7 réponses à ce sujet

[The Fred]

OK, "What's the best programming language?" is an age-old question which doesn't really get anyone anywhere, but "What's the best language for programming something to do something in NWN2?" is one which I think might be more answerable. Of course, that's a bit vague, since there are lots of things you might want to do (for example, I think tools would be different to toolset plugins) but it seems there must be pros and cons to various approaches which don't exist in the "outside world".

For example, when I made my demo Auto Content Installer I did it in C, since C is all I knew (or rather it's what NWS - Neverwinter Scripting - is, indirectly, based on, and NWS is all I knew). Recently, though, I started a course in Java, and for all its downsides, it's also a LOT nicer to use in many ways (I actually got told off for writing something like a C programmer) and it got me to thinking about whether converting to another language might be better. But anyway, what are the thoughts of the true programmers and toolmakers?

[Olblach]

Programming a standalone tool is not very different than a plugin: a plugin is a DLL and a standalone is an exe. Better start by doing a plugin I think because you'll find more examples.



You can use any dotnet language, since programming uses a lot of Obsidian's dll. If you know C why not try C#? If you want an example you can download any plugin given with source (most are) or some standalone tools. RDR Wizard is in Visual Basic and TerraCoppa in C# to name just two of them.

[The Fred]

The difference if that afaik, plugins have to work with Obsidian's stuff (I haven't done any plugins myself, but as you mention, they are DLLs and all that jazz). A standalone you can basically do what you want, theoretically from scratch (at least that's what I did). A lot of people do seem to have used C#, though, that's true.

[Olblach]

You can develop a standalone tool without Obsidian dlls but then you limit your possibilities...

[The Fred]

True, I just haven't really looked at them yet. As I mentioned, my programming experience is limited (I've literally done a short course on C and and even shorter one on Java, and everything else comes from my NWN scripting knowledge). More generally, though, I was thinking kind of in terms of whether there are any specific advantages/disadvantage to what different things can do as specifically regards NWN(2). I personally am fine with plain C, though I do think I'm making life hard for myself given I've basically been building everything from the gorund up.

[Olblach]

Depends on how much time you have on your hands. That is how I add wings to a character in a bic file with C# and Obsidian DLLs, it took me a few minutes to write it:

        public void ChangeWings(string fname, byte num)
        {
            prepGFF(fname);
            if (gff != null)
            {
                if (gff.TopLevelStruct.Fields.ContainsKey("Wings"))
                {
                    GFFByteField b = (GFFByteField)gff.TopLevelStruct.Fields["Wings"];
                    b.ValueByte = num;
                    completeGFF();
                }
            }
        }

With those DLLs you can poke into BICs but also into 2DAs, HAKs and so on.

Now you could do it in C++ with the same DLLs, the difference is not so big.

Modifié par Olblach, 05 novembre 2010 - 07:42 .

[SkywingvL]

Olblach wrote...

You can develop a standalone tool without Obsidian dlls but then you limit your possibilities...

If you're building a standalone tool without the OEI DLLs, the NWN2 Datafile Accessor Library (if you're using C++) provides a great deal of functionality for working with the various NWN2 file formats, including GFF processing support.

[The Fred]

I did see your library which looks pretty cool, but ofc at the time I was using C and having enough trouble trying to learn what I needed/wanted to know for that to try and understand anything else. Not that I have a massive amount of time on my hands right now, but hey. I guess that is one advantage of using C++ though :-)