Thread: local.player.fireheld, explain please?

Try something like

local.player.hidden = 1;
while(local.player && isAlive(local.player))
{
    if (local.player.fireheld) {
        local.player light (randomfloat(1.0)) (randomfloat(1.0)) (randomfloat(1.0)) 750;
        local.player show;
        local.player.hidden = 0;
        local.player.hideTime = level.time + 0.25;
    }

    if (!local.player.hidden && level.time >= local.player.hideTime) {
        local.player lightOff;
        local.player hide;
        local.player.hidden = 1;
    }
    waitframe;
}
wait 1;
thread give;

Things to note:
(1) Using $player as an entity instead of an array of entities only makes sense in single player. This snippet assumes your mod is designed for multiplayer and local.player points to the player entity in question.
(2) Don't check the health property of a player entity, use the isAlive() command instead.
(3) Fireheld will return true if the player is hold the fire button at that very moment. Your script will happily continue lighting the player even when he lets go of the button because you're using arbitrary waits
in your looping logic.
(4) Writing loops can be tricky.
(4a) Essentially, what you're trying to do each iteration is first and foremost assert your invariables. These are the things that must be true, otherwise there would be no point in executing the body of the loop.
For example, if the player has left the server, local.player will be NULL and the loop will end prematurely. Depending on what you're doing there, you may have to assert some invariables later inside the loop.
(4b) In the body of the loop you assess which conditions are true or false at that point in time. Time being the keyword here. The purpose of loops such as this is to assess the situation at specific intervals and
respond accordingly so you can't just use arbitrary waits. By the time the wait is over, the player might have died, stopped holding the fire button or left the server. The loop in the snippet will assess the player's
situation every frame which is typically 20 fps or 0.05 seconds on the server (even if you host locally). You would not want to lower the wait interval even further, not unless it is absolutely necessary.
(4c) By processing each interval, you may have to schedule and time certain events in the future (given the right conditions of course) so you'd need a way to tell the time. Luckily, level.time is a global variable
which gives you the time that has passed and is updated every frame. We capture its value and add 5 frames' worth of milliseconds to it so 0.25 seconds is the minimum time the light has effect. Now in your
script, you vary the colours of the light. You'd have use the same level.time technique in order to achieve that effect. This is also the way Rookie did it in his mod.

I hope this refreshes your memory somewhat. I'm always glad to see people come back to modding for AA.

Hey

1.
{ on the same line as the if statement is just personal preference, i do it on the next line, i find it makes code easier to read, but doesnt affect the code.

2.
A semicolon is more used in other languages as line/code breaks, to separate code used on the same line. Languages such as C# and SQL have to use this AFAIK. It isnt necessary but good habits i suppose.

3.
! is used to represent IS NOT .
so if(!local.player.hidden)
means that if local.player.hidden IS NOT true(1) then....

if(!local.player.hidden) is the same as if(local.player.hidden != 1)

Programming languages require the semicolon to signal the end of a single instruction (not to be confused with CPU instructions as that depends on what you're doing in that instruction and how it is compiled to machine code). Scripting languages are far less strict about it. In MoH and other scripting languages, the line break serves this purpose as well. Without a semicolon, though, you can't put multiple instructions on the same line. It has become a habit, I guess.

EDIT: In fact, in many programming languages you can spread out an instruction over multiple lines if it's too long otherwise since all line breaks and whitespace is ignored by default. In MoH, you can only do this if you use a backslash (that is immediately followed by a line break) like this:

waitthread Find local.needle \
                local.haystack \
                local.index \
                local.count \
                local.ignoreCase \
                local.backwards;

You can use curly brackets any way you want. It's just a matter of preference. Personally, I never use brackets if the body of my if/while/for statement contains a single instruction. Many languages will interpret the next instruction as the body of the statement if no brackets are found. Some compilers may complain if you didn't indent that instruction properly. If the body of a if/while/for is sufficiently small, I use a bracket on the same line as the statement itself. In all other cases, I put the bracket on the next line such as for methods, classes, namespaces, lengthy statements...
The parentheses I used with the isAlive command are not required. In fact, your script won't compile if you try to do this for a command that expects more than one argument. Most other languages have function call syntax that use parentheses so again, this is a matter of preference.

The NOT operator (or absence of it) means you are trying to assert whether a variable IS or IS NOT. Essentially, you're trying to determine whether the variable contains a value that will always evaluate true or false for that data type. Just remember that any value of any data type will evaluate true unless it is zero (for integers and floats), empty string (for strings), NULL (for entities), NIL (for pretty much any data type) or ( 0 0 0 ) (for vectors). I really miss this feature in languages like Java and .NET. I haven't had the opportunity to program in C, but as far as I know, the same principles apply there as well.