Unified Event System

These things that exist or are planned all use some event-like constructs:

• the plugin system
• connections (i.e. buttons and gates)
• the callbacks from common to server
• the proposed refactoring to have “method-like” function pointers for objects and/or object types.

All of those things could be set up to use a unified event/callback system, which would:

• benefit plugins by making it more flexible
• get rid of ugly stub hacks
• reduce repeated effort on the “method-like” system for objects.

• Event hooks however can be: global, per-map, per-arch, and per-object.
  • All events can be hooked as a global event
  • Events pertaining to a map or an object in a map can be hooked per-map
  • Events pertaining to objects can be hooked as per-arch or per-object
  • This essentially means, everything that can be hooked per-object or per-arch, can be hooked per-map, and everything that can be hooked per-map can be hooked globally.

• Event hooks can be given priority, with 0 reserved for core server handling of the event. Priority stored in an SINT8, so it can range from -127 to 127, and negative means it happens first. This allows useful things such as setting hooks to run after a player is teleported, or before.

• The return type of calling an event depends on the event, and some events don't return a value; events act as callbacks of sorts, however multiple callbacks can be assigned to an event.

• For events that return a value, hooks may or may not return a value. Hooks can be set to active or passive, active ones have a chance of returning a value whereas passive will not. When an active hook returns a value, active hooks of lower priority will not be run, though passive ones still will be.
  • This is to in principal allow hooks that may override the default return of a callback, while also allowing passive hooks to still run both before and after.

• Events with no return value only allow passive hooks

• For events without return values, hooks may at runtime opt to force priority 0 (default server internal) or lower, not to run.
  • This is to allow hooks for events without return values, to stop default server code from running. This achieves the same purpose as only the first active event that returns a value, running for events that return a value.

• Though I wrote the original proposal, I am somewhat concerned that the proposed logic for active/passive hooks and when not to run other hooks is over-engineered, however I cannot think of another method to achieve the same usefulness which is simpler. Does anyone have any suggestions? — Alex Schultz 2006/09/24 00:20

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