Your First Script

HomeIngame ScriptingFirst Script

Let’s start simple. Let’s say you have a light, and you want to turn it off and on. Sure, you can add that to any old toolbarm but it’s one of the easiest things you can script. If you want to test this out, here is a finished blueprint with the script in place and ready to go.

Since it’s somewhat… cumbersome… to read scripts in the game’s internal editor, let's look at the script here. Comments are removed for brevity.

public void Main() 
{
    IMyInteriorLight light;

    light = GridTerminalSystem.GetBlockWithName("That Important Light") as IMyInteriorLight;
    if (light == null) 
    {
        Echo("Oh my! I couldn't find that block...");
        return;
    }

    light.Enabled = !light.Enabled;
    Echo("I have toggled the button!");
}

So let’s explain what is happening here.

First I need to define a variable to contain a reference to the light I want to change.

IMyInteriorLight light;

Then I must query the grid terminal system for the specific block I’m after. I do this by requesting it by name. Be aware that this name must be exact. Even if your query differs by a space, the system will not find your block.

light = GridTerminalSystem.GetBlockWithName("That Important Light") as IMyInteriorLight;

The first part, GridTerminalSystem.GetBlockWithName("That Important Light") will find the first block on the build that has the name That Important Light. It does not care what type of block that is. If you rename the light to something else, and rename, let’s say the reactor, to That Important Light, the method will return that block instead. So to remedy that, we add a conditional cast as IMyInteriorLight which will test if the block is of that particular type, and return it only if it is. If the type does not match, it will return null. So in practice that means that there are two scenarios where the query above will not return a block: Either because there is no block with that name on your build, or because the block with that name does not have this particular type. This means that we should check if the block has been retrieved:

if (light == null) 
{
    // Output some text to the programmable block's details section:
    Echo("Oh my! I couldn't find that block...");
    // Just quit, we can't do anything else here.
    return;
}

You can read more about Echo here.

Ok, so we have a block, and we know it’s a light. So all we have to do now, is to toggle it.

light.Enabled = !light.Enabled;
Echo("I have toggled the button!");

What we are doing here is to set the light’s Enabled state (its on/off button, essentially) to the opposite (as defined by the !) as its current value. This will effectively toggle the button on and off. We’re done! Press Check code, then Remember & Exit, and then the Run button, to see what happens (you may need to wait a second or so for the light to catch up to the change).

That will conclude the first introduction. Keep in mind, you can always ask questions at Keen’s official Discord and the #programming-in-game channel.

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This tutorial was adapted from the original on Malware's MDK wiki, by the author.