What is your development workflow?

[sidereal6]

What I mean by "workflow" is like, what steps do you take in developing and testing a script? The way I go about it seems very convoluted and slow.

 

I'm playing around with Wicked AI and what I have to keep doing is this:

 

1. - disconnect and quit Arma
2. - stop the server (I keep a remote desktop session open to it)
3. - check RPT file if needed (although I have it tailed in another window)
4. - make a change to a script (I use sublime text to get syntax highlighting)
5. - save script, click batch file to pack PBO and copy to addons dir (I realize I could automate that in sublime text)
6. - back to remote desktop. Start server. wait.
7. - start arma. wait. wait. @$%# wait.
8. - see that I've done something wrong. Return to step 1.

 

I bet there's some super fast in-game editing that I don't know about, right?

[Guest]

I have got the Server RPT kinda allways open and and in DayZ Launcher Settings i selected "Show Script Errors". So if anything is not working, i can immediately see why and solve it (most times).

 

I also like adding Debug Points to completely new scripts, just in case it's not working as expected. So i just add "diag_log "breakpoint 1";" or something simular to the file.

[Gr8]

I do all my edits at my PC, push it in github > Run a batch script that takes the script, packs it, throws it in the server and starts it > Start up the server > Join

 

 

The key is to never closing the game, and just quit the mission (if possible ofc) which boosts the loading time next time you join.

[raymix]

MP: disable signature verify and play with code using debug console on a live local server.

SP:  notepad++, save script, reload editor mission... takes about a second on SSD and VR map.

[Halvhjearne]

just fyi, you can execute any script locally from your arma 2 oa folder and infistar antihack has a build in debug console in a2 you can open with shift + tild then execute any code you like, server side, globally or locally.

 

... if you do not have infistar antihack, i did see a script somewhere that can open a debug console and execute code for you locally.

 

just remeber that you cannot suspend in the console, so any sleep or waituntil or whatever has to be spawn'ed or run from script and running code on the server live can cause crashes in some cases (even for errorfree code).

[SchwEde]

holy sh***
that one is a real blessing for testing.
Will try this out. If this really works that simple that would be awesome :D

 

EDIT: 

I would kiss you for this info! THanks for this!!!

[sidereal6]

Just found this:  Epoch Admin Tools

 

Haven't tried it out yet but it looks very helpful.

[axeman]

Oh, how many hours I have lost to restarting arma2 servers for testing :) get a console as arma 3 has, there are some good ones out there. 

[raymix]

Oh, how many hours I have lost to restarting arma2 servers for testing :) get a console as arma 3 has, there are some good ones out there. 

pretty much a must ^

 

i can suggest my favorite for A2:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=5773

[sidereal6]

Run a batch script that takes the script, packs it, throws it in the server and starts it 

 

Uh, would you care to share that? That sounds pretty cool.

 

You have to convert .CPP files to .BIN too, right? There's a command line tool that does that and packs the PBO?

[raymix]

binpbo or cpbo can do that from cmd. I prefer pboProject for binarizing and pbomanager for quick packaging for testing. There is absolutely no need to binarize unless you aim for release and performance, so no - you don't have to convert.