DWAINE..zards.

[Clarks]

Termos/DWAINE has nothing really multilayered or complex. It's just a bunch of special frequencies that you need to pinpoint to receive command packets. You can build more complex "programs" using keelin's electronics machines than you ever could with dwaine scripting.
Frequency hunting is dumb, and there's no shortcut to find out some, like the doors freq. In case you chumps never noticed, some computers on the bridge have network card set to useful frequencies, and you can get the robuddy frequency by connecting straight to the radio.


Someone just needs to put some effort to update the wiki with all the systems you can control, and maybe put up the frequencies.
And yeah, the dwaine guide in game should probably be updgraded from the full wiki page from a copy of the dwaine inline help as it actually is.

[Paineframe]

TermOS/DWAINE are on the wired network, and have nothing to do with frequency hunting, which is a different network and system entirely. That demonstrates another aspect of the problem, though - even people that are in the know about some flavor of hacking often don't clearly distinguish between the four different systems (DWAINE, TermOS, ThinkDOS, and wireless signals) running and blending together on the station. Even the wiki article about TermOS treats it and DWAINE as the same thing, which makes it more confusing than it needs to be.

[Zamujasa]

It probably doesn't help that you can send packets from DWAINE, either (and yet wireless computers can't connect to the mainframe, apparently...)

guard_script has an example of piping

It apparently was removed in the rewrite, since it's just a basic "run prman with arguments" script now.

For every person spending their rounds in tech storage poking at DWAINE there are at least five sitting at the forums complaining about how difficult it is.

I've spent several rounds in Tech Storage poking at DWAINE, and even held a little tutorial session with a few folks last night to help teach them some of the more interesting usages, as well as spilling some beans on basic packet sniffing and such.

That doesn't change the fact that unless you're told, the chances of you finding out interesting frequencies (and how to interact with devices on them) is really, really slim. With Chemistry, it's at least sort of based on real chemicals, and you can start doing interesting stuff right from the start -- synthflesh is an amazingly useful healing chem and it's utterly trivial to make, and it's one of the most basic things you can do. DWAINE... well, not really anything of value you can do with it right away, until you really learn more advanced shit.

With packets and DWAINE, if you're off by even a little bit, ... well, you get nothing. There's no feedback other than "Error" (or often nothing at all), so it's impossible to even tell if you're on the right track.

[Zamujasa]

I spent a bit of time today writing up a bunch of bullshit about packets. Not pictured: Sending Murray in an infinite loop on LLJK #3 between the engine and escape.

[Lavastage]

I spent a bit of time today writing up a bunch of bullshit about packets. Not pictured: Sending Murray in an infinite loop on LLJK #3 between the engine and escape.

now this is what people needed.

[Marquesas]

In my absolutely unhumble opinion, it's fine as it is. The structure is completely logical (apart from the scripting language, which is a mess, but forget that I said this because IBM is likely to eat my babies for this), and you don't actually miss out massively by not knowing this stuff. Remember, most of us who know how to use it spent some serious time figuring it out; and it's much easier if you are familiar with the real world analogues, much like in chemistry. Try using this to do even the most basic actions on your computer for two weeks and it'll all be much, much clearer.

[AngriestIBM]

(apart from the scripting language, which is a mess, but forget that I said this because IBM is likely to eat my babies for this)

No, it totally is. It's only there because Dr Melon kept bugging me about it and I never really got back to making it Less Bad because of Real Life / Depression / I'm The Worst.
Also fun and useful characters like & and < > are problematic because byond really loves html and is maybe not the best when it comes to escaping them&amp;&amp;&amp;

[Zamujasa]

Found out that apparently you can't set teleporter coordinates with just packets. Boooo! Also a new telescience computer decided to not work when I hooked it up with a pad right next to it, despite everything being wired and on data terminals.



Anyway, added a bunch more terbonerd shit to the station network page. Great if you're set to arrest and need to avoid Beepsky. Not actually sure if you can start or stop his patrolling, I forgot to test that after finding summoning didn't work. :saddowns:

[Sundance]

Found out that apparently you can't set teleporter coordinates with just packets. Boooo! Also a new telescience computer decided to not work when I hooked it up with a pad right next to it, despite everything being wired and on data terminals.



Anyway, added a bunch more terbonerd shit to the station network page. Great if you're set to arrest and need to avoid Beepsky. Not actually sure if you can start or stop his patrolling, I forgot to test that after finding summoning didn't work. :saddowns:

This is brilliant and it's the exact type of insight that was needed to be shared for dwaine. Keep up the good work!

[Dabir]

Frequency 143.3 is plant pots. They're not reporting to anything in particular, it's an unfinished feature or something. Of course, Mechanics can kind of finish it, if they feel like it.

[Chips Ahoy]

Anyone have any cross pda-dwaine compatibility updates? For ex: does anyone know if it is possible to send a pda file to a dwaine terminal, and vice versa?

[Marquesas]

Executables are not cross-compatible at all. You can transfer PDA files to ThinkDOS systems via the ROM cart module, but can't run it and that's about it.

[Zamujasa]

I think he was looking more for a way to, say, have a DWAINE session via PDA, maybe. I know that'd certainly be a bit useful.

Really wish there was a list of shit DWAINE's scripting could do, unless what you see is literally all it can do. Shit like escaping |ns or ^s (though I guess a single | will turn into a ^ after an echo or something???).

I was hoping for a way to iterate over a variable, something like this:

Code:

i = 0
while i < 10
mkdir i
i = i + 1
end

...but it doesn't seem like that's possible (there's no "eval" or looping?). oh well!

[Dabir]

It's not listed in any documentation but there is an eval. Try 'help eval'. Also try 'help blah' for any linux shit you can think of cause it might just be there.

[Abinmorth]

haven't really figured out some of the basic stuff for dwaine
- is it possible to set variables in a script apart from the scripts start parameters?
- can you do math with variables?
- i think you can't use the classic for or while loops... but you should try recursion.... (it will actually run the script multiple times, but the script will break after some iterations because the stack will grow too big)
but yea... i haven't really found a way to run a script for a controlled number of iterations
also i wish it was possible to start a dwaine script via wifi, so you could link together the computers and the mechanic wifi components