Arma 2 Forward Compatibility

[UNN]

in ArmA 2 namespaces will be introduced for user scripts and variables. There are many low level reasons to do this and most of the content will be not be affected by this in any negative way. However, in order to be prepared, it is very important to separate UI related scripts and code as much as possible and not simply share global variables between UI and missions as UI namespace needs to be handled differently.

Any ideas what this means exactly. Will we still be able to interact with our own dialogs and scripts/objects running in game, in real time?

[schaefsky]

Any ideas what this means exactly. Will we still be able to interact with our own dialogs and scripts/objects running in game, in real time?

As far I understand it, short answer "yes".
Considering your scripting work so far I assume you are familiar with the general concept of namespaces in programming.
Now it seems that you will no longer be able to directly manipulate global variables in your UI scripts from mission (/addon?) scripts and vice versa. I suspect you would have to do something like let's say invoke a UI function with parameters you would like to have manipulated, this UI script would then be able to manipulate UI global variables.
For example:
Let SCH_GLOBAL_STRING be a global variable in UI namespace.
Now invoking the follwing command from mission namespace would not work

SCH_GLOBAL_STRING = "Some text"

Now let "setText.sqf" be the following UI script:

SCH_GLOBAL_STRING = _this

You could then manipulate UI namespace variable with

"Some text" call compile loadFile "setText.sqf"

I could be completly wrong here, of course
If I am not, I hope there will be a more elegant way to do this (if not, you will probably be able to work one out yourself)

[Rommel]

Any official word on what this namespaces will actually entail; any chance BIS could ease our minds and give us a small example? Come on Ondrej! :P

[PhilippRauch]

Yes, please my Javelin uses loads of Dialog/UI stuff...

[Dr_Eyeball]

I'm guessing the UI namespace relates to the UI event handlers mainly, which are strings. (eg: MouseButtonDown, LBListSelChanged, Action, etc).

But I'm guessing if you execute a script from those EH's, then those scripts will still have access to global variables, so long as they are not passed in as parameters, so you would simply need to move your processing logic into there.

This would then encourage you to use the control which is already passed via the parameters too.

Maybe they are expanding the ability to use nested dialogs or are providing access to certain Arma dialog's (eg: main menu(/action menu), scoreboard, etc)

[alef]

in order to maintain smooth frame rate in real-time content, time limit for all scripts in each frame is enforced by the engine in ArmA 2. Generally speaking, in case of more demanding scripts, be prepared that their result may come way later and also there probably can suffer from significant latency. It is under evaluation if and how possibly allow user scripts to change how much time they may take from the CPU in every frame.

It could be possible to have more info about this, thanks.
If I run a "more demanding script", should I expect a frame change between statements, like if i put a waitUntil ?
{ _a = getPos player ; _b = getPos player } => _b (could be, by value ) != _a ?

[UNN]

I'm guessing the UI namespace relates to the UI event handlers mainly, which are strings. (eg: MouseButtonDown, LBListSelChanged, Action, etc).

In retrospect, I figure there must be some interaction allowed. Otherwise there is no point in having dialogs, if you can't do anything with them.

[Günter Severloh]

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