Modding Help Method to get random String value

ok so since i had some time again ive dig a bit dipper and for some reason game resets value of storage.state and on wiki it says that it ll persists even when u ll shut down whole game...
i thought that i ll try in update to check if my animator state is same as (it should be) storage.state (this is bool value) and i've found out that game resets both of those and i can understand that it ll reset animator but why storage.state too? (Yes im mad and that's why this message may be a bit chaotic )

 

The thing about storage.state is it will persist(but reduced to a boolean if anything else was stored there), however you have to be careful about not re-initializing. Yet you need to initialize.

Since this is a boolean value, this will solve the issue.

Code:

storage.state = storage.state or false

if true, it will stay true and the right hand side of or won't be evaluated. if false or nil, the right hand side of or will be evaluated. Thus the value will maintain true and false, otherwise initializing to false. You can preserve other value types that way too, except that you don't want them initializing to false so change what's to the right of or into your desired default value.

 

Code:

function init()
  if storage.state == nil then storage.state = config.getParameter("defaultLightState", true) end
...

and every single time when im teleporting back to a planet i see that animator.animationState() is default (off) and that would be ok if my storage wouldn't reset it self too
I even removed uninit function as i had there

Code:

storage.state = nil

but that didn't helped at all

Code:

function update()
    object.say("storage.state = "..tostring(storage.state).." animator.animationState('fjukeboxState') = "..animator.animationState("fjukeboxState"))
end

this is for testing purpose only!!!

 

The animator state definitely won't stick. So set it during init based off of storage.state
This is code from Automatic Doors. I call this function in init but also when anything happens.

Code:

function updateAnimation(wasOpen)
  local aState = ""

  if (storage.state ~= wasOpen) then
    if storage.state then --door opening
      aState = storage.openingAnimation_stateName
      animator.playSound("open")
    else  --door closing/locking
      if storage.locked or storage.wireControlled then
        aState = storage.lockingAnimation_stateName
      else
        aState = "closing" --already vanilla supported transition state
      end
      animator.playSound("close")
    end
  else --door is not opening nor closing
    if storage.state then
      aState = "open"
    elseif storage.locked or storage.wireControlled then
      aState = storage.lockedAnimation_stateName
    else
      aState = "closed"
    end
  end

  animator.setAnimationState("doorState", aState)
end

Don't worry about things like storage.openingAnimation_stateName because those are set by JSON config or default to a string. For example "opening" is a state that transitions to "open" but your vanilla doors only have "open".

This example is probably more complex than you need. That function receives the former state of storage.state, and looks at the current state too. If it was false(door closed) and now true(door open) then the door should go to an "opening" or "open" state. If it was closed(storage.state == false), but now is locked, no opening or closing but rather switch to "locked" directly.

As for init and storage.state,

Code:

storage.state = storage.state or ((config.getParameter("defaultState", "closed") == "open") and not storage.locked)

I guess that's slightly more complicated than storage.state = storage.state or false.
Make sure no other function is altering storage.state that doesn't need to(because something changed). You probably want to tell the animator to stop playing in uninit, but don't change storage.state itself.

I should point out something else. When you teleport around, upon returning init will be called again. So set a value to indicate that it has ran before to avoid running most of the code again. But do let it set the animator states again to make sure they are correct. That is one area where a separate animator handling function will come in handy.