Global shared RuntimeVar storage?

[BrodyB]

Something I'm trying to figure out how to implement is a way to have multiple Cradle stories get/set StoryVars from a shared location. This way, Cradle stories can share information with one another, or I can have scripts in my Unity scene listening to variables that a number of stories are affecting.

My initial thought is to have a singleton GlobalRuntimeVars class and to add <<setGlobal $variable = "something">> type setter/getter commands to access those shared variables.

So my question is: is adding those getter/setter macros easy to pry in with the current code base and where would I do that? Or is there a simpler way to go about this?

Thanks!

[daterre]

A macro could work but unfortunately not as natively as yoursetGlobal example. Something like this:
<<setGlobal "someVar" "something">>
<<getGlobal "someVar">>

The easiest way to implement this would be via runtime macros:

[RuntimeMacro]
public void setGlobal(string globalVarName, StoryVar value)
{
	// Some static class or singleton
	GlobalVariables[globalVarName] = value;
}

[RuntimeMacro]
public StoryVar getGlobal(string globalVarName)
{
	return GlobalVariables[globalVarName];
}

Because you're using SugarCube, which doesn't have the concept of nesting macros, you'd probably need to use GlobalVariables directly if you need it in an expression, e.g.:

<<print "You have " + GlobalVariables["someVar"]>>

A better option would be to make a sync script that listens for standard variables' value changes and propagates them to other stories. You could do this in an update loop and compare each variable in Story.Vars to a list you saved in the previous frame (a bit tedious).

Actually, I might add an event to the Story object, sort of like this: Story.OnVariableChanged(Story story, string varName, StoryVar newValue, StoryVar previousValue). You could then register a single handler for all your stories and propagate the value to all of them.

[BrodyB]

Ah, yeah. I think I was moving away from that because I didn't think runtime macros received StoryVars, but rather what they cast down to? I'll give it a shot.

Thanks!