Talking to other scripts

Your script rarely works alone. A teleport pad moves a player’s transform; a scoreboard reads a match’s score; a switch tells a door to open. There are two ways to reach another componentcomponent: One script attached to one entity. The same script on ten entities is ten components, each with its own copy of the script's fields.: read or write its fields, or send it an event.

Either way, you first need a handle to it, a Component. The Cookbook shows all the ways to find one; the most common is asking an entity for the script by name:

let me: Entity = $entity.get()
let transform: Component = $support.entity_get_component(me, "transform.vscript")

Reading and writing fields

With a handle, a dot reads another component’s mutablemutable: A field declared with let mut. The script's running state: it changes while the game runs. field by name, and = writes it:

let transform: Component = $support.entity_get_component($entity.get(), "transform.vscript")
let where: vec3 = transform.position
transform.position = where + vec3(0, 0, 100)

The name must be spelled exactly as the other script declares it. Reading a field it doesn’t have prints a warning like Script … does not have a mutable named … and gives you nothing.

Only mutables

The dot reaches another component’s mutable (let mut) fields. Its constants, the settings chosen in the level editor, can’t be read this way. If you need a setting from another component, look for a native that reports it, or put the value somewhere you can read.

Sending an event

When you want another component to do something, send it an event with $component.queue_event. You name one of its event export fn functions and pass the arguments as a list:

let effect: Component = $support.entity_get_component($entity.get(), "effect.vscript")
if effect {
  $component.queue_event("play", effect, null, false)
}

queue_event takes the event’s name, the component, the arguments (null for none, or a list like [position, rotation]), and whether to wait until the end of the frame (true) or run as soon as the current event finishes (false).

The event doesn’t run immediately: it’s queued, and runs after the code that sent it has finished. Don’t expect its effects on the next line.

✗ Writes around the owner

// A ball's own script owns its position,
// so this write is overwritten.
ball_transform.position = destination

✓ Asks the owner

// Ask the ball to move itself.
$component.queue_event("set_position_and_rotation",
  ball, [destination, rotation], true)

Prefer the event when a script offers one. The owner knows what else has to change along with the value (its own caches, the network, the animation), and a field written around it may be overwritten on its next tick.

Finding what another script offers

• Its events are listed on the Events page with the scripts that export them: filter for a word like ball or jump.
• Its fields are the let mut lines at the top of its source, which you can read in your editor.

For programmers

Field access by name is late-bound: it compiles to a lookup on the target at runtime, so a typo is a runtime warning, not a compile error. queue_event is fire-and-forget with no return value; end_of_frame: false runs it after the active event, true at end of frame. $component.try_queue_event doesn’t assume the event exists. Calling another script’s non-event function directly isn’t something this guide covers; use events.