For discussion of the language used for custom levels
#Custom Level Language Discussion
honest gazelle
bleak orchid
what do you want to know? 🙂
honest gazelle
mostly just what inspired it
is it a completely new language or based off an existing one
bleak orchid
well its based on my own ideas, but I try not to be different if there isn't a good reason for it
honest gazelle
makes sense
bleak orchid
however, I am still building it as if it would become its own standalone thing
So no compromises 🙂
honest gazelle
what do you plan on naming it then?
bleak orchid
I think I will name it wrench
bleak orchid
lol
honest gazelle
I am wondering how the actual level creation will work? is it similar to zachtronics or different
bleak orchid
Wrench is because its a simple unassuming, but reliable tool
bleak orchid
I am wondering how the actual level creation will work? is it similar to zachtro...
No you will just write a few functions
honest gazelle
ah
bleak orchid
Here is what the current level language looks like
this one is very simple and not compiled
its interpreted, which is kind of a hack
honest gazelle
what's going on with the random numbers at the top? shouldn't out be based on in?
actually for context, (if this is an ingame level) which level is this?
bleak orchid
this is for the bus level
honest gazelle
ah that makes a lot more sense lol
bleak orchid
in decides which input to read from and out which output you send to
honest gazelle
and val1 and val2 are the 2 byte inputs
bleak orchid
yeah
honest gazelle
nice
bleak orchid
so you will basically write a couple of functions like this to create a custom level
honest gazelle
it actually seems pretty similar to zachtronics
bleak orchid
there also needs to be a way to design the starting layout of the level and a few other things like that
honest gazelle
at least TIS and shenzhen
bleak orchid
I see
honest gazelle
since (and it's been a while since I've made a level in them) you generated an input, and then put that through some algorithm you made in lua to get the output
I might be wrong though
honest gazelle
Here is what the current level language looks like
is that a previous version of the language?
or was the one in #general the previous version
bleak orchid
is that a previous version of the language?
No that one is the one that is in the game right now
which I am going to replace
honest gazelle
ah
bleak orchid
Maybe the syntax looks a bit similar, but they work very differently
the one that is in the game right now took 1 or 2 weeks to make or something like that
honest gazelle
from what I understand about the new one (which might be incorrect but hopefully it isn't) it looks pretty cool
bleak orchid
thanks 🙂
honest gazelle
I'm not really an expert at high level languages, only asm
which, kind of a missed opportunity to program the custom levels using an ingame computer lol
anyways gl on the language
honest gazelle
do you mean generically typed methods or generic tests?
bleak orchid
Here is an example of a generic function
normally you use name types T for some reason
honest gazelle
T I assume is short for Type
bleak orchid
here generic types are just named starting with $
honest gazelle
in c# at least generically typed methods are usually done with angle brackets T my_func<T>(T n)
bleak orchid
yeah
honest gazelle
from the image in general I assume angle brackets are for arrays/lists?
honest gazelle
oh nice
though not very helpful for me since I only recall using an enum once lol
bleak orchid
so you struct could be something like this:
{ operating_system :<windows, linux, macos> whateever :int }
honest gazelle
don't you have to also assign those values?
bleak orchid
above would be a type definition
But actually, you are right in type definitions you actually give the default value, not a type
The way you specify a value of some type is like this :int
For example:
var my_number :int
or
var my_number :int 4
But you can use it anywhere since its actually part of the value
honest gazelle
do you mean type of a variable?
bleak orchid
yeah for example if you want to make an array of u8 you could do this:
[:u8 1, 2, 3, 4]
bleak orchid
because the first item is u8, it figures it out
you could also do this :[u8] [1,2,3,4]
honest gazelle
so you struct could be something like this:
`{
operating_system :<windows, lin...
and I'd assume here windows/linux/macos are classes defined elsewhere?
bleak orchid
No they are enum identifiers
honest gazelle
ok
bleak orchid
kind of like variables where windows is equal to 0 etc
bleak orchid
yes
honest gazelle
so operating_system.windows == 0
bleak orchid
no, you actually have to convert it to an int like this: ord(windows) == 0
but the ord() thing isn't done yet
honest gazelle
ord = ordinal?
bleak orchid
I think I will actually just let you do it like this :u8 windows == 0
honest gazelle
will there be an ingame ide for it (hopefully better than the ingame assembler) or will it need to be made outside the game?
honest gazelle
actually I am making chars just enums
wdym, aren't chars normally a primitive type?
honest gazelle
when it gets interpreted you should be able to just treat 'a' as 42(?).
bleak orchid
no you would need to cast
honest gazelle
I mean in the asm
since the processor doesn't distinguish between an int and a char
bleak orchid
pointers are also just ints
honest gazelle
oh right
bleak orchid
but floats are different in hardware
honest gazelle
is there even a different type for pointers in HLLs
bleak orchid
but your hardware doesn't keep track of what is typed or untyped, and most operations are the same anyway
bleak orchid
is there even a different type for pointers in HLLs
most high level languages abstract away pointers
honest gazelle
ah
bleak orchid
they may give you references which are kind of safer pointers
honest gazelle
also slightly curious, will the language be interpreted directly to machine code or to another language like LEG or C++?
bleak orchid
directly machine code
honest gazelle
ah
bleak orchid
I want it to be as fast as possible
actually I am going to make your circuits also convert to this language (well not to the text but to some later step in the compilation)
which means level code and your circuit will melt together and be converted to binary and run fast
honest gazelle
nice, in that case I'd recommend making it compiled (if possible) since compilation is faster than interpretation, though it may result in a lag spike when hitting the "run fast" button
though I can also see why you wouldn't since I would assume (again I've never written a compiler/interpreter) that compilation would be harder than interpretation
bleak orchid
this is a compiler
honest gazelle
wait what
honest gazelle
oh nvm interpretation was for the current language lol
bleak orchid
I mean I didn't do all the optimizations, but I was curious to find out how it all works 🙂
honest gazelle
I mean if you were rich you could hire millions of people to manually compile it with perfect optimizations
bleak orchid
it has to compile every time you change your circuit
bleak orchid
ok anyway, better get back to work