Definitions for various words used throughout CraftStudio
The CraftStudio server is a piece of software that you can run on a computer to serve projects. When you start CraftStudio, a server for your own projects will automatically start on your local machine (unless you disable the auto-start in the Settings).
When you want to make a new game, you create a new project on a server. A project has, among other things, a name, description, type (game or movie), whiteboard, members and assets.
Assets are models (characters / objects made of blocks), animations, maps, block sets, scenes, scripts, sounds or fonts.
A scene is a type of asset that contains a tree of game objects. Each game object has one or more components:
The Transform component is found on all game objects and cannot be removed. It allows them to be located in space through position, orientation and scale.
Various other game object components are available: Camera (for defining a view point from which the game will render something), Model / Map / Text Renderers, Scripted Behaviors, Physics and Network Sync.
A variable is a jar (containing a value) with a label (the variable’s name). The variable’s name can be made of any letters of the alphabet or digit but can’t contain any spaces.
A global variable is a variable initialized at the root of a script (that is to say, outside any function or block) like so: variableName = value. Such a variable is shared and can be accessed by all scripts.
A local variable is a variable initialized with local variableName = value. Its lifetime is limited to the inside of the enclosing block (function, condition, loop, etc.) and it ceases to exist as soon as the block ends. You can define a variable as local at the root of a script, in which case it will be only accessible to this particular script.
A property can be added to an object of type table:
myTable = {}
myTable.someProperty = value
In script functions whose name is prefixed by Behavior:, the Scripted Behavior component currently being executed is made accessible to you as a variable named self and it’s possible to add properties on it. Since each Scripted Behavior component is unique, this allows you to make reusable scripts for multiple objects.
For instance, one could add a property self.health to a scripted behavior used by all enemies in a game, and each of the enemies would then have their own independent health value.