SCICompanion Prelease Testing!

[SuperDre]

The biggest problem with SCI Companion is the interface, IMHO it is very bad compared to SCIStudio, there is no real distinguish between toolbars and windows, it all looks like one big canvas with icons. But I guess that's just my opinion. But it's great someone is making another editor..

[MusicallyInspired]

You can alter the interface to look like a list instead of labeled icons like SCI Studio. I think the interface is fantastic, however.

[troflip]

The biggest problem with SCI Companion is the interface, IMHO it is very bad compared to SCIStudio, there is no real distinguish between toolbars and windows, it all looks like one big canvas with icons.

Is your complaint that you want the toolbars to have lines around them?

[SuperDre]

Is your complaint that you want the toolbars to have lines around them?

Simply put, yeah, or better said, I'd rather have the real 'old' windows look like scistudio has.. but musicallyInspired said about being able to alter the look, and that's something I haven't tried yet..

Just to let you know what I think about UI's: the new ribbon stuff in the new MS Office is just plain awfull.. hehe..

but keep up the great work on SCI-Companion, in the end it will be a really great enviroment to develop SCI games..

[troflip]

Ah, I think the office ribbons look great... I'm still not sold on their usability though.

I can easily switch sci companion back to something resembling the old windows look (just one line of code change).  I could offer this as an option in the prefences dialog.

[Nychold]

SCI Companion crashed several times for me last night, trying to add two functions to Feature.sc.  I don't have them with me, but I'll post them up when I get home tonight.  Sufficed to say, the problem is with one specific chunk of code that may or may not have syntax errors.  I can't tell because it crashes.    But I do know that if I comment it out, the program works perfectly.

Also, would it be possible to change the names of proc999_2 and proc999_3 to something representative of what they actually do?  proc999_2 is a max function (returns the largest number in a list) while proc999_3 is the min function.  

[troflip]

Thanks... I will await your code...

As for proc999_2, that's just what Brian called it when he created the template game - I haven't changed it, but I could.

[Nychold]

Yeah, I know.  And I'm sure Brian wanted to go back and change it, but I think he was too busy getting a demo game together, and didn't remember when it was all over with.  But since you seem to be the only one working on getting new/better tools for us to use...

[Nychold]

Here's what I was trying to do.  I used the SCI tutorials to set up a simple room, but had troubles with determining on which control line ego stood.  In the tutorial, it says to use

Code: [Select]

  (if (== (send gEgo:onControl()) ctlXXXX)
    // stuff
  )

But this doesn't always work, especially when multiple control lines are triggered.  So I thought I'd simplify the whole process:

Code: [Select]

(procedure (consolidate x others)
  (if (== paramTotal 0)
    return(0)
  )
  (else
    (if (== paramTotal 1)
      return(x)
    )
    (else
      return(| x consolidate(others))
    )
  )
)
//...
// Inside of Actor
  (method (isOnControl controlColor others)
    (if (== paramTotal 0)
      return (self:onControl())
    )
    (if (== paramTotal 1)
      return (& (self:onControl()) controlColor)
    )
    (if (> paramTotal 1)
      return (& (self:onControl()) (consolidate(controlColor others)))
    )
  )

If I comment out Actor:isOnControl, the program doesn't crash, the game compiles, and runs.  If I uncomment it, the program crashes, with nothing sent to the output screen:

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w167/nychold/SCI%20Companion/Success.jpg

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w167/nychold/SCI%20Companion/Fail.jpg

[troflip]

Excellent, thanks. I'll try to reproduce this when I get home.
One question: do you have browse information enabled?  (tools->preferences)

Also, when does it crash?  When you compile?  Or as you are typing in the editor?

As for the control colours,
have a look at this tutorial.  You shouldn't need to change the template game to get the behaviour you want.

[edit] ... oh, I see.  It crashes when you "compile all".. in that case, browse information has nothing to do with it.

[Nychold]

Yeah, I figured out why it didn't work, but I kind of prefer a bit more simplicity when I code.   Especially with a Polish notation language like Lisp SCI's language. 

[troflip]

Ok SCI Companion version 2.1.0.5 has been uploaded here.

Let me know if that works for you.  The crash would happen whenever you added a method or property to a class that used a name that wasn't used anywhere else in the game yet (e.g. isOnControl).

[Nychold]

Yep worked.  Thanks!

Edit:  I got another one for you now.  The program crashes when you "define" a value from another defined value.  In other words:

Code: [Select]

(define TRUE 1)
(define FALSE 0)

(define ENABLED 1)
(define DISABLED 0)

(define NULL 0)

(define DEBUG_ENABLED TRUE) // <--- This causes the crash


[troflip]

Ok, for some reason I was under the impression that SCIStudio didn't even allow you to do this (I thought it only allowed integers for defines), but I guess I was wrong. 

I could fix the crash pretty easily, but offering that functionality is a bit of work, and I don't want to risk de-stabilizing the version that's out there now.  So I think I'd like to address this in the next version.

So for now, can you just work around it by specifying 1?

I really appreciate you finding these issues though!

[Nychold]

Yeah, that's what I'm pretty much going to do...just make it 1.  Whether it's defined in the language or not, it shouldn't crash.   And rest assured, if there's some little nuance of the compiler that's at fault, I'll find it.  I pride myself on not following the norm of programming.