[ALittleLight]

One problem I'm having, when manually editing the code, is using Math functions. Ideally, I'd like to calculate the square root of an expression, but whenever I try to use Math functions I get the error "The Callee's type is MemberExpression which is not allowed".

Any advice?

[Adam13531]

Hey, so one thing to keep in mind is that BotLandScript is a subset of JavaScript. Member expressions (e.g. "entity.life") are only allowed in extremely narrow scenarios.

Second, all available functions are accessible by clicking the question mark that shows in the script editor. Some Math functions like "abs", "floor", and "ceil" are exposed to users, but "sqrt" is not. This means that you would have to either write your own implementation or convince me to add it to the game. When I hear "sqrt" in Bot Land, I assume you want to find the distance between two objects, in which case you may be able to use the built-in "getDistanceTo" function. It can either take in an entity or two arguments representing (X, Y) coordinates and returns the Manhattan distance between the bot and the target.

If there's another scenario where you'd like the square root, I'd be glad to consider either accommodating the scenario or just adding access to Math.sqrt directly. If we go that route though, you wouldn't have access to whatever results from it before ~Tuesday of this week at the earliest.

[tardo99]

What's the rationale for excluding sqrt? And, do you allow Math.pow (since that's the same thing)?

[Adam13531]

> What's the rationale for excluding sqrt?

That's a great question, and one with a non-obvious answer! For any potential function in Bot Land, including utility functions like Math.sqrt and Math.pow, I purposely wanted to provide as few as possible until someone expressed a desire for them, that way I could ask about the scenario they were trying to accomplish (as you saw in this thread). From there, I try to figure out if there's an even easier way of supporting their scenario so that everyone (i.e. even Blockly users) could enjoy it.

For example, if we find out that Math.sqrt was needed solely to find distance and that getDistanceTo was sufficient, then I could treat it as an education problem on behalf of Bot Land. In other words, I may want to include more snippets that use "getDistanceTo" or maybe make more tutorial content around that function.

Another philosophy would be to just add whatever functions I can think of and see what users do with it. That would probably have worked too; I'm not saying mine is better, it's just what I was thinking.

[ALittleLight]

Thanks for the reply and the explanation. You're right that I was trying to calculate distance.

One thing that confused me though, when I was trying to figure out how to square root is that one of your code blocks seems to translate into Math.pow, which made me think that I could use it too.

For the same reason you gave, equality between block-based and text-based programmers, I'd suggest any function that the blocks translate into should be allowed.

If it would help you I can find the specific block I'm referring to latter today.

[Adam13531]

> You're right that I was trying to calculate distance.

Oh good! Thanks for following up on that.

> one of your code blocks seems to translate into Math.pow, which made me think that I could use it too.

The way that the blocks work is that they convert into JavaScript under the hood. This means that there's no way to do something through the blocks that you can't do in code (although the converse isn't necessarily true). This means that if there is a block that converts to Math.pow, it's broken, so I'd definitely like to know about that if you find it.

[pbhjpbhj]

Got to say, I love your approach here.

[trentlott]

> Another philosophy would be to just add whatever functions I can think of and see what users do with it.l

Well, the middle ground could be allowing the basic PEMDAS mathematic functions and their inverses, just to allow common manipulations