Program to Program Coding - Is it Possible ?

[Maggott]

If you want an object to do the same things without copying and pasting, put the events in the object's behavior. I find that the inability to use qualifiers in behaviors makes this more or less worthless, though, and that same limitation is likely to thwart any attempts at what you're doing. If you could just set up a bunch of qualifier-based behaviors, you could get your character to react to enemies without knowing them beforehand just by making sure the enemies all had the same qualifier. However, while you can copy and paste qualifiers into behaviors, it often leads to Bad Things [tm].

There is one workaround I have found to qualifier vs. behavior issues. If you can create a sub-object that applies to all of your enemies (or whatever) and parent them to those enemies, you can have your object react to those sub-objects.

So, say you want your character to shoot at any enemy, regardless of which game it's in. You make an object called "EnemyTargeter."

In your character's behavior, you tell him to shoot at EnemyTargeters. In each game, you write code to make sure that each enemy has an EnemyTargeter object following them around at all times.

You can pull similar tricks for other behaviors, and so long as all of your games have the necessary sub-objects, any character should work with them.

If what you mean is more along the lines of wanting to give all the events from one active object to another, there is a "Replace by another object" command in the Event Editor that is accessible by right-clicking on the object's icon at the top of the events screen. This cannot be automated, however.

This is about as close as MMF can get, at least as far as I understand your question.

[Random]

LUA scripts could come useful. Each character could use it's own script file (which is basically just a string - you can swap it at runtime). Then you "only" have to build a very generic engine around it that fully integrates the script. Voilà.

[ansemsnobody]

" I find that the inability to use qualifiers in behaviors makes this more or less worthless,"

I hear this alot, but its not true!
If you just make an event using a qualifier in the event editor and copy it you can use it in behaviors.

It works in 1.5 anyway.
(by the way i've been lurking around here for a while but I just registered now...)

[Random]

Have you ever used it to success? There must be a reason why you can't just create events with qualifiers in the behavior itself..

[Harvy]

It was a "bug" in 1.5 that you were able to do that... CT removed it in MMF2. Now it is impossible to have qualifiers mixed with either behaviors or global events---which makes behaviors and global events basically useless for anything serious.
There have been posts about this before... I'd really like to see it fixed.

[Dynasoft]

I don't think it's going to be, the whole problem was that a qualifier gets split up depending on what type of object it's for, and in behaviours and global events there is simply no way of knowing what kind of object the qualifier is attached to.

[LB]

the whole problem was that a qualifier gets split up depending on what type of object it's for

Well that's just plain stupid there.

[Dynasoft]

Well no, because the actions for an active object don't exist in a counter for example.

[Random]

It shouldn't matter. Why can't we just specify the type of object the qualifier uses? Easy. That's how other languages do it.
Besides I never before used something else than an AO in a qualifier and probably never will.

In my opinion qualifiers need a major overhaul (MMF 2.5 *hinthint*).. they need to be nameable and "typed". So you can only qualify objects of the same kind and then be able to use them in global events and behaviors.

[Dynasoft]

But as you said, that would be a major overhaul, not something that they could do for the next build.