Poll: Anyone else give a rat's ass about Lua?

[dizzy]

I know this is a relatively recent addition to the sims world, but come on! It's been almost a YEAR since we first took a look at this. Am I the only one who has taken R&D into this seriously?

[tIIsuggas]

I don't have a clue who Lua is.

[J. M. Pescado]

It sounds interesting, but it also sounds like a form of Maxian obfuscation. It might be worth pursuing....IF it is possible to put LUAs inside actual object packages. Otherwise, it is DEFINITELY a form of obfuscation. This is the key point: Does it actually respond to being placed in the downloads folder? Or is it an obstacle that has presently thwarted us, like sounds?

[dizzy]

Lua hacking isn't normal hacking in the sense that you can just put it in the "Downloads" folder and you're done. There are other folders you have to add files to, but it is doable. I did up a tester mod (that you can still get on MTS2, by the way).

[syberspunk]

I kinda browsed/skimmed through your thread(s) about Lua, but that was waaaaaaaayyy back in the day, before I figured out SimPE and basic simantics. So, it was a tad over my head, and it seemed to require a lot more reading/research on my part that I wasn't willing to/was to lazy to do at the time. Heh.

I was/am under the impression that, with Lua, you can actually 'write' or script like 'real' code or something that looks more like code. Of course I could have confused that with the NASM stuff too. One of these days I might get orf my lazy ass and reread it. I think or imagined heh that lua is like used in many video games.

Ste

ETA: I kinda skimmed through the wiki entry on lua and it seems promising. I think the challenge is to figure out how to use lua and integrate it with simantics in interesting and useful ways. I've only seen lua used in some of the new OFB bhavs. Thus far, it just appears to be a way to further abstract functions by defining them outside of bhavs? I just don't think I'm creative or innovative enough to think of ways to use it.

ETA2: Oh, btw, for anyone interested, I believe AdidasSG2 recently posted a tutorial on Lua. I haven't read it yet myself, so I don't know how comprehensive or elementary it might be.

[J. M. Pescado]

Lua hacking isn't normal hacking in the sense that you can just put it in the "Downloads" folder and you're done. There are other folders you have to add files to, but it is doable. I did up a tester mod (that you can still get on MTS2, by the way).

Yeah, supposedly the method as documented there is awful and incredibly unfriendly to install, making it unsuitable for public distribution. Also supposedly, LUAs were allegedly moved to their own package-type-thing as of OFB. Any status on that? OFB wads all the former objLua things into a .package. Does that function inside downloads now?

[dizzy]

I don't know what OFB does. Honestly, I haven't even looked at Lua in TS2 since October last year. 

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, you're the resident LUA expert, so find out!

[dizzy]

I looked at this briefly and it doesn't appear to be a simple toss-together type mod situation. It looks like yet another case of Maxis File Name Dependency (which as many of you Wants-modders know is also a pain to deal with). There's also the 7-byte hash value, but I'm not holding out too much hope that they actually use that in any way that helps our purposes.

It may, however, be possible to upgrade your "ObjectScripts.package" in such a way that can be more easily customized later (if they still support the dofile(), that is).

[J. M. Pescado]

So basically, LUAs are a piece of Maxian obfuscation intended to keep things out of our grubby paws so we won't make them look stupid there, too.

[twojeffs]

That's the way it appears to me. I was looking through some of the LUAs recently trying to figure out the attraction system and the whole thing appears to be a typical Maxian implementation of something that could have been very cool and useful. I don't really see an easy way to mod them, and I'm sure this is by design. Also, SimAntics spaghetti is much easier to deal with, and as you both know, that's not saying much.