Debugging.md

Debugging Lua Code

Unity Methods

This is a tough one, since the lua you're making is very Homebrew specific (in most cases), it can be rather tough to debug values..

Thankfully, we supply everyone with a Console (´´home key`` to toggle it on/off), which will log each Debug message you put in.

It's fairly easy to send specific kind of logs using the default Unity "Debug" class

Debug.Log("This is a regular log")
Debug.LogWarning("This is a warning")
Debug.LogError("This is an error")

this will result in these messages in your console.

this might not be the handiest way for debugging though, as it requires you to be outside of a vehicle to toggle on/off.

The other way you can debug is via local chat messages!

Chat Debugger

This is rather simple to implement, first we need to get the chat, then call a function to send a message.

Keep in mind this is only locally, so don't try spamming the chat, it won't do anything for other players.

self.chat = GameObject.FindObjectOfType("HBChat")
self.debug = function(msg) self.chat:AddMessage("[DEBUG]",msg) end

Then we can call it as such:

if Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.P) then
  self.debug("You pressed P!")
end

and it will look something like this

As you can probably tell, this can be fairly handy in a lot of situations.

You can even add custom color coding to it if you want, let's change our original setup, and do that now.

self.chat = GameObject.FindObjectOfType("HBChat")
self.log      = function(msg) self.chat:AddMessage("[DEBUG]",msg, "ffffff") end
self.error    = function(msg) self.chat:AddMessage("[DEBUG]",msg, "cc0000") end
self.warning  = function(msg) self.chat:AddMessage("[DEBUG]",msg, "ffff00") end

this makes it a bit easier to quickly see if it's an error, warning, or a regular log.

We can also just change our 'name' value ([DEBUG]) to specify if it's a log, error, or warning, you could even colorize them quite easily!

self.error    = function(msg) self.chat:AddMessage("<color=#cc0000>[DEBUG]</color>",msg) end

which will result in the name being red

Seperate Console window

Alternatively, you can also open up a custom instance of the Console we supply, and only place debug messages of your own design in there. This is a bit more complex, but not too hard to figure out.

First we'll need to make a new Console, this is fairly straightforward

  self.console = HBConsoleManager.Create(Application.streamingAssetsPath .. "/HBConsole.exe", "Custom console yo!", 2000)

the HBConsoleManager.Create function takes a couple of argument, not all are needed though.

HBConsole.Create(string exePath, string consoleTitle = "Homebrew Console", int port = 1989, int consoleWidth = 255, int bufferSize = 1024, string prefix = ">>")

The ones that definately need to change, is the port. We also specify a custom title, so it's a bit easier to differentiate between our own console, and the one embeded in Homebrew.

Next you'll need to hook up the events, and the destruction of your console.

function con:Start()
  self.console = HBConsoleManager.Create(Application.streamingAssetsPath .. "/HBConsole.exe", "Custom console", 2000)
  self.console.OnRead = self.onConsoleRead
  self.console.OnConnect = self.onConsoleConnect
  self.console:OpenConsole()
end
self.onConsoleRead = function(s)
  self.console:WriteLine("you wrote " .. s .. " in the console.")
end

self.onConsoleConnect = function()
  self.console:WriteLine("Your Console connected succesfully!")
end

function con:OnDestroy()
  self.console:KillConsole()
end

As you can see, we hook up console.OnRead and console.OnConnect, OnRead gets called when the user inputs anything in the console, and presses enter. OnConnect gets called when the console has started succesfully.

Then we call console:OpenConsole() to open up the console, and we can log what-ever we want in there using console:WriteLine(message), the console also accepts color input (using html tags, like so <color=#FF0000>this is red</color>), so you can slightly modify the functions we made for the getting the chat colors working, for our custom console.

self.log      = function(msg) self.console:WriteLine(string.format("<color=#ffffff>[DEBUG]</color> %s", msg)) end
self.error    = function(msg) self.console:WriteLine(string.format("<color=#ff0000>[DEBUG]</color> %s", msg)) end
self.warning  = function(msg) self.console:WriteLine(string.format("<color=#FFD700>[DEBUG]</color> %s", msg)) end

I think that's enough for now about regular text debugging.

TODO

Add visual debugging, aka drawing cubes/circles/squares on screen, along with GUI elements for real-time visual debugging