zscript-doc/3-entry.md

Table of Contents

• Entry Points
• Actors
• CVARINFO
• DECALDEF
• DECORATE
• LOCKDEFS
• GLDEFS
• KEYCONF
• MAPINFO
• MENUDEF
• TERRAIN

Entry Points

For backwards compatibility reasons and so as to not bloat the ZScript language itself, many interactions with the engine are not defined in ZScript. This section describes all ZScript interactions with the engine, both inside and outside of ZScript itself.

Actors

Actor classes can be replaced by the replaces class flag, which during dynamic actor replacement will choose to spawn this class over its replaced actor, unless the replaced actor is later replaced again by another class. Dynamic actor replacement can also be overridden with an event handler's CheckReplacement virtual function.

For example:

class MyActor : Actor replaces OtherActor {} // OtherActor will be dynamically replaced with MyActor
class MyOtherActor : Actor replaces OtherActor {} // OtherActor will now be replaced with MyOtherActor instead of MyActor

CVARINFO

Any CVars declared as a server CVar in CVARINFO or by the engine will be accessible as a global variable in ZScript, which has a special type that can be implicitly cast to the type of the CVar. They cannot be set this way, only accessed.

DECALDEF

DECALDEF can set the decal generator for a specific Actor class with the generator keyword. An actor can also define its generator and inherited classes' generators with the Decal property.

DECORATE

TODO: lots of things to note here

LOCKDEFS

Key and lock groups in LOCKDEFS are defined as groups of Inventory or Key descendants.

GLDEFS

Lights can be associated with Actor classes and frames in GLDEFS.

KEYCONF

TODO: this can be used for custom buttons

MAPINFO

In MAPINFO, the GameInfo block (referred to as MAPINFO/GameInfo in this document) the following properties interact directly with ZScript:

• EventHandlers and AddEventHandlers override or add to the list of StaticEventHandler or EventHandler classes registered by the game (as opposed to event handlers registered per-map.)
• MessageBoxClass sets the MessageBoxMenu class to use for message boxes used by the engine's GUI.
• PlayerClasses and AddPlayerClasses override or add to the list of PlayerPawn classes the game provides.
• PrecacheClasses will pre-cache all sprites used by an Actor class. Note that this also works for StateProvider degenerates like Weapon.
• StatScreen_CoOp sets the StatusScreen class to use for co-op intermission screens.
• StatScreen_DM sets the StatusScreen class to use for Deathmatch intermission screens.
• StatScreen_Single sets the StatusScreen class to use for single-player intermission screens.
• StatusBarClass sets the status bar class used by the game to the provided BaseStatusBar class.
• WeaponSlot sets the game's default weapon slots to the provided Weapon classes.

TODO: there are other things here as well, like map event handlers

MENUDEF

TODO: this directly uses ZScript classes

TERRAIN

The SmallSplash, SplashBase and SplashChunk properties of Splash blocks use Actors.