BYOND extools

External tools for BYOND. Used to fiddle with the game engine's internals.

Isn't there a project just like this already?

Most of development of Lunar-Dreamland has shifted from Lua to C++. I got tired of having to interface between them, so I decided to go with the latter.

What can I do with it?

Here are the modules currently available (not counting the core). Scroll to the bottom to see install instructions.

TFFI

Threaded FFI for BYOND. Automagically threads off all DLL calls and prevents them from locking up the game until they return. You may use a Promise datum, pass a callback or simply sleep until the call returns.

Calls the do_work function from sample.dll with 3 arguments. The proc sleeps until do_work returns.

var/result = call_wait("sample.dll", "do_work", "arg1", "arg2", "arg3")

Calls do_work with 1 argument. Returns a promise object. Runs some other code before calling P.resolve() to obtain the result.

var/datum/promise/P = call_async("sample.dll", "do_work", "arg1")
... do something else ...
var/result = P.resolve()

Calls do_work with 2 arguments. The callback is invoked with the result as the single argument. Execution resumes immediately.

/proc/print_result(result)
	world << result

call_cb("sample.dll", "do_work", /proc/print_result, "arg1", "arg2")

What will I be able to do with this?

These modules are planned to be included in the future.

Disasm: Disassembles procs into bytecode, mostly for use by other modules.
Debug server: For use with debugging; Manages breakpoints, sends and receives data from debuggers.
Hotpatch server: Receives compiled bytecode (eg. from the VSCode extension) and patches it in for live code replacement.
Maptick: Measures time taken by BYOND's SendMaps() function and makes it accessible from DM code, helping reduce lag spikes from not leaving enough processing time.
Lua: Allows writing lua scripts that replace builtin procs. Mostly for messing about.

I want to use this!