SPT Lua
SPT Lua is not complete, and the documentation is also still very much a work in progress. If you are seeing this, it's purely just to give you an idea of what's to come, and to get feedback on the current state of the documentation.
SPT Lua gives access to the Lua scripting language in Portal. This was originally being developed as an independent plugin called "vlua" by ChrisUMB and Tom. The plugin was used to create the latest Glitchless TAS, and when public interest in the plugin increased, it was decided to merge it into SPT.
As it stands, SPT Lua is still in development, and is not yet officially integrated into SPT. However, if you are interested in testing it, you can download the latest version from the releases page on the GitHub fork of SPT.
Uses
SPT Lua provides a number of different ways to interact with the game. You can print to the console, change the player's
position, get information about entities, listen to game events like player_touch_trigger, player_teleport, and more.
You can even modify the game's memory directly, allowing you to test hooks and memory manipulation without having to
set up a plugin development environment.
Getting Started
Commands
spt_lua_run <path>- Runs the Lua file at the given path.spt_lua_reset- Resets the Lua environment.
Folder Structure
Once you have downloaded the latest version of SPT and loaded it, there will be a new folder in your Portal directory
called lua. This folder contains useful assets, like auto generated documentation, a libraries folder which will
be useful later, and a scripts folder where you can put your own Lua scripts.
Your First Script
To get started, create a new file in the scripts folder called hello_world.lua. Open the file in your favorite text
editor.
The Visual Studio Code text editor has a number of useful extensions for Lua development. SPT Lua contains Lua documentation powered by Lua Language Server, which you can get as an extension for VS Code here.
console.msg("Hello, world!")
console.warning("Hello, world, but in red!")
Save the file, then go back to Portal. Open the console and run spt_lua_run hello_world. You should see
Hello, world!
Hello, world, but in red!
printed to the console.
Libraries
SPT Lua supports loading libraries from the lua/libraries folder. This is useful for sharing code between scripts.
One such library that you might have heard about before is tas.lua.
To use a library, download it and place it in the lua/libraries folder. Then, in your script, use the require
function to load it.
local example_library = {}
function example_library.hello_world()
console.msg("Hello, world!")
end
return example_library
local example_library = require("example_library")
example_library.hello_world()