craygetchld

Can someone talk to me a little about design time code?  Apart from the simulate property, is there a way to write code that runs at design time.  If not, then can I access the simulate property from code, so that I can say I want this code to run at design time, but not this code?
EndeavourToday at 1:43 PM
Is there a List of all the actionsNames a character can play ?
CamenwolfToday at 2:11 PM
GetChildren() returns a table of children.  I can't figure out any built in way to reference a specific child by name, and the table seems to be indexed by integers.  The documentation says the order of that table is not guaranteed which means that I can't reference the child entity that I want by its index.  I wrote this little function to get the specific child that I'm looking for, but I feel there is a more elegant way to do this.  Get Children doesn't seem to accept a parameter for a specific child, and there is no GetChild() method, so how do I get a child entity out of the table returned by GetChildren()?
function <myscript>:GetChild(myTable, name)
    for k, v in pairs(myTable) do
        if v:GetName() == name then return v end
    end
end
whosamericaToday at 2:27 PM
@Camenwolf iirc children can only be referenced by parents or other entities by using sends or event sends. I could be wrong, buy for every situation where I've had to be like "if child has 'x' then parent does 'y'" I've had to create either a Findscriptproperty on the parent and create a Boolean to reference on the child or use the send or event functions to send information from the child to the parent.
CamenwolfToday at 2:31 PM
@whosamerica Well, I mean the function I posted above does successfully reference the child.  So, using that function if, for example, I say
local myChild = self:GetChild(self:GetEntity():GetChildren(), "Charlie")
mochiToday at 2:31 PM
You can also add children into script properties
CamenwolfToday at 2:31 PM
Then from that point on myChild is a reference to the child entity named Charlie.
But I just figured there was a more elegant way to do it.
mochiToday at 2:31 PM
If you don't want it cluttering up the UI you can set it and then set editable = "false"
CamenwolfToday at 2:32 PM
oh, as a property?
mochiToday at 2:32 PM
Yup
CamenwolfToday at 2:32 PM
type = "entity"?
Then I have to drag the child into the property, or is there a way to reference it in the property declaration in code?
mochiToday at 2:36 PM
Need to drag it in/select
CamenwolfToday at 2:41 PM
Hmm.  Well, that certainly is a faster, more elegant way to do it.  But what you said about cluttering up the UI is correct.  I'm building an asset that I want to upload as a package.  My vision is a super user friendly, no code package to procedurally generate things.  I want to only expose functionality to the end user through the UI that they are meant to configure.  So I guess short of a built in "GetChild()" or GetChildren(parameter) function, I'll just leverage the function I posted.  I think a re-usable script full of helper functions may be called for.
mochiToday at 3:06 PM
You can set editable = false and it won't show that property on the ui
CamenwolfToday at 3:07 PM
@mochi Then how do I assign it?
mochiToday at 3:08 PM
You assign it first, then set editable as false and it'll keep the value you assigned
CamenwolfToday at 3:08 PM
ah, so in the template it will forever be that child.
Actually I just fixed that function to where you don't even pass it a table.  You just pass it the name of the child and it returns the entity.
function <myScriptName>:GetChild(name)
    local myTable = self:GetEntity():GetChildren()
    for k, v in pairs(myTable) do
        if v:GetName() == name then return v end
    end
end
mochiToday at 3:10 PM
Yup
CamenwolfToday at 3:10 PM
so to get a child entity I just say self:GetChild("Charlie") and it returns the child named "Charlie"
Seems like this should be a built in method.  But the function is short enough.
mochiToday at 3:13 PM
Otherwise I'd recommend something like
for i = 1, #self:GetChildren() do
  self.children[self:GetChildren()[i]:GetName()] = self:GetChildren()[i]
end
 in Init
Then no function necessary and you just reference like self.children.CHILD_NAME
CamenwolfToday at 3:15 PM
ah yeah.  sweet!  very elegant.
so the # is sort of like the "length" method in say javascript?
mochiToday at 3:16 PM
Only problem with that is if the entity gets renamed then you need to update your strings
CamenwolfToday at 3:16 PM
It means the number of elements in this table?
mochiToday at 3:16 PM
With properties you don't need to worry about that
so the # is sort of like the "length" method in say javascript?
@Camenwolf yup
CamenwolfToday at 3:17 PM
Good stuff.  Thanks, mochi.
DaigorōToday at 3:51 PM