Current and proposed practice

In my mind a scripting language should be simple to both understand and use. You should not need to be a C++/Lua hacker to be able to create a dialogue menu where some replies depends on certain circumstances. Here follows a few suggestions how the tmwserv Lua scripting could look.

NPC dialogue

Currently on eAthena:

// A comment!

mes "[Maji Chan]";
mes "\"How do you do my dear quester?\"";
next;

Currently on tmwserv:

-- A comment!

do_message(npc, char, "“How do you do my dear quester?”")

Which is quite unwieldy. When scripting you most often only have the NPC say something to the player, so this could be simplified a fair bit to something like:

-- A comment!

message("“How do you do my dear quester?”")

I would actually propose to gettext-ize it:

-- A comment!

message(_("“How do you do my dear quester?”"))

Using variables

Currently on eAthena:

set @variable_1 = 42; // numeral variable for the local script
set @variable_2$ = "Bottle of Sand"; // string variable for the local script

mes "\"Did you bring " + @variable_1 + " [" + @variable_2$ + "]?\"";

Currently on tmwserv:

...

Displaying dialogue options

Currently on eAthena:

mes "It seems Maji Chan is waiting for an answer...";
next;

menu
	"I'm fine!, thanks for asking.", L_a_good_option,
	"...", -, // Continue after the menu
	"Quite well, and you?", L_another_good_option;

mes "[Maji Chan]";
mes "\"\You could at least say something!\"";
close;

Currently on tmwserv:

...

Variable dialogue options

Currently on eAthena (easy but quickly unwieldy solution):

set @variable = 108;

if (@variable < 100)
	menu
		"Ye olde dialogue option.", L_usual_option,
		"Good bye!", -;

if (@variable >= 100)
	menu
		"Ye olde dialogue option.", L_usual_option,
		"A new exciting option!", L_ohhhh,
		"Good bye!", -;

close;

Currently on eAthena (more complex solution):

...

Currently on tmwserv:

...

Starting a script from scratch

...

See also

• Script bindings — things we currently can access through scripts
• Script bindings to do — things we should be able to access through scripts... in time
• Current tmwserv script example
• eAthena scripting standards — scripting on the old eA server software