LUA questions, please help!

[jms 0]

hi guys, i've just got a few very important lua questions that i was hoping could be answered...

firstly, how are lua scripts executed inside the game?  i'd like to create my own but i'm not quite sure how i'd get it to run.

also, how do i get a lua script to send game variables that are constantly changing to a custom query window that i've made?

help would be greatly appreciated, thankyou.

[jms 0]

    ...anyone?

[qurlix 20]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the game runs every LUA script it comes across. It just needs it's own LUA code and IID. The LUA id is the same as the instance id, but the first digit is changed to a zero. Look for an already existing LUA file that has a code like this at the top to figure out a template for doing this...the Maxis ones probably won't have it, so check out a STEX download or maybe the el-rail-UDI file in the NAM (just search the NAM file for a LUA).

Are these in-game variables or variables of your own?

Sorry, I'm no LUA expert...just giving you answers until, say Daeley stops by.

-qurlix

[Daeley 46]

ok here's a few questions before i can give you asnwers:

1. Do you have any experience in modding? 
2. Do you have any exprerience in programming? (any language - even matlab - is a plus)
3. What do you plan to do? Chances are that you either don't need LUA for it, or that it's impossible to do with LUA.

[jms 0]

hi daeley,
no i don't really have any experience in modding but i plan to within the next few months.  i'm looking to add a mod to the game which can extract certain game variables that you cannot usually see while playing the game.  it'd help if i could design a query window to display these changing variables or if i can just send these variable values to an external .dat file or whatever hopefully using a batch script inside the lua script.
it's a small project i'm working on and would like to construct a model with the data i extract.  the variables i'm looking at analysing are basically all the constant changing variables in the game, so in the lua scripts, most of the 'game.####' variables.  i'm almost finished my software engineering degree, i'm familiar with most languages and although i haven't used lua before, it seems fairly straight forward.

thanks for your time.

and thanks qurlix, i'm reading through the regional tracking mod for some tips, but i can't get the thing to run so there's not much point, i'll check out the other mods you've suggested.

[Daeley 46]

as I somewhat suspected, you don't need LUA to do this. if all you want to do is simply show variables (or simple calculations on variables) you can do this in the UI itself, by using script "tags" in the LTEXT files.

for example, suppose you want an UI (or news message for that matter) to say this: "congratulations mayor mayorname, we have now reached a population level of total_res_population"

this would look like the following in the LTEXT file:

congratulations mayor #mayor# we have now reached a population level of #game.city_r_population#

You can put snippets of LUA code or variables between # and the game will simply replace them. Simple calculations also work, for example #(game.city_r_population/game.region_r_population)*100# will show the percentage of people in your city compared to regional population etc.

some good examples of this are Equinox' query mod and my old ninja tax collectors lot.

[jms 0]

thanks a lot daeley, just a few more questions...

how would i go about copying these variables that i display to an external file such as a .txt one?
and also, can i make my UI refresh every second or so, so it displays variables that are constantly changing?  or must i manually click on an object to make the UI appear again with a new set of data?

thanks so much for your help.