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Programming / Re: Writer needs Coder
« on: September 22, 2014, 02:33:58 PM »Did you read that link? Gamemaker includes all the functions required to manipulate the following:
"stacks, queues, lists, maps, priority queues, and grids."
I never use them, I stick with arrays and use tons of heredity, but they are in there. Not just arrays.
Or are you saying that GM handles them poorly? Is that it? I wouldn't know...I do know other GM users that make use of them extensively. But maybe they are just used to the clunkiness.
There's another program coming along too, I've not used it, but it's a competitor to Gamemaker:
https://www.scirra.com/
Also, of course, T-Engine.
I did read that link, but I must be explaining it poorly. I'll give you a simple example (that is probably already obvious to you):
Most OOP roguelikes have an 'actor' class, or something similar like that. Lets say you want to add a new monster to the list (or queue, or attack, or whatever) - it can be a new action on the stack, a new monster in the list, whatever, it doesn't matter: actor.next = new actor();
That's it. You can add a constructor that will instantiate the actor for you with default behaviors, and you can pass the monster type to direct the constructor at creation time (eg, monster.next=new actor("goblin");) If you want to delete a monster in the middle of the list, its as simple as
monster.next = monster.next.next;
or if its at the end of the list
monster.next = null;
and you're done - if the monster you remove no longer has an active reference, the garbage collector frees that memory (some languages make you do it yourself, but you can have a destructor to take care of the clean up - either way its a hell of a lot better way to do it than what follows). You can pass an object reference wherever you want, and each object can have whatever methods you want attached to them: (monster.take_damage(3);) You know all this - this is programming 101 stuff.
Contrast this with GML, and using arrays for everything. A monster then is referred to explicitly by an index into a bunch of arrays....a bunch of arrays that cannot be easily redimensioned, and have memory reserved whether they are used or not.
name[3]='goblin';
hps[3]=10;
defense[3]=4;
inventory[3,1]='sword';
inventory[3,2]='helmet'
..... etc....
You now either have to have a capped number of actors, or reserve memory for a lot of creatures you may not be using. You have to iterate through the list to find what you want each time (not a huge big O, but it adds up) God forbid you want to copy a creature...then you have to laboriously copy every single array at a specific index, and unless you keep a position variable, iterate through the array each time to find a free index. If you add a field later, you have to go through all your code and update in every single place. There's no cohesiveness to the code. You have to iterate through an entire array every pass to see if there is an active actor at that index UNLESS you compact the list of actors down and iterate through a set number each time - which requires copying arrays to remove gaps in the list every time a creature dies/leaves/whatever. And if you do that, it invalidates EVERY data structure you are using that references creatures by indexes unless you go clean them up every time too.
Yes you can do everything with GML's array based data structures that you can with OOP, but it would be a hell of a lot easier if they just allow you to make your own classes/objects, which is the entire point of what I'm saying. Trying to program a balanced binary tree using arrays? Holy crap, you could, but it would not be fun. 'Easily implemented' is the keyword. Even worse, GML also has arrays restricted to 2 indexes (2D)... full stop. As opposed to a simple list/queue/whatever of objects with pointers to other objects in the structures which you can do in 30 secs with no support coded needed.
At the end of the day, its half a dozen of 1, or six of the other. If you program in a conventional OOP language (Java, C++, etc), you get the massive flexibility of an object oriented language but you have to write or use a potentially hairy 2d library (though there are some good choices out there that make it easy); if you use GML, you get AWESOME 2d graphics capabilities at the cost of being forced to use arrays for everything. There's another thread going now that talks about a system with heavy object interaction that might be worth looking at that you just couldn't do with arrays (you can't attach a behavior to an array index like you can with a class.)
If they have added this to the latest GML, then I stand corrected, and redact all of what I have said, but as of the last version I bought, none of this existed. It is a work in progress, and they have some really new nifty features each time I log in, but I haven't bought all the expensive available modules - I bought the first level package that unlocks all the standard features, but none of the add-ons. And whan I bought it, it wasn't called Gamemaker Studio, it was still Gamemaker 8.
