November 2008
Intermediate to advanced
512 pages
12h 6m
English
Content preview from Coding4Fun
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Before We Get Started
This chapter assumes that you're a .NET (Visual Basic or C#) developer who plays World of Warcraft, and maybe you've used Warcraft addons, but you've never written your own. There are many similar concepts that apply to both building Warcraft addons and building .NET applications, as you can see in Table 3-1.
Table 3-1. High-level comparison of Warcraft and .NET programming models
|
CATEGORY |
WARCRAFT ADDONS |
.NET |
|---|---|---|
|
Application files and resources |
Table of Contents (.toc) |
Assembly manifest file |
|
Application metadata (name, author, version) |
Table of Contents |
AssemblyInfo |
|
UI |
FrameXML markup and widgets |
XAML markup and controls |
|
Code |
Lua |
VB/C# |
|
Programming model |
Event-based |
Event-based |
|
Libraries |
WoW Function APIs, third-party libraries |
.NET Framework, third-party libraries |
|
Storage |
SavedVariables |
Isolated storage/filesystem |
|
Referencing current object |
Self |
Me (VB); this (C#) |
|
Tools |
AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft |
Visual Studio Express Editions |
A Quick Tour of the Lua Programming Language
There are many nuances to the Lua programming language, but the following is a quick glance at its features. For a full reference on the Lua programming language, you can download the language reference from http://www.lua.org/manual/.
Note
World of Warcraft uses a slightly modified version of the Lua 5.1 runtime that adds some helper functions and removes operating system and file I/O functions.
Lua types
Lua defines five basic types: a Boolean (true/false), a number, ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.