Many of you are probably familiar with the http://www.cipscis.com/fallout/utilities/validator.aspx that I wrote for Fallout 3, which automatically formats scripts and reports errors and warnings that the GECK may miss. Over the last 5 months or so, I haven't done any work on it, but now that New Vegas has been released and I'm once again active in the modding community I'd like to start working on it again.

Speaking of the release of New Vegas, I've noticed that the validator's traffic has ridden suddenly and extremely since its release. For example, the validator had 69 unique pageviews in the week of the 10th of October (the week prior to New Vegas' release), and over the last 24 hours alone there has been nearly as much traffic as in that entire week. In the week just finished, there has been over 450% more traffic than in the week prior to New Vegas' release. The way I see it, that means it's about time I added New Vegas support to the validator.

I've just finished setting up rudimentary support for New Vegas on the development version of the validator, allowing the user to specify which game they're using, although currently the New Vegas blocktype and function dictionaries are both direct copies of the equivalent Fallout 3 dictionaries (the NVSE function dictionary is also a copy of the FOSE function dictionary). In the past, I've had a few friends in the modding community agree to help me in populating the Fallout 3 function dictionaries, and ideally I'd like a bit of help in creating the New Vegas function dictionary.

In order to make it as easy as possible for anyone who wants to help, I've set up a http://code.google.com/p/fallout-script-validator/ to make it easier to merge changes with anyone who wants to help. I've also written some rudimentary documentation on how function definitions may be written, which is available on that site, and the entire dictionary is also available as an example. If anyone is interested in helping out, please let me know.

In the meantime, I'll be slowly updating the New Vegas function dictionary as best I can, and fix any bugs that I find in the validation code. If you have any bug reports or feature requests, please let me know here.

Cipscis

heh!!!!!!

If you kept any of the form data, I bet you'd see some interesting stuff.

Wonder what you'da thought of some of the FOOK/Phalanx code I ran through it. whew.

There's nothing like a missing endif in code that's got like 100 of them to um, make your day, yeah.

Thanks for this I used your validator several times last week.

Cipscis, what does SIFH mean? Like in an NPC dialogue result script:

SIFH 0

"SetIgnoreFriendlyHits"

It seems to be undocumented on the GECK Wiki, unfortunately, but here's its documentation on the CS Wiki - http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/SetIgnoreFriendlyHits

Cipscis

EDIT:

Both "SetIgnoreFriendlyHits" and "SIFH" are currently recognised as functions by the validator, but due to their lack of documentation on the GECK Wiki they haven't been documented beyond that inclusion. If you can confirm that the documentation on the CS Wiki is still accurate in New Vegas, I'll update the GECK Wiki and the validator's dictionary.

Cipscis

I cannot vouch for it working exactly the same in NV, because, on these followers, I can shoot them for more than 3 hits out of combat and they don't aggro on me. I cannot say what is responsible for it, I just know that its happening.

I used it on the baby deathclaw after it aggro'ed on me after one accidental hit. Haven't had a problem since.

.... oops?????

but. I coulda swore I tested that.

sigh alright I have to patch my [censored] for that, now.

I think.... that was before I downloaded the latest version yesterday from the Nexus, though.

Thank you, Cipscis! Your validator is still one of my most frequented bookmarks.

Just updated the validator. The dictionary still hasn't seen any major changes to support New Vegas, but the UI has been extended so that you can specify which game the script is intended for (currently the New Vegas dictionary is equivalent to the Fallout 3 dictionary without any FOSE functions).

Also, the effects of hiding errors and warnings via the button at the bottom of the page (now a toggle button) will persist if you make changes to the script, and any warnings or errors will now animate prettily into position when hovered over thanks to jQuery.

I've also upgraded the validator's ability to report bugs - if there is a JavaScript error it will be reported alongside a link inviting you to report the bug on the Google Code hosting page, as opposed to simply stopping. This won't prevent the validator from becoming unresponsive for whatever reason (there is at least one scenario at the moment in which this can happen) but hopefully that will be relatively rare. If you use Google Chrome then it should also be no big deal.

Cipscis

I just finished a new and exciting (if I may say so myself) update to the validator. You can now hover the cursor over functions to view their documentation, as it is stored in the validator's function dictionary. You can also turn them off via a new option in the UI if they get in the way at all.

I didn't spend much time on their actual appearance, and any suggestions on improving it would be appreciated.

Due to an annoying bug in the rendering engine used by Chrome and Safari, tooltips for script extender functions will have their entire content underlined, whereas only the function name should be underlined. Aside from that minor issue, I don't think there are any other bugs.

Cipscis

EDIT:

Just fixed a bug where undocumented functions would break the validator when it tried to generate tooltips for them.

Cipscis