template scripts

If you have multiple scripts that are very similar you can split common functionality into a single script that gets included into all scripts that share this functionality.

The following assumes you want to create a number of awesome entities, all sharing an awesomecommon base script.

OSE version

awesomecommon.lua

if not v then v = {} end
if not AQUARIA_VERSION then dofile("scripts/entities/entityinclude.lua") end

function v.commonInit(me, tex, scale) -- some extra parameters, optional
    setupEntity(me, tex)
    entity_scale(me, scale, scale)
end

function v.commonUpdate(me, dt)
    -- do common stuff
end

awesome1.lua

dofile("scripts/awesomecommon.lua")

function init(me)
    v.commonInit(me, "awesome1", 42)
    -- individual init here...
end

function update(me, dt)
    v.commonUpdate(me, dt)
    -- individual update things here...
end

Note that the dofile() will load a script from your mod if the file exists, and if no such file can be found, it tries to load the file from the vanilla scripts directory. If it still can't be found there will be an error.

Old script interface

For reference, the pre-OSE way of doing the same is as follows:

awesomecommon.lua

dofile("scripts/entities/entityinclude.lua")

function commonInit(me, tex, scale) -- some extra parameters, optional
    setupEntity(me, tex)
    entity_scale(me, scale, scale)
end

function commonUpdate(me, dt)
    -- do common stuff
end

awesome1.lua

dofile(appendUserDataPath("_mods/myMod/scripts/awesomecommon.lua"))

function init(me)
    commonInit(me, "awesome1", 42)
    -- individual init here...
end

function update(me, dt)
    commonUpdate(me, dt)
    -- individual update things here...
end

Note that you really need to use this:

dofile(appendUserDataPath("_mods/myMod/scripts/awesomecommon.lua"))

instead of the more intuitive

dofile("_mods/myMod/scripts/awesomecommon.lua")

Why? The old version does not treat mod scripts paths specially. In the Windows version the second, simpler variant does work, but will not be able to locate the file on Linux or Mac. Therefore you must use the first variant, which is longer but guarantees that your script is loaded regardless of the user's operating system.

And yes, the path must contain your mod name. If you change the folder name of your mod, you must update all scripts.

If you want to reference an existing vanilla script, leave the mod path away. Like this:

dofile("scripts/awesomecommon.lua")