if anything stands out - maybe something about factions?

[frank elbow]

Best bet would be checking UIElement and UIManager in the Java

[tough oxide]

i keep closing that file

i dont know why

[frank elbow]

Not sure about an entire building, but if you mean safehouses the SafeHouse.getSafeHouse overload that accepts an IsoGridSquare checks whether the square is in a claimed safehouse

[ebon chasm]

before I go too far down the rabbit hole, is there a function call or something I can use to make zombies take damage when they attack a specific structure? Akin to how hitting a window without a weapon would cause you to take damage

Actually I should probably just look at how they did it for windows, huh...

[small topaz]

Thanks! Exactly what I need!

[ebon chasm]

do we have a list of functions and language stuff here somewhere? like I'm trying to figure out what "LogicClass" does for a wall for example

[bright fog]

JavaDocs

See my pinned message

[ebon chasm]

Which one? the migration? The TIS thingy? The Wiki? 😅

I did go through a couple of the pinned threads and looked across the wiki but I'm a little lost honestly

[small topaz]

In pre-42.13 times, we had a global command getCell() which returned the IsoCell around the player (only for single player games). Now I see that we have a command IsoPlayer.getCell(). So, do you think it is save to assume that we can use player:getCell() on server-side to get the cell around the player?

[bronze yoke]

no

all getCell() functions are deprecated wrappers around the global getCell()

there is only ever one cell

IsoCell used to correspond to specific regions on the map, which is why a lot of API implies that objects/squares belong to a specific cell, but it was made global years ago

[small topaz]

But what happens then when I call player:getCell() on server? What and where is the IsoCell which is returned?

For context: In single player, I used getCell() to get a list of all zombies around the player when game starts and it always worked fined for me. So I used

local zombies = cell:getZombieList()
if cell then
  for i=zombies:size(),1,-1 do
    -- do smth with the zombies
  end
end```

[bright fog]

https://pzwiki.net/wiki/JavaDocs

[ebon chasm]

thank you!

[bronze yoke]

the only IsoCell that exists, there is only one ever

[bright fog]

I need to make a dictionary on the wiki for useful pages

[bronze yoke]

things like the zombie list in the server cell may not be reliable, the server does not really use IsoCell the same way the client does

the server really uses entirely separate logic in ServerMap that is not accessible to lua at all

[small topaz]

Ok... then I'll probably just disable that feature from my mod on multiplayer altogether. In single player, I used it to make a custom spawn logic for the player when game starts. I used the zombieList from the IsoCell to remove all zombies from the spawn area. But I guess that's not so easy to do in mp on server side anymore.

[severe ore]

Sorry for this question, but i think i read the docs, tried pretty much everything and can't see my mod showing up in the mods panel.
So i am in a Mac and i am trying to test my simple mod.
My mod info is in folder MyMod1/42/mod.info
I have zomboid on stream, and i have these 3 folders:
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/108600
~/Zomboid/Workshop
~/Zomboid/mods
Tried to put my MyMod1 folder in all the 3:
In the 1st nested in a bogus <workshopid>/<gameid>
In the 2nd either directly or nested in MyMod/Contents/mods
In the 3rd directly
In all cases in the Mods selector panel i never saw my mod.
Where should i put the mod files to actually show up for activation?
Thanks in advance

[bronze yoke]

does your mod have a common folder

[severe ore]

no, Just a lua file under 42/media/lua

ahh! Client!

i misses the client folder in between

[bronze yoke]

you need a common folder, it can be empty but it has to exist

[severe ore]

Yes! It worked!
I actually had my script under 42/media/lua/client, but forgot to mention.
So the empty common folder was the problem.
Thank you very much!

[tough oxide]

ugh.. the static analysis is so bad for lua..

but its fine.. its making me create docblocks which is for the best

[small topaz]

When using object:setMaxHealth(n) and object:setHealth(n) on server where object is a thumpable (a wall or a door), is there a special sync command I need to use to sync it with the clients? The objects in question are already on the map.

In vanilla, all I can find in such a context is object:transmitCompleteItemToClients() but not sure if this can be applied in my situation since vanilla only seems to use it when the object is newly constructed and added to the map.

There is also the command object:sync() which might be relevant...

[bronze yoke]

object:sync() is generally what's used

it's not clear currently exactly what does and doesn't get synced

transmitCompleteItemToClients might cause issues, at least in b41 this would create a duplicate object on the clients rather than updating the current one

[tough oxide]

Wasn’t there talk a few days ago of the sync command being called “automatically”?

[bronze yoke]

player stuff often gets synced on its own after a bit, but things like world objects that don't change often usually won't send updates on their own

[tough oxide]

Right - probably until they are interacted with at the worst or “in sight” at the best

[small topaz]

Thanks!

Another question: when I have a thumpable object on the map and I know on client which object it is, how an I identify and access the object on server? Problem is that I cannot send those objects via sendClientCommands.

[bronze yoke]

send the x, y, z and object index

[small topaz]

Ah! Object index is pbbly the thing! Already thought about the coordinates but there can be more than one thumpable on a square.

So how do I get the object index? Is this just the index from the list I grab by square:getObjects() ?

And it is guaranteed that the index agrees on server and client for that list?

[bronze yoke]

-- client:
local x = object:getX()
local y = object:getY()
local z = object:getZ()
local i = object:getObjectIndex()

-- server:
local square = getSquare(x, y, z)
if square then
    local objects = square:getObjects()
    if i < objects:size() then
        local object = objects:get(i)
    end
end

[bronze yoke]

it is not entirely guaranteed, but this is how the game does it too, so it won't be introducing new issues

the only time they should be different is if the server has added/removed an object and the client doesn't know about it yet

so it should be very rare and only for a moment

[small topaz]

Great! Many thanks!

[tough oxide]

another beginner question - is using

---@type table
o = ISPanel:new(x, y, width, height)

a reasonable fix for the IDE complaints about fields not being able to be injected into...

[bright fog]

No that's an awful fix lol

[tough oxide]

lol

[bronze yoke]

you're basically just turning off type checking when you do that

[tough oxide]

this is why i ask

[bright fog]

Because you remove any intellisense for o

[tough oxide]

yeah, but im getting complained to about adding properties to ISPanel in the :new method

[bright fog]

In a derived UI element ?

[tough oxide]

yeah, let me scale it down for posting

function StatsUI:new(x, y, width, height)
    local isPanel = {}
    isPanel = ISPanel:new(x, y, width, height)
    setmetatable(isPanel, self)
    self.__index = self

    isPanel.targetAlpha = 1.0

i get complaints at targetAlpha

[bright fog]

You need to define your StatsUI as a class which takes on ISPanel

[tough oxide]

sure

---@class StatsUI : ISPanel
---@field targetAlpha number
---@field bars StatsBar[]|table
local StatsUI = ISPanel:derive("StatsUI")

[bright fog]

Then you need to make isPanel that class

Not table

[tough oxide]

i started that way

[bronze yoke]

the usual pattern would be```lua
local o = ISPanel.new(self, x, y, width, height) ---@as StatsUI

[tough oxide]

yeah, thats what i had

oh dope

the . notation

[bright fog]

Yea

That's a common mistake

[tough oxide]

gotcha

yeah, already had it once today

i know everyone uses o but i have a disdane for single letter vars outside of like a for loop

so

function StatsUI:new(x, y, width, height)
    local isPanel = ISPanel.new(self, x, y, width, height)
    setmetatable(isPanel, self)
    self.__index = self

    isPanel.targetAlpha = 1.0

would be reasonable?

[bright fog]

You're still not setting isPanel type

Define the params and returns of :new

[tough oxide]

docblock it?

[bright fog]

You'll quickly see why you need to set its type

param and return annotations

[tough oxide]

gotcha

[bright fog]

---@param x number
---@return StatsUI
function StatsUI:new(x...)

[tough oxide]

amazing

[bronze yoke]

i generally agree with this, but this is a special exception where o has a strong conventional meaning

[sour island]

the sacred o

[bright fog]

o

[sour island]

https://giphy.com/gifs/amazonvideouk-lotr-gollum-lordoftherings-i7WbuFkyAZ8HUAIn8E

Updating errorMag with some feedback/ideas I got

• Added handy useful PZ-info dump as standard header.
  Includes game version, game-mode, and luachecksum flag.

[frank elbow]

I've taken to using local this in constructors so I can piss off Java and JS devs who read my Lua code (not really, just because it's like self but dissimilar enough that I won't mix them up)

[sour island]

Basically every question I ask commentors who say stuff is breaking in ways that are unexplainable

[frank elbow]

Sounds handy

[tough oxide]

thats such a great idea - i used instance today but thought it could be better

[sour island]

I also added an API for custom debug dumps

[frank elbow]

instance seems better to me tbh, but honestly names are names at the end of the day

[frank elbow]

I think I saw this elsewhere, but this means adding arbitrary additional info to dumps, yeah?

[sour island]

=== Zomboid Settings ===
Version: 42.13.1 1267173a2044ba62aa3d0a0e9899b15e9057de5c 2025-12-18 10:34:47 (ZB) (Steam)
Mode: SINGLE PLAYER

[SkillRecoveryJournal - Mod Report]
SANDBOX = {
 [...snip...]
}
CHARACTER = "NONE"
JOURNALS = "NONE"

[bronze yoke]

i added one for the horse mod this morning but i haven't merged it yet

[sour island]

Yep, for cases where you have information you'd want readily - hoping/assuming the player uses errorMag

[tough oxide]

i like this a lot - i might start using it for the same reasons

[sour island]

I made it required for this purpose - for my own sake and sanity

[frank elbow]

Definitely sounds worth adding compatibility with that, very cool

[bronze yoke]

i'm most tempted to use self but there's enough : constructors out there that it'd get confusing

[frank elbow]

Yeah, that's the only reason I don't just use that—would certainly be the most Lua-like option

[sour island]

I stand by that players just need guide rails to provide useful reports

and leaning on the guiderail metaphor, guiderails > tour-guides (mod authors repeating themselves)

really stings when a player butchers a stacktrace error and leaves it on a steam comment 😅

[small topaz]

Does Zomboid's lua version supports the check if math.type(x) == "integer" then?

[willow tulip]

and the lack of steam comment search.. and 10 messages per page.. just ugh

[sour island]

Yeah in the same vein as updating errormag to be more proactive -- i've been thinking up something

[frank elbow]

Kahlua does not have the integer type, it's similar to Lua 5.1

[sour island]

going to see if I can make something of a (semiverified) github issue maker with a template/form from a redirect from steam

I've made github a central place to report issues but it just trims too much fat from the pool of people willing to share information

[frank elbow]

Unsure if this is what you mean or you've already done this, but GitHub's issue template system is fairly straightforward; I link to https://github.com/omarkmu/pz-omichat/issues/new?template=bug_report.yaml on my mod page

[tough oxide]

and this is why ive left my mod unlisted for awhile

[small topaz]

Can a thumpable object have modData on server?

[bronze yoke]

yeah

[sour island]

Sorry I probably butchered the explanation - I meant a way for non-github accounts to make issues - but not have it be just anonymous

Also unrelated - but I wish there was a workshop policy to disclose AI use and maybe to what degree

alot of mods look... weird... (not even talking about posters which are whatever) the features discussed are just insane sounding + if you look inside it's all garbage

[bronze yoke]

yeah it's been getting worse and worse

[tough oxide]

yeah, i had to turn it off on VSCode

ive been trying to do some stuff i havent tried before in c# and its so verbose and opinionated

if it wasnt giving* bad answers it was also ruining the discovery

also thanks for ide/instantiation advice - no errors or kinda false alarm warnings now without supressing

[small topaz]

Has anyone an idea why vanilla game has the TimedAction ISBuildAction still defined in the client folder? From what I see, this is the action which is executed when players build new stuff like walls, doors etc. Shouldn't such a TimedAction have stuff which is executed on server-side when in multiplayer?

[bronze yoke]

i'm pretty sure it's unused b41 code

[small topaz]

So, in B42 single player, it is still the code which is executed when building stuff. Don't know how it behaves in multiplayer though.

[bronze yoke]

oh i see

building uses custom sync compared to regular actions

[mellow frigate]

Inventory transfer uses some specific transation protocole. it may be similar for that

[bronze yoke]

the building code is really convoluted 😅 hard to see what's used where

it is a special cased type of action in the java side of the game

[small topaz]

So they use some custom sync for that and therefore it works although they have it in the client folder?

[bronze yoke]

actions don't *have* to be in shared, it's just generally convenient for them to be

they are still allowed to run entirely on the client

[small topaz]

Strange thing is that this action doesn't have a complete() function and the new object seems to be created and added in the perform() function.

What I also found out: on server (!!), they use the command
buildAction = ISBuildAction:new(playerObj, selfCopy, x, y, z, self.north, self:getSprite(), maxTime, containers)
So they may somehow call and execute the whole action on server somehow?

[bronze yoke]

complete() functions are only for networked timed actions, if that function doesn't exist it's a client-only action

[small topaz]

Strange is that if it would be client-side only, how do they sync the new objects added by the client with the server game world?

[bronze yoke]

the function returns before creating the object in multiplayer```lua
if isClient() then
if self.item.completionSound ~= nil and self.item.completionSound ~= "" then
self.character:playSound(self.item.completionSound)
end
ISBaseTimedAction.perform(self);
return
end

most likely that server code only actually executes on the client (all build cursors are in server/ despite only running on the client)

there is some custom sync going on that i don't see immediately but it is related to the BuildAction stuff i talked about, that triggers object creation too through an event

[small topaz]

Hmmm I see... but where do they create the actual object then when in MP? Or is this somehow done because they add this TimedAction to the queue on server side? So that the server also executes the perform() function?

[bronze yoke]

i think it is only created that way on the client side, the server (by a method i have not worked out yet) creates a BuildAction instead, which has a complete() function (kind of, it is java so it's not exactly the same) that triggers OnProcessAction

it uses createBuildAction in its start() function to tell the server to create this action

[small topaz]

The server file ISBuildingObject.lua has this code:

    local square = getCell():getGridSquare(x, y, z)
    local playerObj = getSpecificPlayer(self.player)
    local playerInv = playerObj:getInventory()
    
    -- create build action, early, so we can call startCraftAction before walkTo
    local buildAction = nil;
    if not self.skipBuildAction then

        -- [[ some code ]]--

        buildAction = ISBuildAction:new(playerObj, selfCopy, x, y, z, self.north, self:getSprite(), maxTime, containers);
    end

    -- [[ some code ]] --
    if smth then

        ISTimedActionQueue.add(buildAction)
    
    else
        print("ISBuildingObject -> tryBuild - cannot walkTo target")
        self:onActionComplete();
        return nil;
    end
    
    return buildAction```

so they somehow seem to create and execute the action on server side...?

[bronze yoke]

this is almost definitely running on the client

this is a cursor and cursors do not run on the server, remember that code in the server/ folder is not necessarily server code

[small topaz]

Ahh ok... didn't know that... Looks super mysterious to me.

So my problem: To make a mod of mine work in multiplayer, I have to catch the moment where a certain thumpable object has been build by the player and is present on server (the objects in question are doors and walls). In singleplayer, I can simply hook the perform() function from the ISBuildAction but I am afraid now that this might not work in mp...

[bronze yoke]

try hooking Actions.build instead

or perhaps in addition, i think this is probably not used in singleplayer?

[small topaz]

where to find that Actions.build function?

ah I see, ActionManager in shared

[torn igloo]

Does client's timedactionforceStop get transmitted to server? I got this perform error on server-side whenever I execute a forcestop command on client.

[small topaz]

Omg! If they just created this TimedAction with a complete() function as they did for almost all other actions, it would take me 2 minutes to make my mod ready for mp! Now it is complicated, requires super long and repeated multiplayer testing and... #!$!X(!!(!!#$%!!

[willow tulip]

... Just add a complete function to it? 🙂

Nothing is stopping you from just.. adding another function to the global table that is that TimedAction

[bronze yoke]

you would have to make it load on the server

otherwise the server can't create the action and bad things happen

it would be better to work out how this all really works in mp (i am sure it still goes through lua enough for your needs) than to hack something together like that, that's likely to break with updates

[fervent wraith]

I’m working on a large multiplayer mod that pushes pretty hard into custom ISUI, server-authoritative state, and long-term persistence. Before we lock in some core patterns, I’d really appreciate sanity checks from people who’ve already fought the engine in these areas.

This isn’t a beginner mod, we’re deliberately avoiding "hacks/workaround" where possible and want to build something that survives long-running servers.

-In custom-drawn ISUI panels (not ISScrollingListBox), which mouse callbacks actually fire reliably?
onRightMouseDown
onRightMouseUp
onMouseDown with RMB
Are there known cases where RMB is swallowed by parent containers?

• When multiple ISUIElements overlap, what actually determines which one receives mouse input?
  Is bringToTop() enough, or can parents still intercept events?

For “card/list” style UIs, what’s considered the least brittle long-term approach?

• ISScrollingListBox
• child ISUIElement rows
• manual draw + hit testing

[bright fog]

I believe bringtotop should do the work, if I remember right there's counterpart something like "always bring to top" equivalent

The mouse events should work, I'm not aware of any issues

For a list, depends what you want really. If you want a selectable list, yea probably go with that

If you want an list, there might some UI elements specialized in that, else I'd say make a list isuielement if you want interactions with them, also probably more flexible

[fervent wraith]

Thanks it helped confirm we were fighting z-order, not input callbacks themselves.

[willow tulip]

So what moodle framework is most commonly used? or do people just impliment it themselves?

(Can you impliment custom moodles without conflicting with other moodle mods? easily?)

[bright fog]

Eh

People use the moodle framework usually

[willow tulip]

trying to add 'food poisoning' if your filthy when you cook but realizing the vanilla PZ system is.... realllyyy bad about poison being either nearly unnoticable or deadly

I want more the 'slowly murders you with thrist/hunger/loss of calories/low max HP' kinda sickness, and not the straight up murder you kind

[umbral totem]

People unsafely adding icons to the left menu is a PITA for making mods isn't it

[dull moss]

I just delete any comments saying "doesn't work" or "bug" or posting 1/3 of stacktrace

[tranquil kindle]

What exactly do you mean by that?

[tulip valve]

I guess that they post a small portion of the stack trace error and think its enough

[dull moss]

That's exactly what he means

Classic steam report

[mellow frigate]

At some point I'll need a therapy with a professional

[frank elbow]

I have to know what inspired this pattern & similar in PrintMedia code rather than just using tonumber

if key == "width" then
    local val2 = loadstring("return " .. value)()
    self:setWidth(val2)
elseif key == "height" then
    local val2 = loadstring("return " .. value)()
    self:setHeight(val2)
end

The only benefit I can imagine is arbitrary expressions, but that sounds less like a benefit and more like a nightmare & it doesn't appear to be used (width and height is always a number, at least in Print_Media_EN)

I just noticed the textures are just getTexture calls

[mellow frigate]

my best guess is partial knowledge of the language.

[frank elbow]

It seems very odd to imagine someone knows loadstring and not tonumber, so I believe it was an intentional decision

[tough oxide]

when im troubleshooting a stack trace how do i see the ".... 10 more"?

im in debug mode

[frank elbow]

If you're in the debugger (F11), you can view the stack directly

[tough oxide]

thank you

i made too many "clever" changes at once and im trying to see where i got too clever

[sour island]

Someone who's trying to be helpful but doesn't know what to provide will sometimes give like 3-4 lines of a stack trace where the useful bits are further down.

It stings because they're trying to be useful but don't know how -- and if their mental bandwidth for the day is spent you'll probably never get a follow-up

[tough oxide]

to be fair, so far, the default stack traces for me stop too soon

[sour island]

There's a weird logging issue where they sometimes get sent to print too soon so you may see 2 headers for 1 error

It's something errorMagnifier also corrects

[limber solar]

hi guys! i was wondering if the levelup sound is not working for you as well or it's one of our mods! thank you and kudos

[tulip valve]

Anyway I can check if the player is in Combat Stance?

I know if isSprinting, isWalking, isRunning, isSneaking but what about when player is in Combat Stance?

[bronze yoke]

isAiming()

[tulip valve]

thank you

[small topaz]

That probably won't work cause they have some specific and convoluted extra logic on server-side which is used when building stuff like walls. Just adding a complete() function would probably involve disabling their whole custom logic to avoid conflicts which would be quite complicated I guess.

When hooking their server-building action, I have still problems to set the maxHealth of a building object on server. It seems to have no effect or is not properly synced with the client.

Here is my code where I hook the server-side Actions.build function:

local vanilla_build = Actions.build
function Actions.build(character, args, ...)

    local isOldObject = {} -- store walls or doors which are already present so we don't accidently assign them the new hp
    local recipeName = nil
    local square = nil

    if isServer() and args and args.item and args.item.craftRecipe then
        
        recipeName = args.item.craftRecipe:getName()
        if character:getDescriptor():getCharacterProfession() == Regs.NewProfs.rasArchitect 
           and (isWall[recipeName] or isDoor[recipeName]) then
            square = getSquare(args.x, args.y, args.z)
            if square then
                local oldObjects = square:getObjects()        
                for i=0, oldObjects:size() - 1 do
                    local object = oldObjects:get(i)
                    if object:getName() == recipeName then
                        isOldObject[object] = true -- store old walls or doors
                    end
                end
            end
        end       
    end
  
    vanilla_build(character, args, ...)  -- execute vanilla code

    if square then
        local newObjects = square:getObjects()
        for i=0, newObjects:size() - 1 do
            local object = newObjects:get(i)
            if object:getName() == recipeName and not isOldObject[object] then
                local newMaxHealth = math.floor(object:getMaxHealth() * 1.2)
                local newHealth = math.floor(object:getHealth() * 1.2)
                object:setMaxHealth(newMaxHealth) -- extra hp
                object:sync() 
                object:setHealth(newHealth)
                object:sync()
                break
            end
        end
    end
end```

What works is the setHealth() command. What doesn't work is the setMaxHealth() command. So in the UI, the health of the building object is shown is as 588/490.
The essential part in the above code is the second if-condition with if square then.

[willow tulip]

add a custom server->client packet to setMaxHealth() on client side

[small topaz]

So you think it is only due to wrong syncing?

[willow tulip]

Yea they prob never considered maxHealth changing

[small topaz]

Good idea. Definitely worth a try!

Hmm... problem is that I have to send this to all the clients then and to all the clients who may enter the game at some time in future (and for all the affected objects which have been build at some time). Maybe impossible doing this but requires some complicated and over-the-top coding to just fix such a little issue...

[bronze yoke]

no, only the clients who currently have the object loaded need to know

clients don't know about an object until the server tells them about it, so they will get all information from the server at that time

[small topaz]

So you mean that a new client logging in later will automatically get told about the correct maxHealth value from server?

EDIT: Yesss! can confirm that this works. After logging out and in again, the maxHealth is displayed correctly. So it should suffice to only send info to the clients who are actually logged in!

That's probably not too complicated...

[bronze yoke]

it should be fine even if a client isn't near the object, so if the square returns nil it's fine

you only need to update the max health for the clients that currently have that object loaded

[small topaz]

Is there an easy way to get exactly those clients? Or wouldn't it be easier to just do it for all clients logged in?

[bronze yoke]

send it to all clients, but if they don't find the object it's fine

[willow tulip]

Oh good I was worried about that, weird that it syncs it on create

Ohh

You can try this hack that iv used to sync stuff that won't sync:

Just remove the item from the world and readd it.

ie: transmitRemoveItemFromSquare() then transmitCompleteItemToClients()

From what I can tell, the game sends a lot more sync information when an object is first 'added' vs any of the sync functions

[bronze yoke]

of course it does, when an object is added it needs to tell the client literally every single thing about that object

the client doesn't know anything about it

[small topaz]

That's a trick I also used in other situations and I already thought about using it here.

[tough oxide]

So with lua requires - is it from the base “client/server/shared” of your mod? So a file in a child folder of let’s say client like “client/ui” would just require it as though it were in the same folder? It being a file in the root

Seems like something changed and the dot notation wasn’t working

[frank elbow]

It's relative to the shared, client, or server folder of any mod, or vanilla. When you use require it isn't relative to the current file or even necessarily relative to your mod (which is why I personally put everything in a subfolder of each of those, e.g., shared/ModName/something.lua)

[severe ore]

I have a question regarding getting information about food (such as DaysFresh, DaysTotallyRotten, etc...).
I know all this information is in media/scripts/generated/items/food.txt
Do you know of any API way to obtain this information from lua?
I know i can always read this file from Lua and parse this data myself (and maybe there are even builtin Lua functions to facilitate that), but anything already in the API would be even better.
I am not talking about current property values of concrete food items in the game, but values about the type of food.

[willow tulip]

Yes

did you want every item or a specific item?

Either way it comes down to this API for an 'item script'

https://demiurgequantified.github.io/ProjectZomboidJavaDocs/zombie/scripting/objects/Item.html

[severe ore]

Does an instance of Item relates to a concrete item, or to an item type?
Example.. will we have one instance for Broccoli, or one instance for every Broccoli in the game (or known/visited cells)?

[willow tulip]

so an instance of Broccoli is an https://demiurgequantified.github.io/ProjectZomboidJavaDocs/zombie/inventory/InventoryItem.html InventoryItem

the definition of every broccoli in the game, is an Item

you use inventoryItem:getScriptItem() to get the item from the inventoryItem

[severe ore]

Ahh! so InventoryItem is a concrete item and Item is the type

[willow tulip]

basically.

do note a lot of properties get copyed into inventoryItem when created and won't be updated if you change Item later, but SOME will.

[severe ore]

yes, i was trying to understand if those get updated

[willow tulip]

PS: in item, its getDaysTotallyRotten() and getDaysFresh() for the rotten/stale timers

[bronze yoke]

not all properties have a getter either, and some that don't have a getter do on InventoryItem which means you may need to instance the item to get it 😅

[severe ore]

DaysFresh and DaysTotallyRotten. I wouldn´t expect, as it would be a lot of work to be reducing the value of all InventoryItems as time passes

[severe ore]

is there a pattern to what requires an instance to get a value? Is it about the visibility modifiers (public/private)?

[bronze yoke]

no it's just random

it's not decided by any logic more than 'did they remember to add one'

[severe ore]

DaysTotallyRotten, for example, is both public and has setter/getter. A bit of redundancy there

Ok, so from Item i can get all that data. Is there an API to get all Items in the game?

probably is such method exists, it will be in the GlobalObject

[bronze yoke]

you can get all items from the script manager

[willow tulip]

You can't access fields from lua(*technically a lie, you can't write fields from LUA and its annoying to read them without Getters)

[severe ore]

Yes, i was expecting the getters to be for lua access

public fields are not encouraged in Java language, but i guess here they come in handy

[willow tulip]

You can, but note there is literally thousands of them.

[severe ore]

but it´s good to know Lua accesses them in the "right" way

[willow tulip]

getAllItems

[severe ore]

yes, in this case i am only interested in food, and i would only get them once

[bronze yoke]

the reflection lua can use to access fields doesn't care about accessibility modifiers

[willow tulip]

local allItems = getScriptManager():getAllItems()
for i=1,allItems:size() do
  local item = allItems:get(i-1)
-- do stuff with item
end

[bronze yoke]

i-1 🙁

[severe ore]

Interesting... Well i am a professional Java developer since 1998 and soon enough i started using reflection myself, but i use it when in total control

[willow tulip]

And the reflection java has access to doesn't care about annyyythinggg! uses java reflection in his mod because plant/zombie slowdown and impulse when driving over zombies

[willow tulip]

Blame the vanilla code I just copy/pasted

ISLiteratureUI:setLists()

[frank elbow]

That's odd, typically you'd find Java-like patterns in vanilla Lua (sometimes to the detriment of said Lua)—wonder who wrote that one 🤔

[severe ore]

I'm still relatively new in Lua. Started it a couple of years ago, playing around with Defold engine. Its a simple and nice language, but i don't master those metatables (yet) and all the tricks

but anyway, i am sure getAllItems() it´s something not to be called all the time. I expect to call it only once, in the start

[severe ore]

Ahh! I guess that´s a reference to Lua´s "1-index" approach 😄

[willow tulip]

local allItems = getScriptManager():getAllItems()
for i=0,allItems:size()-1 do
  local item = allItems:get(i)
-- do stuff with item
end

[bronze yoke]

specifically it's a complaint that when looping over java collections you should do for i = 0, list:size() -1 instead of subtracting 1 from i every iteration

[severe ore]

only now i noticed. so allItems() returns a Java list (0-based), not a Lua table (1-based)

[willow tulip]

is the preferred method to save a -1 every loop.

[bronze yoke]

in newer versions of lua it would even crash to do it the other way

[willow tulip]

wut?

[severe ore]

indeed. Only computes -1 once

[willow tulip]

Important to notice the java apis almost exclusively return java based containers

[bronze yoke]

in lua 5.5 control variables are read only

[willow tulip]

lua code generally returns tables.

[willow tulip]

Ok but i-1 doesn't alter i

[bronze yoke]

oops 😅

[frank elbow]

imo the biggest benefit isn't really optimization, just that it's cleaner to look at—you're getting the index at i

[bronze yoke]

still, it's weird if index doesn't-- yeah

[frank elbow]

Subtraction isn't all that expensive

Some would even say it's a constant time operation (I would say that too, because it's true)

[bronze yoke]

if you're iterating over a collection and the variable specifically claiming to be an index into that collection isn't, that's poor style

[willow tulip]

Im guessing it also depends on how used to LUA loops starting at 1 is and how used you are to 1 vs 0 based arrays

[severe ore]

It´s not, but in a big list anything unnecessary costs too much

[willow tulip]

Id wager more time has been spent arguing over where to put the -1 then -1 has ever spent executing 😛

[frank elbow]

I think if you're dealing in something 0-indexed the loop should be 0-indexed, if it's 1-indexed it should be 1 indexed

[frank elbow]

Exactly lol

[willow tulip]

LUA is just weird with its 1 based arrays and all people should be subjected to the concept of 0 based indexing if they wish to program.

[bronze yoke]

i don't seriously worry about the cost, subtraction is essentially free, but it's a lot easier to convince people if it's slower than if it just looks bad

[willow tulip]

off by 1 errors are a beautiful thing that we need to subject the youth of tomorrow to at every opportunity.

[frank elbow]

I suppose so, but idt an optimization at that extreme of a low level is necessary for something done one time (if it were done for optimization)

[frank elbow]

I suppose that's fair too 🤔

[frank elbow]

I wasn't going to put my “Lua, not LUA” correction hat on until it was repeated

[willow tulip]

shrugs

lUa, now in camelCase!

[severe ore]

But there´s a reason for that. Good/Bad is subjective. It an emotional argument. We try to bring the discussion to a rational argument (and performance is one), but sometimes it just doesn´t pay off

[willow tulip]

My fav is when you actually benchmark stuff and find the weirdest conclusions.

[severe ore]

Yes, i can imagine. Even sorting algos have their own sweetspot. Some are faster for small lists, other for long, and some even for something in the middle

[willow tulip]

"Ok so turns out we've been doing this wrong all along, it should be

local allItems = getScriptManager():getAllItems()
for i=allItems:size()-1,0,-1 do
  local item = allItems:get(i)
-- do stuff with item
end

[willow tulip]

And they depend on how sorted the data is and how many duplicate values exist, and if you want a 'stable' sort or not. (aka duplicates remain in the same order they started in)

[severe ore]

what is the 0 and -1? termination and step? Are we traversing in reverse?

[willow tulip]

Yes

Its faster to compare against 0 on the x86 and most processors than it is to compare against arbitrary values since there is often a 0 register.

Of course... have fun dealing with cache misses and such.

so of course 'it depends'

[bronze yoke]

every day i thank god that i'm mostly writing gameplay code that doesn't really need to be significantly optimised

[willow tulip]

Right? iv done raytracing stuff where that kinda stupid 'wtf even is this?' optimization adding 10% actually matters lol

inner loops where the loop is only doing a few math operations, the loop starts becoming a signfiicant cost lol

[willow tulip]

Another thing that really helps as a programmer is to think of code execution frequency: If your doing an event spawned by a user input, you basically have unlimited time to process it because you know another user input isn't going to happen for 0.5+ seconds. lol

If your doing an event spawned by some NPC that you have 100's of, spamming that event every frame.. Now you have problems and better get that code running fast.

I spent wayy too much time optimizing UI stuff before I realized most UI buttons had a click frequency of <0.1hz -_-;

[bronze yoke]

the problem is we usually think of performance in percentage increases ('it is 20% faster') etc and don't think about what it's 20% of

[willow tulip]

yea, making the code that eats 1% of your cpu time 99% faster does nothing. Making the code that eats 90% of your cpu time 10% faster is decent gains.

[bronze yoke]

your maths code should be fast, your gameplay code should be pretty

[willow tulip]

And even then... gains are often situation dependent...

I recall one game dev testing a fix I gave.. saying it only did 5~10% FPS so not worth it...

... Except the most popular mod on the workshop spammed the ever living hell outta the entity that needed culling, meaning with that mod the fix was more like +25~50% FPS

and made the maps 2x bigger (4x area), so there was like 10x as many entities

[bronze yoke]

% of fps is a meaningless statistic in the abstract 😅 the cost of a frame decreases as framerate increases

[willow tulip]

2D Game was dropping into the 10~30fps range on 1060GTX with cpu/gpu/ram that was WAYYY better then the 'recommended specs'

Not entirely due to that issue, but sure didn't help.

Other fun things it was doing: you know how video cards can.. tile a texture?

And many games, especially 2d ones will use a repeating texture?

Yea.... their engine broke down any polygon with a UV repeat style texture.. into separate draw calls for every repeat of the texture.

This wouldn't have been... that horrible, had one of there 'used absolutely everywhere' signs not had a like 16x16 tile background repeated over 100x300+ pixels

a tile background that was essentially just black + 2% random noise.

did they fix the engine to use shaders to properly UV repeat polygons? Hell no.
They just changed the sign background to be bigger and it increased their FPS by 20~30% on most vanilla ships -_-;

[small topaz]

I am currenly trying to modify a building object's maxHealth on server via this construction:

 object:removeFromWorld()
 object:removeFromSquare()

 object:setMaxHealth(newMaxHealth) -- extra hp                
 object:setHealth(newHealth) 
 object:setIsThumpable(true)
 object:sync()

 square:AddTileObject(object)
 object:transmitCompleteItemToClients()```
Problem is that for such an object (which is a wooden wall in my case), it somehow hasn't any hit-detection anymore. When I manually hit it with a hammer, there is no hitting sound and the health is not reduced.

[willow tulip]

I don't think you want the lines:

 object:removeFromWorld()
 object:removeFromSquare()

but I could be wrong.

I also recommend not bothing with object:sync()

 object:setMaxHealth(newMaxHealth) -- extra hp                
 object:setHealth(newHealth) 
 object:setIsThumpable(true)
 square:transmitRemoveItemFromSquare(object)
 object:transmitCompleteItemToClients()

is basically what I would do (though your free to have the remove at the start, it doesn't really matter)

the remove/send process should sync everything

[bronze yoke]

i wouldn't overcomplicate adding/removing objects like this

[willow tulip]

And you don't actually need to remove/readd to the square on the server side, just tell the client you did.

[bronze yoke]

all you need to add or remove an object is```lua
--add
square:transmitAddObjectToSquare(object, -1)
--remove
square:transmitRemoveItemFromSquare(object)

[willow tulip]

weird, migration guide says use transmitCompleteItemToClients

transmitAddObjectToSquare is more symetrical though..

[bronze yoke]

transmitAddObjectToSquare adds it to the square for you

[willow tulip]

then it would be added twice?

[bronze yoke]

code for adding objects in excavation literally just looks like this:```lua
local obj = IsoObject.getNew(square, sprite, nil, false)
square:transmitAddObjectToSquare(obj, -1)

[willow tulip]

Hes not adding an item, hes editing an existing one and just fake removing/readding it to make the game sync stuff it doesn't normally sync

Hmm nm transmitRemoveItemFromSquare does remove it from the world too

[bronze yoke]

i mean your code actually removes the object from the square doesn't it? isn't that going to be an issue 😅

you want to readd it or the object doesn't exist on the server and all kinds of issues are going to come up but especially 'the object will disappear when you reload the area'

[willow tulip]

Yea point taken

didn't realize transmitRemoveItemFromSquare actually removes it.

I thought it was like the add/remove container transmits.. wait do they?

[bronze yoke]

they don't

[willow tulip]

yea just checked, lol.

bloody inconsistencies.

[willow tulip]

Also prob best not to try and 'sync' something that doesn't currently exist on the client 😛

[willow tulip]

But yea, Consider trying this @small topaz

square:transmitRemoveItemFromSquare(object)
square:transmitAddObjectToSquare(object, -1)
``` to sync the object

Like a custom sync packet is.. likely the 'best' way, but if this works... its the simplest way.

[bronze yoke]

since you're doing this on object creation the ideal solution would be to find some way to slip between creation and transmission

[willow tulip]

oh I assumed he was upgrading existing walls or something?

[willow tulip]

are you upgrading existing walls or creating new ones?

[small topaz]

Upgrading existing walls.

[willow tulip]

Yea, so try what I posted without any other sync code.

btw im pretty sure removeFromWorld tries to delete the object itself.

so, don't call that.

(likely why the object acts like a ghost afterwards)

 object:setMaxHealth(newMaxHealth) -- extra hp                
 object:setHealth(newHealth) 
 object:setIsThumpable(true)
 square:transmitRemoveItemFromSquare(object)
 square:transmitAddObjectToSquare(object, -1)

(remove can happen after the settings are made, because changing those settings doesn't sync anything anyway)

and doing the remove/add syncs everything (hopefully)

[mellow frigate]

that's for IsoObject parent class only, it is not sufficient for daughter classes. also if you add many in a row, you calling for too many sync.

[bronze yoke]

is there a way to batch sync objects?

excavation does often create a decent amount of objects at once (~11 additions and 3 deletions can happen in one action) but i didn't think i had any choice but to sync them all separately

[small topaz]

So no matter what version and order of commands I try, fake-removal of the object always destroys the hit-detection for me. But manually syncing the maxHealth by sending commands to the client seems to work without destroying the hit-detection. So I just take that as a solution...

However, syncing the maxHealth worked indeed fine with the fake-removal trick but this just introduced the new problem with the hit-detection. Some weird side-effects which I wasn't able to anticipate nor to understand...

[mellow frigate]

There is a way to only sync once the square at least. I'm interested if you wanna make a peer review of Architect mod (ArchitectSave.lua => Arc.buildFromPOD)

[willow tulip]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1415460498001891479/1468369078262694011/image.png?ex=6983c4c5&is=69827345&hm=c7ab44946133ebd54eba6e9347299757cc50c38ae5254e872971b3301159aba7&

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1415460498001891479/1468369164464034011/image.png?ex=6983c4d9&is=69827359&hm=3aee0463ef9e04dc0f6bd90ebb05e1dd677652e31bf8722d68bdcfad41f8b86d&

Mmm toilet soup.

Still working on the 'add water' menu I guess.

Functionally works to fill your container up from any stationary water source

[tough oxide]

you find a clean way to make the ui elements?

i was just complaining to myself about how quickly it gets out of hand

[willow tulip]

No, UI is...

https://tenor.com/view/joel-haver-gif-20465535

[tough oxide]

alright, misery loves company

ive been trying to abstract away certain parts of it and im like.. should i even be doing this in Lua?

[small topaz]

So in singleplayer, the event OnNewGame always fires when character dies and then the game starts with a new character fter selecting "continue with new character". This isn't the case in multiplayer anymore?

What is the event I can use in multiplayer then?

[winter bolt]

fuck lmao i didnt know about this that explains some of the bug reports i keep getting

[tough oxide]

just a quick search of the events EmmyLua put together theres an OnCharacterDeath with the note Triggered when any character dies, including zombies, players and animals.

which seems like a lot to hook into, but quick escapes could make it okay?

and it passes in the character that died

[bronze yoke]

i wouldn't worry about it

it's not like hundreds of things die a tick

don't do unnecessary work of course but it'll be fine

[tough oxide]

albion the* pragmatic one

[small topaz]

I haven't any bug reports yet but I guess they will come soon. (My updated mod is online for only a few days.)

It's probably about your character customisation mod? So for me in my mod, characters don't get their modded "body items" equipped after they die and choose "continue with new character". They are just vanilla then. But better test this yourself to be sure. Possible that there is another problem in my code (although I get the exact same problem in two of my mods.)

[winter bolt]

i need to test it yeah

testing b42 mp is such a fucking pain in the ass though it takes about 10+ minutes just to get past all the loading

[small topaz]

Yeah, and even worse that we have to test the spawn mechanics, constantly creating new characters...

[tough oxide]

is there a quick way to kill your character or do you need to write your own stuff for testing?

[bronze yoke]

getPlayer():die()

[severe ore]

maybe reduce health, programatically

[tough oxide]

add a button and call it a day

is there a way in the lua to detect if -debug is active?

[severe ore]

if lua can reach java env i think so

[willow tulip]

isDebugEnabled()?

[tough oxide]

really?

pretty close i think

alright, this might change some things for me - though you can join servers with the flag enabled i think so - worth keeping in mind maybe

[severe ore]

yes, i just saw some vanilla lua scripts with that function call

isDebugEnabled()

greping into lua scripts, either vanilla or from mods is a good way to search for things

[tough oxide]

yeah, thats a better way^ than me opening my decompiled source and ctrl+clicking and doing something else while it searches

[severe ore]

i also grep in the java decompiled code, but javadocs is better

[tough oxide]

i havent gotten proficient at reading those yet..

i still end up looking at all damned classes or methods half the time

[severe ore]

readind the java sources?

[tough oxide]

the community maintained javadocs

i thought there was a java version of this https://demiurgequantified.github.io/ProjectZomboidLuaDocs/classISPanel.html

[severe ore]

the type hierarchy?

not exactly like that, but... you can see the parent and children classes

example... ifyoi go here, you can see "direct known sublasses" https://demiurgequantified.github.io/ProjectZomboidJavaDocs/zombie/scripting/objects/BaseScriptObject.html

[bronze yoke]

i plan to merge both of these into one custom site with better presentation eventually but i'm pretty burnt out on tools projects for now

[severe ore]

only direct. So there is no fancy diagram with type hierarchy

[tough oxide]

dude the work already done is amazing

[shy mantle]

Question: There are several states you can spawn a zombie into, but is that one crawling animation through a window on top of something like a table one of them?

[small topaz]

I just tested it a bit more: The event seems to fire as expected but for some reason, it doesn't execute the custom spawn logic for me anymore. So characters do not get equipped their correct items on start... That's even more weird!

So maybe we need to wait even longer before we can send smth to server after we choose "continue with new character"??? my default way to go is waiting 2 ticks...

[mellow frigate]

was this a long time thing that food cooking in a stove does not update its cooking time when far out of sight ? (I guess uloaded)

[tough oxide]

so whats the goal?

respawn with the already created character and their inventory?

[small topaz]

No. Creating a new character in a mp game via "continue with new character" after death and then putting stuff in the new character's inventory when they spawn.

[tough oxide]

like a starter kit?

[severe ore]

do you know where he dies the last time? do you keep that data?

died

[small topaz]

Yeah but also equipping new custom clothing items.

[severe ore]

ahh, so the problem is which event you should wait to trigger the requip code, right?

[small topaz]

Yes somehow. For me, the thing is that the event OnNewGame fires then but in this particular situation, it doesn't put the new stuff to the inventory

[winter bolt]

mine is 3 ticks i think but ive not tested if it works yet

[severe ore]

maybe that is not a new game

[tough oxide]

seems like you could use a combo of OnCharacterDeath and OnCreatePlayer but im not sure if you get any information about the player logged in

[small topaz]

So the event definitely fires then. I just tested it a few times now...

[tough oxide]

like if you stored info about the player that died and find a way to link it to the created player you might be able do what you are looking for

im for sure spit-balling and giving a naive answer

[severe ore]

i think the problem is not that.. so the event triggers but the callback code doesn't run?

[tough oxide]

have you done the basic "print" method to see if you see anything in the console?

[willow tulip]

How does one get the icon of an isoobject? (Like what shows up when you right click it, in the context menu?)

[bronze yoke]

isn't that usually just its world sprite

[willow tulip]

so isoObject:getSprite(): something?

[small topaz]

Situation is really bad. Even if I wait 30 ticks, it simply doesn't send anything to the server...

[severe ore]

ahh yes... send to server. It´s a MP game

isn't there some sync() method?

[small topaz]

I am afraid not for what I need to do...

[severe ore]

maybe you need to recurse into all the objects

sync player, sync InventoryItems

etc etc

[small topaz]

No that won't solve the issue. Problem is for me that in this particular situation, the server will simply not receive or detect client commands.

But here it is: I just waited 1000 ticks and then it worked! XD

[severe ore]

voilá! Patience solves it always 😄

[small topaz]

@winter bolt if you really can confirm that you have the same problem like me (i.e. server doesn't add/equip correct items after player death and choosing "continue with new character"), try waiting 1000 ticks before you send commands from client to server after the new character has spawned in. That seems to work for me. The event OnNewGame seems to be still the correct event for this. Only the waiting time gets longer.

[willow tulip]

getTexture(isoObject:getSprite():getName()) thanks.

[willow tulip]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1468379659774459998/1468392954585677926/image.png?ex=6983db01&is=69828981&hm=1f124bfffa471be387101097bd391ff3e99b71fd9967de49123678819e526448&

Mmm proper toilet soup.

[severe ore]

Behare the toilet seat.
Toilets should have a warning sign "Carefull with the toilet seat when consuming drinks"

[tough oxide]

not gonna lie - lua is annoying, but it reminds me of my roots with duck/loosely typed languages and the interesting features that kinda let you implement more oop-based patterns

though im curious what the implications of instances are for memory

do they "compile" the lua on launch?

[frank elbow]

What do you mean by compile, exactly? The Lua is loaded and executed by (modified) Kahlua

[tough oxide]

i should probably just look at kahlua

already a solid read

[frank elbow]

Should probably check out the game's version in particular; Kahlua itself is unmaintained

[tough oxide]

this was already something i ran up against while "type-hinting" Numbers are mapped to Double.

it wasnt an actual code issue, but im very nutty about making sure my IDE knows my intentions

especially in these languages

im not as good at holding long-term states in my head anymore so i need my cheat codes

[bright fog]

No

[tough oxide]

yeah, it looks like its just interpreted and translated to java