History
2004
(September) Weak queues get added with the introduction of Make-X.
Enums get added. Originally called mes - presumably because they were a quick way to do data-driven dialogue messages. They likely weren't fully featured until later if so
Varbits get added to optimize varp storage and reduce the manual bit math some developers were doing.
2005
Strong queues get added.
Region commands get added to create and manipulate instances.
The p_loaddelay command gets added.
2006
Procs get added by a FunOrb developer. Macros are replaced with procs, #multi dialogue was translated into @multi and ~p_choice was created as an alternate method for dialogue flow.
2009
Structs get added - Ash convinced Andrew it was better than creating objects and putting data on them.
Our Implementation
Our RuneScript implementation deviates in a few ways. This is because we continued to learn history during the project's development.
- We support some language features that were introduced later: local variables, procs, booleans, structs, enums, dbtables, and debugprocs. Macros are not supported currently.
- Our pointer checking supports inversions:
if (p_finduid(uid) = false) { return; }is valid code, and code following it will have the pointer set. - We support local variable declarations at any scope. Traditionally the real game must have them at the top level.
- We split strings on the pipe
|character to continue text on newlines if we need a manual break to match screenshots. - Our content isn't written with any general purpose global variables, but they are supported.
We would absolutely add and use every 2004 language behavior if we could get some questions answered.