Fractal Block World

Version 1.01.28 API Changes

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Several functions have been added to the API in this version. However here will focus on API functions that were removed and replaced by better solutions.

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Deprecated, Changed, or Improved Game API Functions

• If you want, you can prefix the chunk generation API functions you call with "gen_". So you could call gen_set_pos instead of set_pos, for example. This is useful to distinguish between the different APIs when searching for names in your code.
  
  
• The "genesis bool" is no longer hardcoded into the engine. It is now stored in the global variable "game.globals.worldgen.state.genesis". These variables can be accessed by procedural world generation code. Variables that start with "game.globals.worldgen.state" are called "mutators". Like all other game globals, you declare these in the "globals.txt" file of your packge. The old way to access the genesis bool from game code (not worldgen code) was to call the function ga_genesis. That function is now deprecated (so do not call it).
  
  
• We are keeping the functions ga_block_get and ga_get_cocoon_block_of_chunk which get the block type (bt) of a block and a chunk respectively. However we added new functions whose names are easier to remember:
  • ga_bp_to_bt
  • ga_chunk_id_to_bt
  • ga_vcp_to_bt.
  We encourage the modder to use these new functions instead for better readability.
  
  
• Pink rings have been completely removed from the engine, and are now softcoded in Lua as part of the base package. There is still a pink ring and pink sphere basic entity Lua script in Data/Packages/base and they function the same way they did before. The game API functions involving pink rings and pink spheres have been replaced by functions in the file Data/Packages/base/Game/game_base_tele_pink.lua The game API functions ga_tele_pink and ga_tele_pink2 have been replaced by the Lua function game_base_tele_pink.tele. Also, you can call the Lua function game_base_tele_pink.get_pink_dest_chunk_id to get the chunk id of where pink rings will take you.
  
  
• Blue rings have been completely removed from the engine, and are now softcoded in Lua as part of the base package. This was much more complicated than softcoding Pink rings. One addition to the engine to make this possible is "dynamic variables" which can be added to the chunk being procedurally generated during procedural world generation. What makes them "dynamic" is that they do not need to be declared ahead of time when the block TYPE is being initialized.
  
  The second technical addition to the engine is the game API function called ga_explore_while. This effectively puts the engine into a "while loop". When we call the function ga_explore_while, we pass it the name of a Lua function f to be called every frame until f returns false. This function f is needed to guide the teleportation. Between calls to the function f, the engine does exploration (it creates and destroys chunks).
  
  The game API functions ga_tele_blue and ga_tele_blue2 have been replaced by the Lua function game_base_tele_blue.start_tele. To make blue teleportation fast, we use the new API function ga_render_skip_next_frame to not render the next frame. This speeds up the teleportation by a factor of at least 3.