LSL Wiki Mirror 7-7-7 : LSL101StatesAndEvents

States And Events

Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.

- Niccoll? Machiavelli

In LSL, we desire to found a state and give it events! Or, better yet, several states -- each corresponding to a stage in the behavior that we want to script.

Arrgh, Why Can't I Just Start Coding?

Indeed, why bother with architecture at all? Just grab a lot of lumber and nails and have at it, until you get tired, or run out of lumber or nails. But if you work with LSL's nature instead of against it, you'll write better scripts and have more fun doing it.

LSL Architecture

An LSL script consists of:

Optionally, global variables and functions. (But you aren't supposed to know about these yet!)
At least one state, named default. Optionally, additional states.
Optionally, some events within each state.

If you have programmed before, you are probably familiar with flow charts, a graphical tool for designing programs in other languages. (If you aren't, so much the better; you won't be burdened with preconceptions!) Anyway, a useful graphical equivalent to an LSL script is a matrix of states and events.

Let's take the Hello, Avatar! script as an example, and see what it looks like as a matrix:

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSay(0, "Hello, Avatar!");
    }

    touch_start(integer total_number)
    {
        llSay(0, "Touched.");
    }
}

Event	default
state_entry	Say Hello, avatar
touch_start	Say Touched.

The leftmost column lists events; states (this script just has one state) are listed in the top row. Where events and states intersect, we can write brief notes about what the event does in this state.

Talk about belaboring the obvious! But remember, this script does practically nothing; it just serves as a template for the script you want to write. Suppose you want the same event to be handled in more than one way, depending on some condition? You could, of course, test for the condition inside the event and branch to different sections of code. But it's easier to create a state for every variation of the condition (or anyway, it would be easier in a non-trivial example).

Two States, What A Thought!

Here's an example; the Tickle Box. The first time you touch it, it asks you to touch it again. The next time you touch it, it thanks you. The Tickle Box matrix looks like this:

Event	default	tickled
touch_start	Say Now, touch me again. Enter state tickled	Say Thank you! That felt good. Enter state default

What techniques do we need to write the Tickle Box script that we didn't already see in Hello, Avatar?

A way to define a second state
A way to move from one state to another

How To Define More States

Now here is a place where what has up until now been a boringly symmetrical language shows some character.

If you define any state other than default, you need to prefix it with the word state or you'll get an error.
But if you prefix default with state, you'll get an error.

Can you say Works as designed?

Moving right along, here is the code to define the tickled state:

state tickled
{
...
}

By the way, putting your terminating bracket in right away like this, and inserting the code that goes between the brackets later, is a good habit. It keeps your brackets-in and brackets-out balanced. Big time saver here! You're very welcome.

How To Move From One State To Another

Inside an appropriate event in state #1, use the state command to enter state #2. For example:

// snip
state tickled;
// snip

How To Search This Wiki

To write your own script, you'll need to know how to find events, commands, etc. that you don't already know. In the bottom left corner of any page of this wiki, you'll see a text box labeled "

only search the lslwm ". To do a search, type a word (such as the name of a command) into the search box and push <Enter> .

Like most programming manuals, searching this wiki works best if you already know the name of the thing you want to use and you just need to check some details about how to use it. Until you get a feel for the language, you may find yourself groping around for a word that gets useful results. We'll try to help by giving you good words! Also ...

Try guessing the name of the command (but, unfortunately, searching on <say>, <print> and <display> didn't lead me to the article on llSay!)
If you know a similar or related command, search on it; you will often find a list of similar commands
If you're looking for a function, try prefixing your search word with <ll> and capitalizing it -- for example, llSay. There are so many Linden functions that you're likely to hit on one of them this way.

The Tickle Box Challenge

I'm sorry, did you think you would find the whole Tickle Box script down here? Ha-ha, you're so silly. That's your assignment! Get in-world, create a box, and create the script in it that we've been talking about.

In the Contents tab, create a new script. You'll get a "Hello, Avatar!" template script.
Edit it, copying the parts you can use more than once and erasing the parts you don't need.

To make this challenge more interesting (and practice searching this wiki),

Do the talking parts with a function other than llSay.
Enter state default from state tickled by a means other than the state command. (Hint; what state does a script enter when you reset it?)

When you're done (or ready for help), here is the solution. No peeking!

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