Talk:Can you retrieve an enemy's attack IDs with plotscripting?
Patsen: Sorry, I wasn't logged in when asking this question. I'm trying to write an alternate battle engine, and I'm trying to use as much of the game's data structures as I can. So, I'd put the enemy stats as enemies, and get their stats as needed. To my knowledge, everything but attacks can be retrieved this way. Is it possible, and if not, would it be a useful feature? --Patsen 04:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Bob the Hamster: I think it is really important to define constants for everything you can read with these commands, and to strongly encourage the use of the constants in the documentation. Failure to do this will cause scripts that access enemy data by DT1 numeric offset to break badly if we ever re-arrange data in the DT1 format in the future
Patsen: I understand. I'm trying to write a game that ignores the in-game battle engine, but am keeping the in-game data structures, so I can call upon the data with plotscripts... but the program is constantly changing. I'll keep these things in mind.
Mike C.: Woah, there, James! Constants aren't dynamic, and a script compiled with an old version of plotscr.hsd will have the wrong offsets anyway. The only real solution would be an enumeration sort of thing (stat block = 0, attack list = 1, etc), with the engine itself translating.
That or plotscripts compiled/interpreted on the fly... Hmm...
Edit: Damnit, the login gremlins strike again!
Bob the Hamster: Yes I know. But if we changed the format, we would update the constants, which would fix at least some subset of the problem. Too fully fix the problem we would have to retain a backwards-compatibility interface to the DT1 data that would translate between the two formats behind the scenes. Hopefully we just won't need to.
Patsen: Granted, but if the format were to change, it would only be necessary to expand, and adding new element to unused slots, and adding slots if needed. Would be ever be necessary to change existing slots? That would help maintain backwards compatibility a lot better.
Bob the Hamster: yes. It is unlikely that we will need to do make any changes other than just expanding records. My earlier warning about things changing was pretty hypothetical.