Consistency checks between game lists and groups of triggers

Posted by Daniel P on Sun 30 May 2010 05:57 AM — 6 posts, 23,313 views.

Daniel P USA Sun 30 May 2010 05:57 AM #0

Here's my scenario: I have a HUGE group of triggers to color individual names of people..probably 500 or so (Achaea - House enemies are red, for those of you who care).

However, I'm pretty much doing manual additions and deletions as these characters' statuses change. What I'm wanting to know is, is there a way to set up some sort of alias that will search a trigger's match and run a command on it as a variable of some sort?

My suspicions are that I have too many triggers for the amount of enemies the org has, and am confused when I run across one who is acting chummy with the org or its affiliations. And then I check the org's enemy list, matching that name and they're not in there. I'd hate to manually check every single trigger I have and remove the ones that are no longer in the org's official list.

So in other words, I want to write a script that will pull all the -match- values of the triggers of an Enemies trigger group into an array or table or whatever, and then check each with the game's enemies list, and probably following those which don't match with a Note("Not an Enemy"). Or for even MORE fun, automatically delete the trigger from the list.

Or maybe just write the name to a blank Notepad window.

Or maybe I should be storing my "offline" enemies list in some easier, more robust manner. I absolutely do NOT want to regexp every name in a single trigger: match = (name1|name2|...|name500). That would be..bad.

Ideas?

-Daniel

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 30 May 2010 07:07 AM #1

You only want the names in one place, so a Lua table is a logical place. Once in a table, and you have a match, a simple table lookup will confirm whether or not it is in it.

The table could also generate the regexp, if you want (just concatenate the names with a "|" between them).

A simple bit of code could be used to add to, or remove from, the table (and then just serialize the table to disk for next time).

I seem to recall something similar was done a while ago.

Daniel P USA Mon 31 May 2010 04:37 PM #2

I really don't like tables. I mean, I understand how they work and how to write them in, but they still confuse the heck out of me. But I bet they're great with memory conservation.

But instead I came up with a fairly workable solution using trigger manipulation..

Have a counter variable that will name triggers as they are added:
ADD ENEMY *


AddTrigger("enemy"..GetVariable("enemynum"),"%1","",41,custom_colour.Custom7,0,"","",100,0)
SetTriggerOption("enemy"..GetVariable("enemynum"),"repeat","1")
SetTriggerOption("enemy"..GetVariable("enemynum"),group","house enemies")
SetVariable("enemynum",(tonumber(GetVariable("enemynum"))+1))

Then I have a delete script which will simply delete the trigger, but the enemynum variable will stay the same and keep incrementing.

As for the actual checker, I have a basic idea, but it needs error handling:
Alias: HOUSE ENEMY CHECK


EnableTrigger("hechecker",true)
SetVariable("v_hecheck","1")
if (tonumber(IsTrigger("enemy"..GetVariable("v_hecheck"))) == 0 then
   Send("house enemies "..GetTriggerInfo("enemy"..GetVariable("v_hecheck"),1))
else
   SetVariable("v_hecheck",(tonumber(GetVariable("v_hecheck)))+1)
end -- if

The HOUSE ENEMIES * command returns the matched enemies and a line that can be triggered with:

Trigger (name = "hechecker"): Total: *.


if tonumber("%1") == 0 then
  Note("%1 is not an enemy")
  --AppendToNotepad("\n%1")
  --DeleteTrigger("enemy"..GetVariable("v_hecheck"))
end -- if

SetVariable("v_hecheck",(tonumber(GetVariable("v_hecheck"))  +1))

if tonumber(GetVariable("v_hecheck")) >= tonumber(GetVariable("enemynum")) then
  Note("Enemy Checking Finished")
  SetVariable("v_hecheck",1)
  EnableTrigger("hechecker",false)
else
  if (tonumber(IsTrigger("enemy"..GetVariable("v_hecheck"))) == 0 then
    Send("house enemies "..GetTriggerInfo("enemy"..GetVariables("v_hecheck"),1))
  else
    Note("Trigger enemy"..GetVariables("v_hecheck").." has been previously removed."
  end -- if trigger exists
end -- if

I haven't actually tested any of this, but if I'm not mistaken, I'm missing a while loop somewhere. If the trigger does not exist, the script will simply break at that point, even though I want it to move on to the next iteration.

I'm going to have to give this a bit more thought...or just buckle down and learn tables, which I don't relish the thought of.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Mon 31 May 2010 10:10 PM #3

Daniel Powell said:

I really don't like tables. I mean, I understand how they work and how to write them in, but they still confuse the heck out of me. But I bet they're great with memory conservation.

They aren't great for conserving memory, they are just great for handling lists of things (like enemies). This is an ideal place to use them. Instead of all that confusing stuff, you can add, delete, load, save enemies in a few lines of code. Here is an example:


-- Initial table of enemies
enemies = {
  Grelinwan = true,
  Hairadric = true,
  Sardo = true,
  Grolith = true,
  Crilili = true,

-- more here

  }  -- end enemies table


-- add an enemy

enemies ["Hilis"] = true


-- delete an enemy from table

enemies ["Grolith"] = nil


-- function to check if someone is an enemy

function enemy_check (someone)
  if enemies [someone] then
    print (someone, "is an enemy")
  else
    print (someone, "is NOT an enemy")
  end -- if
end -- function

-- check if enemy

print (enemy_check ("Nick"))  --> Nick is NOT an enemy
print (enemy_check ("Grelinwan"))  --> Grelinwan is an enemy


-- print all enemies

for k in pairs (enemies) do
  print (k)
end -- for

--[[

Output:

Hairadric
Grelinwan
Crilili
Hilis
Sardo

--]]

-- sort into alphabetic order

local t = {}
for k in pairs (enemies) do table.insert (t, k) end
table.sort (t)
for i, name in ipairs (t) do print (name) end

--[[

Output:

Crilili
Grelinwan
Hairadric
Hilis
Sardo

--]]

-- turn (above) sorted table into a something you can use in a trigger match

trigger_match = "(" .. table.concat (t, "|") .. ")"

print (trigger_match) --> (Crilili|Grelinwan|Hairadric|Hilis|Sardo)


-- serialize into a variable (for saving for next time)

require "serialize"
SetVariable("enemies", "enemies = " .. serialize.save_simple ( enemies ) )

print (GetVariable "enemies")

--[[

Output:

enemies = {
  Hairadric = true,
  Grelinwan = true,
  Crilili = true,
  Hilis = true,
  Sardo = true,
  }

--]]



-- get variables back next time (do in OnPluginInstall or during the world open event):

assert (loadstring (GetVariable ("enemies"))) ()

Note that adding a new enemy, or deleting an existing one, is a single, easy-to-understand line of code.

The list can be serialized so it is saved for next time, and can be turned into the trigger match string so you can test for anyone in the list.

Daniel P USA Thu 03 Jun 2010 04:40 AM #4

Somehow, looking that over makes perfect sense. Thanks so much for clarifying! Just a couple help queries on the terms I don't recognize and I'll be good to go.

I happened to run across a problem with the other solution of creating and deleting triggers as I go. Apparently there's a bit more to AddTrigger() than I had anticipated when using in a plugin. The triggers I add with the function aren't stored in the state file, and so they aren't permanent. So this is as good a solution as any, I say.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Thu 03 Jun 2010 05:07 AM #5

Yes, the state file is really just variables. Adding a trigger effectively would modify the plugin itself, and plugins are really supposed to be read-only. The state files are named in such a way (world ID/plugin ID) that you get a different state file for each world, per plugin.