Tutorial QSP Differences Between Normal And Dynamic Variables

[Greyfrias]

Hello, I've been working in a QSP game for the last month or so and now that I have at least the start of the story completed I started working on the coding part, which is the one that scare me the most, and I've noticed different approaches in handling the variables of your characters.

For example, I was originally going to use normal variables to determine the affinity of your character with the others, or their level of corruption, but then I was looking at the code of "Son of a Bitch" and I saw that it used dynamic coding. I tried to learn from the translated wiki but I couldn't understand the benefits of using this dynamic variables. And that's why I'm here, after a lot of lurking here, writing a post to ask if any of you know the advantages and disadvantages that dynamic code in QSP holds compared to normal one.

Spoiler: Code examples

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Thank you a lot for your time and excuse me for any mistakes I've made writing the post because english is not my first language and I'm a bit rusty writing in it.

 

[captainJugs]

I've never used QSP but seems like what your asking is why would you use arrays.

A variable can hold some data.
While an array can hold multiple variables.
And there a lots of different types of them - lists, maps etc

Anyway - while using variables is fine, it can get out of control if you had lots of them.
for example, you might be fine if you only had 5 characters with different data. what about 20 characters? or even 100s?
This is where an array should be used.

 

[TCMS]

I think it's mostly the coders preferences in these cases. But yeah there's probably a performance side of things that needs to be looked at, but I have no clue about that when it comes to qsp (or coding in general)

 

[geriatre]

Son of a bitch is not a good coding example.

I spend quite some time hacking the source when there's a major update to remove some of the grind, add cheats, simplify event triggers, etc., and it's nasty.

On topic :
You could make a function called "create_character" that returns a map with a predefined format, like

{
    { "Name", "Mike" }
    { "Location", "Bathroom" }
    { "Strength", 10 }
}

And then put that map in the dynamic map of characters, with the key "Player character", so if you want to have a fighting mini-game and compare each character's strength to determine the winner, you can do :

Character["Player character"]["Strength"] > Character["Asshole bully"]["Strength"]

Instead of having

Player_character_name = "mike"
Player_character_location = "Bathroom"
Player_character_strength = 10
Assholebully_name = "Eric"
Assholebully_location = "Bathroom"
Assholebully_strength = 8

Assholebully_strength > Player_character_strength

And then if you have 20 characters who can fight each other ... it's a nightmare.
Smart use of data structures can save you a LOT of time.