When a property is declared, how is it initialized? Specifically for reference types, a lot of times I'll see a script has something like:

Keyword Property SomeThingHere auto

RefCollectionAlias Property SomeDudesHere auto mandatory

and then later in a function it's just used, and I can't find where it's initially set.

SomeDudesHere.GetCount() ; why is this not a null reference?

They're supposed to be initialised in the Creation Kit. When the script is attached to an object (and so an instance of the script created) that instance of the script can have values set on it's properties via fields associated with the object reference in the CK.

I presume that for Fallout 4 people are setting up those property initial values using FO4Edit, by creating/modifying appropriate records.

Ah, so the engine automatically matches record values to script properties by name? Many things suddenly make sense. Thank you.

Well, I've never looked to see how the engine sorts the association out. For all I know the CK associates the values with the script instance properties by memory offset from reference address

But if in FO4Edit it looks like it's by name, then I guess you're right

Rather inefficient way of doing it though, I'd have thought

No, script properties are set manually and stored in records in VMAD subrecord.

Gotcha. I see it, now, all the matching names are VMAD.Script.Property entries.

xEdit still doesn't allow you much freedom to modify the VMAD subrecord, so if you need a VMAD subrecord with some number of properties to work with a script you've written, you have to use the wbCopyElementToFile and wbCopyElementToRecord functions to copy a VMAD subrecord from another record to the record you're working on. What I did was write that xEdit script in addition to writing another script that outputs the metadata for each VMAD subrecord in the ESM, so if I need a VMAD subrecord that has 1 script and 23 properties, I can just search my spreadsheet for the Form ID and then use that Form ID to copy the VMAD subrecord to my working record.

Oh, is this you?

https://github.com/fireundubh/xedit-scripts

Can I convince you to post those scripts to that repo? I haven't gotten that far, yet, but that's ultimately where I'm trying to go. Seeing if I can sneak a custom script into the game before the CK drops, because that seems fun.

Posted to the all folder. Instructions in the main readme.

Thanks! Grabbed it and the dubhFunctions.pas dependency. I haven't touched Pascal since, uh, 1994. Maybe time to refresh.

You need mteFunctions, too, but you might already have that.

Got it, thanks.

Is there a secret place all of you guys hang out to talk about scripting, xEdit, best practices, and etc...? I want to learn the secret handshake. Never modded TES games, before, so I'm basically learning by reverse-engineering stuff, but I feel like there's a decade of knowledge I'm missing.

I learned Delphi through trial and error with some assistance from Zilav.

I learned xEdit mostly from http://www.creationkit.com/TES5Edit_Scripting_Functions and, recently, from helping Zilav, hlp, and Sharlikran decode the FO4 plugin format.

Zilav, Mator, and I have written a ton of xEdit scripts, so you can put them all in one place and use https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack to search through them for examples of how things work.

The only "secret place" I frequent is Gibbed's IRC channel where I'm the only one who uses Delphi.

So that's why Delphi is top 12 language right now and will soon return into top 10, keep it up

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html