Scripting Tutorial Using Functions: Difference between revisions

====Local Functions====

You can declare functions locally. That means that these functions live inside of one particular script, and can only be run if you have a specific script to run the function in.  

  ;inside some script...

  float value = 3.0

     ModifyValue(5.0)

  EndEvent

There are a few things going on here:

*'''Function''' - this is called to start a function declaration

If you want to make some basic functions that everyone can use, and you don't want to have to have a scripted object in the world in order to use the function, you could make a Global Function.

This function can be found in Custom.psc:

  ;This function returns the Nth objectReference in a linked ref chain.

  ;The root link in the chain is 1

     return startRef

  endFunction

So there are some more things going on here. This function starts at a ref in the world (the startRef parameter) and then counts through a chain of linked refs. How many linked refs should it cycle through before the function is done? Whatever value gets passed into the "linkNum" variable, it will try to count through that many linked refs. Then it will say that it's done, and will spit out that reference of the linkedRef chain.

If you were to use this function, you could write something like this:

  objectReference LinkInChain    ;makes a new objectReference (like a ref in the old scripting language) called LinkInChain

   

  LinkInChain = goToLink( 3, someRefInTheWorld)

This will start at some reference in the world (set up somewhere else in the script as to exactly what ref that is) and go to the third linked ref in the chain. Then you can set whatever reference the function found, and it places that in the LinkInChain variable.<br>

You'll notice that the function declaration starts with "objectReference Function" instead of just "Function." This is because we want the function to return an objectReference so that we can know what the function found and place it in a variable.

Native functions are defined in code. In the old scripting language, every function was defined in code so there wasn't a need for distinction.

<br>Here is an example of a native function being declared in the Debug.psc script:

  ; Outputs the string to the VS debugger

  Function Trace(string asTextToPrint) native global

Now, there are some keywords in here that we should go over.