NWScript Editor AD 2017

Valgav

There's no discussion about script editor, but should be, so feel free to add some ideas.

My wishlist contains some features of modern IDE's that I wish someday will show for nwn.

Simple things:
- Autocompleting of code is must have,
- Show every occurrence and type of variable when highlighted
- Brackets that are not nightmare, so supporting both: highlighting and autocompleting of pairs.

Hard one:
- external console executor of code to fast testing without starting game every time
- ... with nwnx support because reseting of server is even more annoying

Probably will stay in realm of my dreams:
- debugger for external executor for better productivity without being forced to write everything to text in console/chat

ZoltanTheRed

I have to agree with this one. I think it would also be nice to have a better system for testing your scripts than going in game every time you need to test something. Something the along the lines of simulation or unit tests. I understand it's a tall order to ask, but it'd be cool to see this added and it would considerably speed up development for module creators.

prwo

I'd also suggest for the toolset to be more open to other IDEs (e.g. Eclipse) and editors. Let the community do the heavy lifting of providing the IDE (at least for script editing).

Currently one of the major stumbling blocks to this is that the script compiler is integrated into the Toolset itself. If it were an own executable with a commandline interface the compiling process could be outsourced to tools that are actually made for this.

Furthermore the Toolset itself shour provide preferences to define the compiler commandline and maybe pre- and post processors. Any modern IDE has this.

I think both could be achieved rather easily and could unlock vast potential for improvement.

FinalStand

> Simple things:

I'd love to see all of these. I would also add "auto code format" (ie, "beautifier" that fixes your line breaks, tabs, etc).

One thing someone else suggested, is allowing an external editor. I think that would be a nice option and won't take as much development work. If we could use Notepad++, Visual Code or vim, etc as the editor, I think that would win-win.

Community could build plugins for editor, as long as, like you said, we had enough information exported from toolset and external tools.

> Hard one:

> - external console executor of code to fast testing without starting game every time

I forgot which game did this, but with their moding tools you could have toolset and game both open. Game would open in special debug/dev mode. You could save in toolset and then alt-tab into game and F5 to reload.

But I agree. We need better feedback loop or developing and testing. I don't care how it's done, but i think everyone agrees it's currently a cumbersome and slow environment to work in.