Need help on overriding Talker:Say

[SenL]

Hi,

 

I have this code in modmain

 

AddComponentPostInit("talker", function(Talker, inst)

  Taler.old_Say = Talker.Say

  function Talker:Say(script, time, noanim, force, nobroadcast, colour)

    --how to filter only for mychar?

    script = "That's all I can say"

    return Talker:old_Say(script, time, noanim, force, nobroadcast, colour)

  end

end)

 

This works but it affects all (I haven't tested). How do I change it so it only affects mychar?

(Yes mychar can only say "That's all I can say" to ANYthing. Lol.

 

Thanks for help.

[Jjmarco]

@SenL, try this:

AddComponentPostInit("talker", function(self)  local old_Say = self.Say  function self:Say(script, ...)    if self.inst.prefab = "mychar" then        script = "That's all I can say, after all, I'm "..self.inst.prefab    end    return old_Say(self, script, ...)  endend)

- When using AddComponentPostInit, the function gets the component as an argument (here, self).

- self.inst is the player who has the talker component attached to it.

- The "..." basically contains all the arguments passed down to the Say function that are not needed here. Shortens the code a bit.

- When calling old_Say, you have to give self as an argument, because it's not called from the component.

[rezecib]

@SenL, What Jjmarco said, but as a side note, it's better to use the "local old_Say" type of construct instead of attaching old_Say to Talker. The point of modifying a function like that is to make it compatible with other mods (otherwise you could just replace the whole function), but if you attach it to Talker.old_Say, then another mod doing the same thing would overwrite Talker.old_Say.

[SenL]

It works!!

Wow quite a lesson there. Thank you sir!

 

Edit:

I was copying the code I found on a thread where the char does not chop effectively

 

In it:

AddComponentPostInit("workable", function(Workable, inst)

  Workable.old_WorkedBy = Workable.WorkedBy

  function Workable:WorkedBy(worker, numworks)

    if worker.prefab == "mychar" and Workable.action == GLOBAL.ACTIONS.CHOP then

      numworks = numworks/2 or 0.5

    end

    return Workable:old_WorkedBy(worker, numworks)

  end

end)

 

Should I change this one too?

Edited February 5, 2015 by SenL

[SenL]

Changed it to below

AddComponentPostInit("workable", function(self)

  local old_WorkedBy = self.WorkedBy

  function self:WorkedBy(worker, numworks)

    if worker.prefab == "mychar" and self.action == GLOBAL.ACTIONS.CHOP then

      numworks = numworks/2 or 0.5

    end

    return old_WorkedBy(self, worker, numworks)

  end

end)

 

It seems to work.

Does it look good?

[SenL]

1)

How do I lengthen the duration of the text being shown?

It seems to disappear after 2 seconds (I need it to stay for 3-4).

 

Edit: inst.components.talker:Say("blabla", 4) seems to work.

 

2)

How do I change the color of the text...

The function has this parameter but I don't know what value to pass...

 

function Talker:Say(script, time, noanim, force, nobroadcast, colour)

 

Thanks.

Edited February 6, 2015 by SenL

[Kzisor]

@SenL, if I had to guess it would be the following.

 

script = string

time = integer

noanim = boolean

force = boolean

nobroadcast = boolean

colour = string? maybe rbg color ?

[Jjmarco]

@Kzisor, Yep, it's a RBG color. There are some already predefined colors in constants.lua, in the PLAYERCOLOURS table.

[SenL]

The talker is fine but it has a bug.

 

My code is:

AddComponentPostInit("talker", function(self)

  local old_Say = self.Say

  function self:Say(script, ...)

    if self.inst.prefab == "mychar" then

      if script and type(script) == "string" then

        if string.sub(script, 1, 2) == "$$" then

          script = string.sub(script, 3)

        else

          script = "Hi"

        end

      end

    end

    return old_Say(self, script, ...)

  end

end)

 

When I play and gain exp, I pass in "$$Exp " .. inst.exp etc etc so that it would say "Exp: 50" for example instead of just "Hi".

However, when a client joins (also as mychar), and he gains exp, his mychar only says "Hi" (should say Exp: #).

How do I fix?

 

Thanks.

[Kzisor]

@SenL, without seeing your entire mod to determine where the mistake is at, we cannot tell you how to fix this issue. 

[Jjmarco]

@SenL, There's a better way of checking if a string starts with a specific word/character. The find or the match functions of string:

if script:find("^%$%$") thenor if script:match("^%$%$") then

Match and find are pretty similar, but the first returns the start and end indexes, then the matched string, while the other only returns the matched string.

 

They both use regular expressions for finding strings, and '$' is a reserved character, so you have to prepend it with '%' so these functions can match it as a litteral character.

'^' means "match at the start of the string, while '$' means "match at the end of the string".

So "^%$%$" means "match two '$' at the start of the string".

 

You can rewrite your code like so:

if script:find("^%$%$") then -- if two '$' are found at start of string    script = script:match("^%$%$(.*)$") -- script now contains everything after themelse    script = "Hi"end

or even more compact:

script = script:match("^%$%$(.*)$") or "Hi" 

script:match("^%$%$(.*)$") will return the string that's after the two '$', and will return nil if it finds nothing.

'.' means "match any character" while '*' means "match the previous character zero or more times, as many times as possible".

The parenthesis '()' are a capturing group, which will make the match function return only the text matched in between them (in this case, all the text right after the $$).

 

More information about Lua's string matching functions here.

 

This might not be necessary for what you are trying to accomplish here, but it's always useful information for the future!

 

Also, the issue might be that script doesn't contain "$$Exp..." at all for some reason, because your code should work like this. You could put a "print(script)" somewhere and look at the console?

[SenL]

@Jjmarco

Thanks for the tip, I will study that and change.

 

I'm not sure what but it works for the host.

Maybe for client the string or talker is handled differently?

 

I will try the print()

 

Edit:

Maybe I'll move away from using $$ but using something else that's not reserved... hmm... **? ##? :

Edited February 10, 2015 by SenL

[SenL]

The script on the client doesn't contain $$ at all for some reason.

 

Code inside mychar.lua

local function applyupgrades(inst)

  --snip

  inst.components.talker:Say("$$Level " .. inst.level)

end

 

Other code is the same.

 

Not sure how to fix it.

Alternatives would be: a) widget to show level (I have no idea still how to do this), b) some kind of item that says what level when examined.

[Jjmarco]

@SenL, Is applyupgrades called from master_postinit or common_postinit?

[SenL]

@Jjmarco The applyupgrades() is being called by

  1. entitydeathfn(), which is being called by master_postinit

    inst:ListenForEvent("entity_death", function(world, data) entitydeathfn(inst, data) end, TheWorld)

  2. oneat(), which is being called also by master_postinit

    inst.components.eater:SetOnEatFn(oneat)

  3. onpreload(), which is being called also by master_postinit

    inst.OnPreLoad = onpreload

  4. onbecomingalive(), which is being called also by master_postinit

    inst:ListenForEvent("ms_respawnedfromghost", onbecomingalive)

 

So I guess master_postinit for all.

[Jjmarco]

@SenL, Actually, I don't understand why you want to override Say.

Can't you just put

inst.components.talker:Say("Level " .. inst.level)

in applyupgrades without overriding Say ?

[SenL]

I have a custom char that can only say x.

Examine this, he'd say say "x"

Hounds are coming, he'd say "x"

However, I do want to see what my exp and level are .