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Visual Studio Code for Leadwerks


AggrorJorn

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I have been using Visual Studio Code for a couple of years now and it is my defacto text editor next to Notepadd++. I mainly use it however to write Lua scripts. 

 

 

Leadwerks extension

Personally I would love to see it if Visual Studio Code would be the default code editor for Leadwerks (either with 4.x or 5.x). So I got started on working on a custom Leadwerks extension.  You can download it here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=aggror.Leadwerks

Todo list:

  • Done: Leadwerks extension has a dependency on the Lua extension. So this Lua extension is automatically installed when you install the Leadwerks extension.
  • Done: Snippets. Every time you create a new script in the Leadwerks editor, you get a couple of default scripts like Function Script:Start(), UpdateWorld(), PostRender(context). Using a very simple snippet, these kind of functions can be inserted with ease.
    • prop[type] : Creates Leadwerk editor properties
    • print: Shortcut for System:Print("")
    • lescripts: Inserts all entity script functions (commented)
    • class: Creates a basic class objects with example functions
    • start: Start function of an entity script
    • updateworld: UpdateWorld function of an entity script
    • updatephysics: UpdatesPhysics function of an entity script
    • collision: Collision function of an entity script with all parameters
    • PostRender: PostRender function of an entity script with the context parameter
    • function: Creates a function for either a custom object or for the specific script
    • if
    • for
    • pair
    • ipar
  • For instance: just type 'col' followed by 1 tab and you get: 
  • function Script:Collision(entity0,entity1,position,normal,speed)
    
    end

     

  • Partially done: Supporting intellisense (sort of) with Leadwerks entities.
    • Lua is a typeless language (not a strong typed language), which makes intellisense not really possible. 
    • VS code is smart enough to recognise some functions that are available in your script, but it is not as complete as when you would work with C# or C++.
    • Done: Generate snippets for the entire Leadwerks API. 
      • Snippets are created per object and a second one without the object. For instance
        • Entity:SetPosition()
        • SetPosition()
      • TODO: Classes with parents, would require matching functions. For instance: a pivot is an entity and thus requires Pivot:SetPosition()
    • Done: parameters into placeholder slots.
    • If I can extend the intellisense so that it recognises Leadwerks entities, perhaps we could see correct variables and functions of those entities.
  • TODO: Loading in the API documentation in a split screen. 
    • The API documentation is written in an XML format which I can retrieve in VS code. I can display it in a splitscreen. 
    • I would have to play with the styling a bit but in general this should work really fast
    • API documentation can be cached if in online mode. Documentation could also be periodically fetched. Moving the API documentation to Github would help improve this process. (newer file versions etc)
  • Debugging
    • Josh stated that he is getting someone to make this for him. So fingers crossed. :)
    • The biggest issue at the moment is the lack of debugging support. Visual studio has debugging options of course, but it can't communicate with the Leadwerks editor.
    • If you have an error in your script while running from the editor, the default Lua editor is opened. :(
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Including the second API snippet that starts with “Entity:” is interesting because if you ever want to know what functions are available for that class you can just start typing “ent...”

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Seeing all the API in VSCode is pretty awesome. It looks like this is your raw input from the docs:

SetRotation(number pitch, number yaw, number roll,  bool global=false)

And you will want to turn that into this:

SetRotation(&pitch, &yaw, &roll, &global)

 

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7 hours ago, Josh said:

Seeing all the API in VSCode is pretty awesome. It looks like this is your raw input from the docs:


SetRotation(number pitch, number yaw, number roll,  bool global=false)

And you will want to turn that into this:


SetRotation(&pitch, &yaw, &roll, &global)

 

Yeah those parameters need some work. What do you think looks better? Your post or the thing below?

SetRotation($number_pitch, $number_yaw, $number_roll, $bool_global=false)
SetRotation($vec3_rotation, $bool_global=false)

On one hand I don't want to lose the type, but on the other hand it looks uglier. Both are just easily made so its just a matter of picking a style.

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Maybe something like this would work:
 

	"Entity:SetPosition": {
		"prefix": "SetPosition",
		"body": "SetPosition($x,$y,$z,$global)",
		"description": "Entity Method\nSets the position of an entity in 3-dimensional space, using local or global coordinates.\nParameters\nx (number): X component of the position to set.\ny (number): Y component of the position to set.\nz (number): Z component of the position to set.\nglobal (boolean): uses global space if set to true, otherwise local space is used."
	},

 

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The popup window can be restyled I think. I haven't tried it yet, but it is basically css so perhaps it is fairly easy to achieve a larger width.

Adding the parameter information to the description could work. This way I can also add 'cleaner' parameter names. As long as the documentation holds up to its current parameter convention, it can be easily transformed. 

type name: "number x" or "bool ignoreCollision"
type name=value: "bool global=true" or "number velocity = 1.0"

Fyi: at https://www.leadwerks.com/learn?page=API-Reference_Object_Entity_SetPosition the first syntax is missing a comma.

  • SetPosition(number x number y, number z, bool global = false)
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Small update published: I have added the parameters as indexes as well. The syntax is converted from

SetRotation(number pitch, number yaw, number roll,  bool global=false)

to

SetRotation(pitch, yaw, roll, global)

The description contains the explanation of the parameters. see image below. It is not waterproof though. Sometimes the syntax parameters are missing in the description, causing the description to be empty or imcomplete. You can identify mistakes/incomplete information in the documentation easier this way.

 The biggest downside at the moment is the way Vs code scales the intellisense window. Right now that is not optimal. However there is word that they are working on that by making the styling more accessible through settings. In the image below I applied custom styling to make the width 2 x its original size.

AddForce command with 2 different versions of paramters.

image.png.fc0af2e1a73ad616c5cc8e4ae83cc962.png

image.png.5b158b75c54b8bbb534054c0ae96d8d5.png

 

  • Like 1
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Because the description was written in array form I need to use comma's to specify a new line. The extension somehow included that comma. I can solve this by just cramming everything on 1 line. It is not that people would read that document anyway. Why the ' Leadwerks' is inserted is not clear to me yet. It is not comming from the code and does also not appear in the snippet file. Vs code is adding it for some reason.

Pushed a new build that fixes the comma.

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