Einlander's Blog

Looks like a good start! Eventually I will have to tackle GUIs as well and I only have Lua (so I can't use tjheldnas ). I will keep track of your progress (if you post updates on this) and learn from your learning!

I would think the following should be in UpdateWorld() instead of PostRender():

 

self.windowmanager.Process()

 

 

When storing the callback you might want to consider allowing for script level functions instead of global functions. In your example windowcallback() is global to the entire game which means if you use a GUI in another script and have the same function you are overwriting the function based on which script was read in first.

 

The way to do this is to first allow your SetCallback() to accept 2 parameters. The first one would be the script object and the second the script function. So usage would look like: SetCallback(self, windowcallback).

 

Then we would define our callback inside these entity scripts like:

 

function Script:windowcallback()

end

 

In your library just store the obj and function in variables. When it's time to call you can call it like:

 

func(obj)

 

This calls the script function and passes the script object. In Lua this is what gives you the 'self' variable (it's hidden and done behind the scenes).

Go to http://www.lua.org/cgi-bin/demo and copy paste the below in and you'll see that it calls the Script level function as the callback.

 

-- this table will store our callback script object and script function
callback = {}
callback.obj = nil
callback.func = nil

-- function like yours to set callback
function SetCallback(obj, func)
  callback.obj = obj
  callback.func = func
end

-- simulate how the scripts work
Script = {}

function Script:Create()
  local obj = {}

  -- this copies the object Script function to this local table
  local k,v
  for k,v in pairs(Script) do
     obj[k] = v
  end

  return obj
end

function Script:Start()
  SetCallback(self, self.MyCallback)
end

-- user defined script level function
function Script:MyCallback()
  print("Inside MyCallback")
end

-- create an instance of this script and call it's Start(). LE does this behind the scene for us but this is just to show
testScript = Script:Create()
testScript:Start()


-- this is how you would call the callback from your library.
callback.func(callback.obj)

Thanks Rick, helped alot. Is the callback script is supposed to change to the modules scope right?

Not sure what you are asking. You would put this callback table inside your GUI library and expose the SetCallback() function from your GUI library as well for us to set what script function we want to assign as the callback. Then when you need to call it from your GUI library you would do that last line of code. That's all you'd really need to do. All the other stuff in there was just an example to show that.