The Module System

Modules were introduced in Torque3D 4.0, by using modules you can easily isolate your changes in a dedicated package. Module system also gives you a nice way of load/unloading packages of scripts and distribute it for others to use.

Before we can begin writing our game scripts, we need to set up a module. The process is simple, create a new folder data/CoinCollection and inside that folder add two files.

data/CoinCollection/CoinCollection.module

<ModuleDefinition
    ModuleId="CoinCollection"
    VersionId="1"
    Description="Starter module for CoinCollection gameplay."
    scriptFile="CoinCollection"
    CreateFunction="onCreate"
    DestroyFunction="onDestroy"
    Group="Game"
    Dependencies="UI=1">
    <!-- UI dependency is needed for the Scoreboard later on -->
    <DeclaredAssets
        canSave="true"
        canSaveDynamicFields="true"
        Extension="asset.taml"
        Recurse="true" />
</ModuleDefinition>

Most of this, you don’t need to concern yourself with at this moment. It’s mainly metadata about the module. The most significant pieces right now is that the Group is set to Game, this means that it will be automatically by our main.tscript file, the game’s entrypoinnt.

Furthermore, the scriptFile, DestroyFunction and CreateFunction specify how our module is initialized. Let’s go ahead and add this file now:

data/CoinCollection/CoinCollection.tscript

/// Module life-cycle

function CoinCollection::onCreate(%this) {
}

function CoinCollection::onDestroy(%this) {
}

/// Server life-cycle

function CoinCollection::initServer(%this) {
}

function CoinCollection::onCreateGameServer(%this) {
}

function CoinCollection::onDestroyGameServer(%this) {
}

/// Client life-cycle

function CoinCollection::initClient(%this) {
}

function CoinCollection::onCreateClientConnection(%this) {
}

function CoinCollection::onDestroyClientConnection(%this) {
}

This is all the life-cycle hooks we get for our module, the Module life-cycle hooks are general for all modules, while the Server and Client life-cycle hooks are specific for Game modules.

The primary difference between the init and the on callbacks is that e.g. initServer will only be called once, whereas onCreateGameServer will be called everytime a server is started.

That is actually the basis of creating a module, the next thing we will look at is how to create a specific gamemode and tie it into a level.