This means that in most cases the Lua code will point to this virtual filesystem rather than your actual filesystem on your computer.

zip files, whose inner file structure is being treated as a virtualised filesystem of some sort. Zoo Tycoon 2's Lua interpreter is quite limited in its abilities, for example you can't write to a file using the io library.Īnother unique property of Zoo Tycoon 2 is that its content is loaded in with. index corresponds to the subject of the task, is the target and is the object. The argument that it receives is passed by the task itself. The entrypoint function accepts a parameter which is a table type. function is the name of the function that will be executed first when the task fires. file should contain the path to the lua file you want to use, this is relative to the root of the virtualised z2f folder structure. The following attributes of the BFBehScript are used to define which function should be called: file and function. You can write your own exception catcher, or you can use a library for this, such as ArluqTools.Įxample exception catcher in a try-catch-like pattern: The game doesn't really show you any exceptions, this can be somewhat added into the game by catching the exceptions and displaying it somewhere in the game, the Zoo Messages panel is a popular choice for this. Other Lua functions which should do similar behaviour, such as require and loadfile do not appear to work properly. This include function is not a standard Lua function, but is made by Blue Fang for data importing. The following example shows an include of a file from Zoo Tycoon 2's official libraries. Like with other files, the files you include don't have to be located inside the same. Importing/using/including other Lua files works by using the path from the mod root directory. Writing Lua can be done with a Text editor. It is possible to load another Lua installation as demonstrated by The Eater's zoobreak. ZT2Lua doesn't have some libraries which are normally included in Lua, some actions, such as executing programs from Lua and writing to files, may not be possible out of the box. It is noticeably more difficult to find support for this version than newer versions, such as Lua 5.1 and 5.2. Zoo Tycoon 2 uses Lua 5.0.2, which is a version so old the Lua website doesn't provide downloads for this version anymore. Summjoke published an Enhanced Panel mod which contained an advanced tag filter in 2022. In 2020 Thom created the Cheat Codes mod, which served as a base for other Lua mods.Ī library, ArluqTools, was created in 2021 by ZtModArchive, based on code samples from the Cheat Codes mod and its derivatives. A copy of the decompiled code can be found on GitHub. In 2019 Harlequinz Eg0 and HENDRIX decompiled large parts of Zoo Tycoon 2's Lua code, paving the way for mods including Lua scripts.

3.1 Including other scripts in your script.

Zoo tycoon 1 modding