Scripting Language Overview

Context: HL Kit … Kit Reference 

The scripting engine is a fundamental element of the Kit and you will find yourself writing numerous scripts to successfully manage character data and present it to the user. The Scripting Language section provides in-depth details on how to utilize the scripting language for your data files, and authors should be familiar with all the concepts presented herein before trying to write any scripts. The specifics of individual scripts and details of accessing the information within particular objects will be found in the sections that follow this one.

The scripting language documentation assumes that readers have a minimal familiarity with programming concepts (e.g. the notion of variables). As such, this documentation is not designed for a person with zero understanding of programming. However, anyone that has picked up a programming book and spent a couple of days toying around with a programming language should have plenty of background to work with HL scripts.

IMPORTANT! The Scripting Language documentation assumes you are already familiar with the basics of scripting and the evaluation cycle. If you have not already done so, please review the section Data Manipulation Basics before proceeding with these topics.

IMPORTANT! The scripting language and parsing mechanisms used by the Kit are relatively simple. This means that certain features provided in more complex programming languages are not available, and this is intentional. Complexity is not needed to support the writing of typically short and simple scripts. In addition, a simple language makes it relatively easy for non-programmers to modify existing scripts and/or write their own. All the intricacies of multiple, highly complex game systems have already been implemented using the scripting mechanisms provided within the Kit, so you should have everything you need to fully develop data files for whatever game system you set your sights on.