! as part of community prefix using statenemes

[cmorgan]

Trying to help a friend out, I ran into some oddities using ! as a qualifier for D files. If I wrap all of the Banter files, J, D, etc, everything I can in tildes, I can use B! as a community prefix ok, just like Andyr's A! . The problem comes when statenames are designated with the prefix as well:

Code: [Select]

BEGIN ~BB!GAVIN~

CHAIN
IF WEIGHT #-1
~CombatCounter(0)
!See([ENEMY])
InParty("imoen")
See("imoen")
Global("B!GavinImoen1","LOCALS",0)~ THEN ~BB!GAVIN~ BGavinImoen1works;

Code: [Select]

BEGIN ~BB!GAVIN~

CHAIN
IF WEIGHT #-1
~CombatCounter(0)
!See([ENEMY])
InParty("imoen")
See("imoen")
Global("B!GavinImoen1","LOCALS",0)~ THEN ~BB!GAVIN~ B!GavinImoen1fails (or if you use modern converntions and drop any tildes, the lexer errors jump right in).

I know the "good" answer is to as the person to change the community prefix to an easier one to handle... i jus thought I should put this up for commentary.

[Andyr]

I've been using a mish-mash of A! and A# since before the prefix list was up. You shouldn't need to use any prefix in state names anyway, as when they're compiled your name is replaced by whatever number is next in the sequence. So there's no possibility of mod conflict (at least, that I can think of).

[cmorgan]

OK, so this is an instance of me having learned slightly incorrectly; for some strange reason I thought that statenames carried over. Now I remember you (and Grim Squeaker) explainig that they are just numbers, not related to the lettering -- thank you! the answer is to NOT use my fancy naming convention practice of matching all statenames with the same community prefix, 'cause I am the one causing the trouble, not WeiDU .

I understand the answer is to retain the ~B!NPCjfile~ format for dialogue files, etc, and not use the ! in statenames.

[berelinde]

It it were me, I'd tell the friend to get over it and use BGavin for state names. Or tell the twit to get a new prefix. *wink*

You guys are amazing, and show great kindness.

[cmorgan]

Well, so that it is all good for everyone, I would keep using the B! convention for everything except statenames; it means that you have to use the tildes, but also means that you will have a hard-to-duplicate community prefix (Andyr has a bunch of working code out there, so we know it works when used right ).  For the record, I have been using X#Statename for BG1 NPC with no problems even under stress-testing WeiDU v196. Since the statenames do not carry over (are not directly translated into a unique number bbased on text but are instead a reference for unique identifiers inside the D files), we can simply drop the whole prefix-added-to-statename in the first place. Then everythig works great.

So,
as long as you use unique internal statenames, no need to even add the B.

The whole thing about avoiding state numbers still exists, though:

putting GavinImoen1 is ok, but putting 0001 or even 1 may lead to unforseen consequences... So the best option is to use numbers like salt, sprinkling a little in text, and the best solution is to avoid numbers altogether (something I do not do - I still use GavinImoen1, GavinImoen1a GavinImoen1.1)

[Andyr]

I use things like initial_meeting, second_meeting, go_away_now and so on.