Object Oriented Programming in Torque Script

(NEW) IMPORTANT NOTE: Ben and I are trying to get this OO stuff to work by modifying the back end of the engine. There's no promise as to whether this will work out of not, but we will be finding that out soon. And if it works, you can expect a great tutorial frrom me very soon!

This is a rough draft for the tutorial I'm making. The tutorial aims to teach people how to program Torque Script in an object-oriented fashioned. If you find that your script's complexity is ballooning out of control with too many global variables and functions, then you may wish to organize your code with with the object orientation paradigm. But, it may be even better to put that code in C++ instead of OO script if it requires more than one layer of inheritance.

First of all, here is a highly commented template which will show a general pattern for organizing a Torque script class and explains how the object oriented features are implemented. Note you will substitute the word Class with the name of the class you wish to use, and substitute varName with the name you want the variable to be -

/////////////////////////
// CLASS Class
/////////////////////////
	
	/////////////////////////
	// INITIALIZATION:
	/////////////////////////
	function Class::create(%objectName)
	{
		// you should usually use "new ScriptObject(...)" when creating a new class
		%this = new ScriptObject(%objectName)
		{
			class = Class;
		}
	
		// create member variables and optionally initialize them to parameters.
		// once a member is created here, it persists for the life of %this object.
		
		/////////////////////////
		// PUBLIC MEMBERS:
		/////////////////////////
		%this.varName2 = 0;
		
		/////////////////////////
		// PRIVATE MEMBERS:
		/////////////////////////
		%this._varName = 0;
	
		return %this;
	}
	
	function Class::delete(%this)
	{
		// call the parent class's delete method as well
		parent::delete(%this);
	
		// insert rest of deletion code here...
	}
	// you MAY want to override this function to handle destruction, but as
	// it stands, you must ALWAYS call delete on any OO class you make
	// if you want to be certain delete() is called.
	
	/////////////////////////
	// PUBLIC INTERFACE:
	/////////////////////////
	
	// you can optionally make an accessor and mutator function for each of your
	// private members if you want them to be accessible and / mutable to the 
	// client. Remember, you do not need to make accessor or mutators functions 
	// for public members since they are already accessible as they are.
	
	function Class::getVarName(%this)
	{	return %this._varName;}
	
	function Class::setVarName(%this, %value)
	{	%this._varName = %value;}
	
	/////////////////////////
	// PRIVATE INTERFACE:
	/////////////////////////
	
	function Class::_incrementAge(%this)
	{	%this._age++;}
	// because this is a private function, it should only be called
	// by code in this class
	
/////////////////////////	
// END CLASS Class
/////////////////////////