Lua Programming Help Thread

[FaT3oYCG]

windows luaplayer - includes the simple menu and simple movement examples that i posted on this thread - with their own run files i also included the optional.cmd file just open it and you can choose a file that is in the luaplayer directory to run with the luaplayer

download:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/14kijf

[PSProgramer]

thanks alot!!
-= Double Post =-
I tryed it and it started, but then my speakers made a wierd noise, and now there is a luaplayer.exe.stackdump in the file. What did I do wrong??
-= Double Post =-
nvm, now it works just fine. but the config.cfg wont load, should it??

[FaT3oYCG]

thanks alot!!
-= Double Post =-
I tryed it and it started, but then my speakers made a wierd noise, and now there is a luaplayer.exe.stackdump in the file. What did I do wrong??
-= Double Post =-
nvm, now it works just fine. but the config.cfg wont load, should it??

lol i dont know what operating system are you using and the stack dump is just an error file you can delete it unless it has anything usefull that might tell us why it crashed inside

ok and the config.cfg is just the file where the x and y co-ordinates from the simple_movement.lua are stored press X to save the co-ordinates then close and restart it and it should start from the last position it was at

[dan369]

to load it to make Link' X and Y watever is in the Config file

Link = {}
dofile("/config.cmd")

That's how Fat30YCG Taught me lol

[PSProgramer]

thanks alot guys, it's all making since now. One last thing that I'm still haveing trouble with is the adding of alpha, I tryed to follow, your instructions, but I couldn't find the remove color tool. If I PM you a sprite sheet, can you send me back an example of what it's supposed to do?? I only need the first character on the sheet, right now, so I can figure out how to do, this, because I have alllllllllllloooooooooooo oottttttttttttttttt of spites, and sprite sheets.

thanx again

[dan369]

i just use the CUT tool, use the magic wand and Cut, colour gone.

[PSProgramer]

By the way, since Dan369 is here, I was wondering if you mind, if I borrow some of your sprites?? They are really similar to mine, maybe from the same sprite sheet. If not it's cool. Just asking.
Thanks for helping by the way.
And I think you Zelda is coming along great, hope mine is close to as good as yours.
-= Double Post =-
I tried to run my Zelda program so far on lua for windows and I got this error:

error:Zelda.lua:30: 'end' expected (to close 'if' at line 18) near '(eof)'

I am working on putting in a timer, so that a stream of text comes at different times, rather than all at once. I do not no how, to fix it, please help, and what is (eof)??
thanx for the help.

[FaT3oYCG]

eof is end of file - basically you have missed an end out somewhere

e.g.

if something then
blah
blah
blah

should be

if something then
blah
blah
blah
end

thanks alot guys, it's all making since now. One last thing that I'm still haveing trouble with is the adding of alpha, I tryed to follow, your instructions, but I couldn't find the remove color tool. If I PM you a sprite sheet, can you send me back an example of what it's supposed to do?? I only need the first character on the sheet, right now, so I can figure out how to do, this, because I have alllllllllllloooooooooooo oottttttttttttttttt of spites, and sprite sheets.

thanx again

the remove colour tool is on the picture tool bar, it is the pen with an arrow pointing down and left it is not highlighted bit it is on the last tool bar at the top in the middle of the screen

like on this picture

also if dan lets you use his then thats fine if you still cant do it ill do it for you

[Nielkie]

I tried to run my Zelda program so far on lua for windows and I got this error:

error:Zelda.lua:30: 'end' expected (to close 'if' at line 18) near '(eof)'

I am working on putting in a timer, so that a stream of text comes at different times, rather than all at once. I do not no how, to fix it, please help, and what is (eof)??
thanx for the help.

eof stands for End of File. Basically, you've got more if/while/repeat/switch statements you have ends. Go back and indent your code if you do not already, and go to line 18, and see if anything doesn't make sense there.

Next time, post your code. Not the whole program, just the lines around the line the error is referring to. Also, with game mechanics code, I recommend you test it in the lua interpreter (Not to be mistaken with luaplayer for windows) first. While it will not give you a fancy output, it will give you a nice trace-back when an error occurs.

You need to start learning how to help yourself. Don't go running to the help thread everytime you reach a minor snag. Do some research, etc. Google if you friend.

Lastly, I don't think you should be tackling such a big project if you can't even create a menu, start smaller games and build your way up (Try a tetris clone, or maybe minesweeper (I haven't seen that for the PSP yet)). I guarantee you that you will abandon this project before you even have your first level running.

Oh, and to create transparency in an image, go download Gimp. It is an free, open-source image editor that is almost as good as photoshop. There are plenty of guides on the internet that deal with your problem. Also most sprite sheets use a specific colour for transparency. In Gimp, you should just be able to to a colour replace.

[PSProgramer]

Nielkie
I would like to thank you for your concern, but I plan on writing this entire thing. So what if I can't do some of the things, to get started. Thats always the hard part for me, getting started. Once I get the minor kincks out in the begining, I will be fine for at least a little awhile. Thank you for your help. And yes, I believe i did fix the problem. thank you Fat3oYCG you have helped me alot, and haven't critisized me yet. I thank you for not putting down newer programers. And thanx for the help on the alpha thing, I think I got it.

[FaT3oYCG]

Nielkie
I would like to thank you for your concern, but I plan on writing this entire thing. So what if I can't do some of the things, to get started. Thats always the hard part for me, getting started. Once I get the minor kincks out in the begining, I will be fine for at least a little awhile. Thank you for your help. And yes, I believe i did fix the problem. thank you Fat3oYCG you have helped me alot, and haven't critisized me yet. I thank you for not putting down newer programers. And thanx for the help on the alpha thing, I think I got it.

well thank you for your appreciation not everyone is that nice, also that isnt 100% true, i do put down some new programmer but only the ones that talk rubbish and dont look promising, mainly if they fail from the start then they will fail forever, i learned lua by myself and found it hard to find relevant material until i cam e here and had the same sort of problems as you, but like you i asked and got some good answers, you will see this if you look furnther back through this thread, i now consider myself to be and advanced programer in the lua programming language, although i do not know every little thing i can learn and understand new features of the language quickly, i can see you becoming just as good as me if you practice and put in the work, but make sure you dont just rely on other people telling you the answer, somtimes it is good to try something out and then if you cant get it to work maybe ask if it is the right method to use if you still cant do it then i would ask for some help but overall i wish you the best of luck, you are a budding programmer in the making, happy coding

thanks

[email protected]

[PSProgramer]

thank you for the support, and Help, I really do appreciate it, and I will quit asking so many questions. It was just so very overwelming in the beginning, looking at all the stuff I needed to do, but it isn't so bad now that I look at it. I have customized your menu, I do appreciate that by the way. There are only 4 options, rather than 5 and I moved the place, and spaceing of the options. One thing, though that I am haveing trouble with, is putting in a background. I know how to "screen:blit" to input images, but i can't get it to fill the background like I want to. But yeah, other than that I am all good. I got the transparency on my sprites, finally. Thanx for that. I have already got almost all the sprites needed for running in all directions transparent. thanks for all the help. I will PM you later in the day on my progress so far.

-PSProgramer

[ifiwere1337]

hey everyone, im making great progress on my game, but i need help, what is the command to exit?

ive been using this, but the psp freezes when i press square

if controls:square() then
os.exit()
end

also im using hm6

[sony psp player]

hey everyone, im making great progress on my game, but i need help, what is the command to exit?

ive been using this, but the psp freezes when i press square

if controls:square() then
os.exit()
end

also im using hm6

Hi,
this should work:

if controls:square() then
	System.Quit()
end

I have not tried it but i think it should work because it is on this list:
http://luaplayerhm.xtreemhost.com/in...view=functions

[ifiwere1337]

Hi,
this should work:

if controls:square() then
	System.Quit()
end

I have not tried it but i think it should work because it is on this list:
http://luaplayerhm.xtreemhost.com/in...view=functions

oh, i didnt know they had a list of functions on the site, i will try that thanks
--edit
thanks it works

[Kooperus]

Hey guys,

could someone tell me, how to assign the ram?

thx

[sony psp player]

Hey guys,

could someone tell me, how to assign the ram?

thx

I don't think Luaplayer is able to assign the ram

[ifiwere1337]

its not able yet, maybe lua player .20, but not luaplayerhm

[FaT3oYCG]

the ram is automatically assigned for what is needed when its all used it runs out of ram this is also called memory we can solve this by using the collectgarbage() function or the System.memclean() in luaplayer hm, but it would be good to be able to assign ram / memory so that it could be overwritten every time that section gets full, if it was doing a process that needed lots of ram but didnt need to store all of the data in the ram at one time

basically no there isnt a function but you can clear the ram of unused variables and code with functions that are available

[andyauff]

Okay. I'm working on saving/loading sets for my Marching Band Drill Writer program. I have saving working so that a text file is written to, with all the x and y coordinates of all the dots on the screen on their own line. For example:

140
200
50
170

That would mean that there is a dot at coordinates (140,200) and a dot at coordinates (50,170). So saving is working. But I can't seem to get loading working. What I need to do is read those numbers from the text file and insert them into a table so they can be drawn. Here is what I have:

--outside of loop
function addLocation(x,y)
   table.insert(locations,{x=x,y=y})
end

--(looping gamestate starts here)

if pad:square() and not oldpad:square() then
  System.usbDiskModeDeactivate()
  loadFile = io.open("Saved Sets/" .. loadFile2 .. ".txt","r")
  number = 0
  locations = nil
  locations = {}

  for line in loadFile:lines() do
       number = number + 1
  end

  for j = 1, number do
       xc = loadFile:read()
       yc = loadFile:read()

       addLocation(xc,yc)
  end

  loadFile:close()

  System.usbDiskModeActivate()
  gamestate = "game"
  pausestate = "select"
end

--here is the code that draws the X's for the dots. it's not actually here in my program, but it's in there

if locations ~= nil then
  for i = 1, table.getn(locations) do
      screen:blit(locations[i].x,locations[i].y,dot)
  end
end

That seems to work fine, but when it goes back to the drawing screen, and it tries to draw the dots at the loaded coordinates, I get an error: "calling 'blit' on bad self (number expected, got nil)".
NOTE: The table inserting and drawing does work fine, because it's the same way I'm doing it for the main program. It must be something with the loading/inserting after loading....

Also, I know I would have to take into account that it is reading through and reading two lines each time- therefore it should only loop that action 1/2 of the number of lines in the file times (if that makes any sense). But I've messed around with that, and I still can't get it to work at all. Ugh!

It's really bugging me (no pun intended). Thanks for any help.

[yaustar]

  for line in loadFile:lines() do
       number = number + 1
  end

  for j = 1, number do
       xc = loadFile:read()
       yc = loadFile:read()

       addLocation(xc,yc)
  end

There are 4 lines in the file. You are reading 4 sets of x and y ordinates, 2 of which don't exist.

[FaT3oYCG]

you could also just save the co-ordinates in a table, and just read the whole file, then you wouldnt have that problem and it would be much easier to load / save data

[andyauff]

  for line in loadFile:lines() do
       number = number + 1
  end

  for j = 1, number do
       xc = loadFile:read()
       yc = loadFile:read()

       addLocation(xc,yc)
  end

There are 4 lines in the file. You are reading 4 sets of x and y ordinates, 2 of which don't exist.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but how would I go about only reading as many times as half the number of lines? I've tried but it says you can't manipulate a function (loadFile:lines()). Would "for j = 1, number/2 do" work? Not sure if I've tried it... I'll try it later.

you could also just save the co-ordinates in a table, and just read the whole file, then you wouldnt have that problem and it would be much easier to load / save data

Hmm... I'll have to try that too.

Thanks to both of you.

[FaT3oYCG]

im not sure if this works but it should do

white = Color.new(255, 255, 255)

coordinate_table = { }

dofile("./stored_coordinates_table.lua")

function save_coordinate_data()
coordinate_file = io.open("stored_coordinates_table.lua", "w")
coordinate_file:write("coordinate_table = { \n")
for i = 1, table.getn(coordinate_table) do
coordinate_file:write("{ x = " .. coordinate_table[i].x .. ", " .. "y = " .. coordinate_table[i].y .. "}" .. " , \n")
end
coordinate_file:write("}")
coordinate_file:close()
end

function addLocation(x, y)
	table.insert(coordinate_table, {x = x, y = y})
end

oldpad = Controls.read()

while true do

pad = Controls.read()

screen:clear()

-- insert your main code here

if pad:triangle() and not oldpad:triangle() then
for i = 1, 10 do
addLocation(4, 10)
end
end

if pad:circle() then
for i = 1, table.getn(coordinate_table) do
screen:print(10, 10 + i * 10, coordinate_table[i].x .. " : " .. coordinate_table[i].y, white)
end
end

if pad:cross() then
	 save_coordinate_data()
end

-- insert your main code here

if pad:start() then
	break
end

oldpad = pad

screen.waitVblankStart()
screen.flip()

end

[TurtlesPwn]

for j = 1, math.floor(number/2)*2, 2 do

the third number is how many to increase the iterator each loop (default 1)
the math.floor(number/2)*2 will eliminate the possibility of an error from an unexpected odd number of lines in the file

[andyauff]

Ok, here is what I have:

              for line in loadFile:lines() do
                  number = number + 1
              end

              for j = 1, math.floor(number/2)*2, 2 do
                  xc = loadFile:read()
                  yc = loadFile:read()

                  table.insert(locations{x=xc,y=yc})
              end

I get the error: "attempt to call global 'locations' (a table value)" at the line "table.insert(locations{x =xc,y=yc})".

[TurtlesPwn]

you forgot a comma in there. table.insert(locations>>> >>>>>,<<<<<<<<"{blahblahb lah})

[andyauff]

Ahh... wow. Thanks. But there's still an error :Argh: . "calling 'blit' on bad self (number expected, got nil)". That's the line where I try to blit all of the dots at the newly loaded coordinates. After it loads it won't blit.

[FaT3oYCG]

for i = 1, table.getn(locations) do
screen:blit(locations[i].x, locations[i].y, dot)
end

[andyauff]

Yeah, that's exactly what I have.