Dev Blog
Hi, this is the Stranded III development blog (see also Forum Thread, Comment Thread).
Entry 102 - Website, Icons & IDs in Lua - September 19, 2021
Responsive Website
Stranded3.com is now responsive and works better on mobile phones. This is something I planned to do for all my pages this year. It's not 100% finished though and I may change a few things in future.
Equipment Icons
I've drawn new equipment icons which better match the building category icons. That means: doodle style stuff.
Click for bigger version
Automatically Generated Icons
Items in the game can either use images as icons for the inventory or the game can automatically render icons from the 3D models. Automatic rendering can be adjusted with some definition settings to make the items look better. I now made a simple hacky dialog which helps to find the right definition values:
Click for bigger version
Technical Stuff: IDs & Lua
Stranded III is using string identifiers to make things more mod- and script-friendly. Internally however it's working with integer identifiers and references/pointers because they consume less memory and are processed much faster.
When writing Lua scripts you can now benefit from the best of both of these worlds. You can use string identifiers (which will automatically be converted to the internal identifiers) or you can use the internal identifiers.
This script will get the internal identifier for the "log" entity definition:
Retrieving the identifier once and using it multiple times in subsequent script parts will be slightly faster than using the string identifier all the time. That's because each time you're using the string identifier, Stranded III will have to do a hash map lookup (it's actually a C# dictionary). If you get the identifier once and reuse it, there will be only one lookup.
Simple, unoptimized approach (100 hash map lookups):
Optimized approach with cached identifier (1 hash map lookup):
This is a micro optimization though and in allmost all cases it's probably easier to just stick with strings. It's just nice to have the possibility to use less of these slow and nasty strings.
Stranded3.com is now responsive and works better on mobile phones. This is something I planned to do for all my pages this year. It's not 100% finished though and I may change a few things in future.
Equipment Icons
I've drawn new equipment icons which better match the building category icons. That means: doodle style stuff.
Click for bigger versionAutomatically Generated Icons
Items in the game can either use images as icons for the inventory or the game can automatically render icons from the 3D models. Automatic rendering can be adjusted with some definition settings to make the items look better. I now made a simple hacky dialog which helps to find the right definition values:
Click for bigger versionTechnical Stuff: IDs & Lua
Stranded III is using string identifiers to make things more mod- and script-friendly. Internally however it's working with integer identifiers and references/pointers because they consume less memory and are processed much faster.
When writing Lua scripts you can now benefit from the best of both of these worlds. You can use string identifiers (which will automatically be converted to the internal identifiers) or you can use the internal identifiers.
This script will get the internal identifier for the "log" entity definition:
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log = entityDefinition.get("log")
Retrieving the identifier once and using it multiple times in subsequent script parts will be slightly faster than using the string identifier all the time. That's because each time you're using the string identifier, Stranded III will have to do a hash map lookup (it's actually a C# dictionary). If you get the identifier once and reuse it, there will be only one lookup.
Simple, unoptimized approach (100 hash map lookups):
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for i=1,100 do
entity.spawnOnGround("log", math.random(-50,50), math.random(-50,50))
end
entity.spawnOnGround("log", math.random(-50,50), math.random(-50,50))
end
Optimized approach with cached identifier (1 hash map lookup):
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logId = entityDefinition.get("log")
for i=1,100 do
entity.spawnOnGround(logId, math.random(-50,50), math.random(-50,50))
end
for i=1,100 do
entity.spawnOnGround(logId, math.random(-50,50), math.random(-50,50))
end
This is a micro optimization though and in allmost all cases it's probably easier to just stick with strings. It's just nice to have the possibility to use less of these slow and nasty strings.