Hi all, had a general question about scripting with TWX Proxy. I played a few years back, and wrote some scripts, and while I never was an expert I think they were pretty good. I am a non-programmer who learned to do some scripting in TWX Proxy mostly by the awesome assistance I got from others with my questions. This is way back in the day, back when Xide was still handling TWX Proxy, version 2.0 up to like 2.02 when I decided to quit. I was going by Thor back then in the TWX Proxy forums and other forums, except on this one.

I see that EP has added a lot of features in the newer versions, and to tell the truth I'm feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. Hopefully I will get back into the swing of things fairly quickly though

But I was wondering if there were any good resources out there so that I could try to catch up on some of the new features added to the scripting language since 2.02, and maybe learn more about some things that I probably didn't fully understand that were in it back then?

For example, I was looking at some old posts while doing some research, and came across a post where Singularity or someone was talking about pointers and parms. I am going to assume that parms is parameters. So I was wondering if there were somewhere I could go to learn a bit more about how pointers work in TWX Proxy and ways they might help a scripter.

Well, been long winded enough here, just hoping you folks can point me in the right direction, I'm eager to try my hand at scripting again!   

Pointers... well they're internal ways of accessing memory. You won't need any of that for twxproxy scripting until you get to the "waaah it's not fast enough!" stage that I'm in. laff

Parms = sector parameters. 2.02 had them, but they didn't work. 2.04 has em all fixed, it's a way of attaching custom bits of data to sectors in the database. Compare this to the way, say, figs, used to be stored back in 2.02 (as an external file) and you'll see how big of an improvement it can be.

As for "how can I learn this stuff" well... get the manual and get a bunch of scripts and start going thru em. I don't know of any tutorials on things that have changed between 2.03 and 2.04, but EP lurks around here and maybe he'll add it to the next script talk.

But there are plenty of people that can answer your questions in the meantime.

sing I don't know why, but I think I started out in the "wah it's not fast enough phase" heh. But ya, I better learn to crawl again before I try to learn to walk. laff

By manual do you mean the html that comes with TWX Proxy describing the commands? Got that one already.

And I would be very interested in scripting talks that EP or any other experienced scripter might want to make.

Laff, well pointers can't be used in twxproxy scripting directly... but there are places where they're used internally to produce faster results than we could by script. getNearestWarps, the bubble stuff, etc.

The manual ya, the one that comes w/ twxproxy... it gives all the commands.

EP was scheduling another talk, there's a thread about it somewhere. It's usually on skype, you get a handful of scripters together to talk about various things. It's kindof fun.

Also students of scripting as well. I am waiting to get in the next class too. Have learned a lot now will finally start to try it out. laff

What you learned in 2.02 will work in 2.04 as far as I know. 2.03 and now 2.04 had some nice additions/fixes made.

Creating windows in TWX to show information is one of the best things I have seen since the screen can scroll fast enough where you can't catch everything and sometimes you don't want to wait until you read the data file that you create.

I know Sing likes sector parameters and I think I will once I start using them, but for now I still use the external fig file when my scripts first fire up. I manipulate my fig data somewhat different than most. I need to test the way I do it against reading parameters and see what happens.

I am not a programmer by any stretch, but TWX is pretty easy to use and like most, I get by.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Welcome back Steve / Thor. I think that as you look over some of the newer scripts, you'll find that people still script much as they did for 2.02. You can get a small amount of insight into new features that have been added by looking over the changes.txt file, and then cross-referencing any of the new commands in the script.html file. This has never really been enough information, but it will get you started.

Pointers are low-level addresses to memory locations, not something usable from TWX's scripting language. I'll often refer to an index into an array as a pointer though. For example, when I create a queue, I use a "pointer" called $bottom to track where my next pull from the queue will be (as in $que[$bottom]), and a "pointer" called $top to track where the next new sector will be added to the queue (as in $que[$top]). I hope that is helpful to you.

You can find a large number of scripts at grimytrader.com, and a nice selection of Sing's scripts at navhaz.com. And of course, we're all here waiting to pounce on any juicy scripting questions anyone might have, so ask away

+EP+

Pro, I know what you mean, I believe I downloaded one of your scripts that has a window in it, the proZTM script? That was handy. Thanks EP, it's helpful but I'm sure I will have a lot of catching up to do before I'm ready to do things like what you just described    I was just starting to get a decent grasp on arrays and using them in scripts. I think I tried using Sector Parameters back during TWX 2.01 or 2.02 but most of the time I don't think they worked well for me. I hope that I will have better luck with them this time around.

In 2.0o4 they've been fixed. They didn't work right back then.

Windows rock, especially for presenting fast scrolling info. Just wish I could add a scrollbar to it.