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Alternative Torque Syntax - ATS

by Tj Holowaychuk · 03/18/2009 (12:08 pm) · 3 comments

On behalf of Vision Media I have been developing some TGB tools, including an alternative syntax.

This and other features will be packed into a single Ruby gem 'torque' which can be found at http://github.com/visionmedia/torque. Other features will include command-line access to a snippits / cheat sheet database, and several automation tools.

Note that I have just begun development and it is not stable at the moment. The alternative syntax looks like this:

# Torque Alternative Syntax
 
unless is_object(FollowMouseBehavior)
  :template = new BehaviorTemplate(FollowMouseBehavior)
  
  :template
    .friendly_name = "..." 
    .behavior_type = "..."
    .description   = "..."
    
  :template
    .add_behavior_field(flip_x,   "...", bool, true)
    .add_behavior_field(follow_x, "...", bool, true)
    .add_behavior_field(follow_x, "...", bool, true)
    .add_behavior_field(tracking_speed, "...", float, 15.0)
end

which is then compiled via a Ragel scanner to:

// Torque Alternative Syntax
 
if (!isObject(FollowMouseBehavior))
  %template = new BehaviorTemplate(FollowMouseBehavior);
  
  %template.friendlyName = "...";
  %template.behaviorType = "...";
  %template.description   = "...";
    
  %template.addBehaviorField(flipX,   "...", bool, true);
  %template.addBehaviorField(followX, "...", bool, true);
  %template.addBehaviorField(followX, "...", bool, true);
  %template.addBehaviorField(trackingSpeed, "...", float, 15.0);
}

As I am still new to Torque I have a question for the dev team if you read this, does TGB have a command-line component as well? I am not sure if this is a gotcha but when I edit and Torque scripts I have to restart TGB, which I can understand seeing as the editor itself is built with torque script, however if this does not exist I will work on an automated solution so that its less of a hassle
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Associate Ross Pawley
#1
03/18/2009 (1:05 pm)
@Tj, well, at one point Tom Spilman implemented some "edit and continue" style functionality into Torsion, but hasn't had time to really implement things into the engine(s) to make it work properly. In the post where he talks about the feature, he gives some information so that anyone interested could run with it and probably get it working.

TorqueScript edit and continue.

You *can* hack TorqueScript to reload files pretty easily by simply making a function in the script file you want to reload (though it could be anywhere really) that calls exec( "pathToScript" ); and then you can merely call that function to reload any changes you've made.

Tj Holowaychuk
#2
03/18/2009 (1:25 pm)
Torsion is windows only though right?

Good plan, I will try some of this out and see what the best solution will be, just seems like a huge roadblock during development if your constantly reloading TGB. Thanks for the tip I will try that out

Associate Ross Pawley
#3
03/18/2009 (1:31 pm)
Ah, yes, Torsion is Windows only at the moment. I believe some people have experimented with running it on Mac with Wine-esque tools (I don't know anything about the Mac equivalents to things like Wine and CrossOver Office...) and managed to get some amount of the functionality working.

If you don't have/use Torsion though, the re-exec tip will work nicely for you :) That trick can have weird side effects sometimes though (not often, really just depends on what the script is doing), so it's good to keep that in mind.