Question with .lang and global variables

[theabcs]

Hey, I know a little about scripting but i need some help. I have a global variable set and i would like it to display when the player looks at a custom item in the inventory. Is there any way I can display the value of the variable in the .lang file during an entry script? So for example:

<CATEGORY Name="Inventory">
<Entry Name="ItemName_item">blah blah blah</Entry>
<Entry Name="ItemDesc_item"> XXXXXXXXXXXXX </Entry>
</CATEGORY>

I would like to somehow insert the value of the global variable in the "XXXXXXXXXXXXX" so when the player moves their mouse over, they see the set amount. Is this possible?

[Apjjm]

This is not possible without a bit of a "hack" unfortunately.

Solution 1 - Lots of values in the lang files
The only way you can achieve this effect is to create entries for the values which the variable may hold. For example: If you wanted to track "money" you could reasonably get away with 0-9999 without taking up too much space. You will probably want to write a program (or use my lang tool) to generate the numbers though.

Assuming you then name the entries like "m<value>" in a category called money you would be able to access the vars by getting the entry of "m"+GetLocalVarInt("money").

This is just a crude example and will need to tweaking for your scenario. If you are using floats, convert it into fixed-point integer & scale. If you are using strings then the solution is much more context dependant. This solution isn't unreasonable though, i used it for "time" and a death counter in a currently unreleased map.

Solution 2 - Billboarding / Light display
The other solution is to display the value in a specific location. You can then use box-lights with a numeric/alphabetic gobo to display digits. You could do the same billboards or entities, activating the appropriate thing for each digit/letter.

This limits the display to specific locations though, which may not be what you are looking for - but you will be able to display much greater ranges of information using this approach without any space tradeoffs. Be wary of having too many (>1k) box lights though - if you are going to need a large display think about using something else.

[Xanthos]

Can't you have like 10 Money Items and
For every Onpickup script have it do a check if player has item if not don't give the third money value and instead give the second value?