Zugg Software :: View topic - Preventing multiple instances of a script.

Wanderer Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 57

I'm mudding on Imperian at the moment, which, like other Iron Realms MUDs (Achaea, Aetolia, Lusternia), uses a system of afflictions, cures and balances for combat. An example of this would be drinking an elixir of health... this can only be done intermittently (approximately every five seconds), and there are numerous afflictions which prevent this from happening (being stunned, for example).

With this in mind, I've tried out a number of scripts to automate the various forms of curing, each with varying degrees of success. For example, here is my current healing script (triggered from the prompt whenever my character's health drops below a certain point):

#FO @preventhealth {#IF %ismember(%i,@currentafflictions) {#ABORT 1}}
#IF (@healthbalance=1 and @healthsips>0) {drink health}

In the above, the variable 'preventhealth' is a string list of afflictions which would prevent drinking health elixir, whilst 'healthbalance' keeps track of the delay in being able to do so, and 'healthsips' is simply a measure of the amount of elixir remaining.

For the most part, this works fine... however, I find myself running into problems when two or more instances of such scripts are triggered to run either in extremely rapid succession, or at exactly the same time (less likely in the above, but certainly possible when two or more afflictions are gained at the same time).

I'd appreciate suggestions as to any ways I might improve the above, and in particular I'm looking for a way to ensure that only one instance of a script can run at one time, even when two triggers for this script are received at the same time.

Newbie Joined: 26 Dec 2006 Posts: 5

what you can do is put all the scripts that could trigger off of a given set of afflicitions in a subclass, then
Whatever the trigger needs to send here;#T- YourSubClass;#alarm "AfflictionTimer" +0:0:3 {#T+ YourSubclass}

that will turn the trigger off so it can't double fire, then turn it back on.

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

First you are going to have to get rid of the use of #ABORT 1 and the use of #FORALL. I would suggest using an #IF with either the %regex or %match functions. Something along the lines of:
#IF (%match(@currentafflictions,@preventhealth)=0) {
#IF (@healthbalance=1 and @healthsips>0) {drink health}
}

This would involve a small change in your preventhealth variable in order to make it into a proper pattern.

Wanderer Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 57

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

If you don't want to adjust the variable to include the braces just use a %concat in the %match.
%match(@currentafflictions,%concat("{",@preventhealth,"}"))

Wanderer Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 57

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

To explain what Vij did, by forcing the %concat you're matching {@preventhealth}
which is the same as when you match a trigger to a variable using {@variable} syntax - so it matches any member of the variable rather than the entire variable.
Very clever nonetheless, something I'd not have thought of ;)