I'm pretty much a novice, but I'd like to start getting my hands dirty with Lua plugins that I think would enhance my and potentially other folks experience with the game. The question I have is where to start? I have no clue what objects or functions in VO can be used in lua.

My idea of a start project is based on the premise that after x number of drops are in a given area, future drops then begin to consolidate into a single pile. I want to write a simple plugin that causes a ship to drop it's cargo in increments of one unit at a time in order to fill that drop requirement in order to make farming more convenient. Does anyone have a few hints?

The Racecar Wiki lists functions, objects & events available in VO (not necessarily always up to date).

The official Lua 5.1 documentation is located here

The best resource I've seen for general Lua programming is at lua-users.org

Here's a good resource on string pattern matching at wowwiki.com

The official IUP documentation (for writing GUIs) is here

NOTE: VO uses an older version of IUP (including various custom modifications) and therefore can differ from what's described above. For this reason, using IUP in VO has a much steeper learning curve.

You might also find it helpful to learn from existing plug-ins. The reload plugin written by Ray is fairly simple and demonstrates event usage.

For your plugin in particular, you'll want to make use of the JettisonSingle(), JettisonMultiple() and JettisonAll() functions.

EDIT:
Oh, and the DevKit plugin is a great resource for plugin authors that has a table viewer and helps for figuring out under which conditions events trigger and what their return values are, among other things.

Awesome! Many thanks.

I know it's said a lot, but start small, something simple like event use and basic API functions. Make sure you understand the basic functionality of the debugger, and some basic understanding of C.

meridian, your link for the IUP documentation is for the latest version, but VO uses a modifed IUP 2.4, and the last time I checked, the official source of that documentation has been taken down.

Maybe we can get it hosted at racecar, but in the meantime, iup2_4_documentation.tar.gz

EDIT: I was really tired from a long drive when I posted this and didn't notice your caveat.

Hi all, I've slowed down in other areas and am finally getting back to my project. It looks like the Racecar Wiki no longer exists as each link listed above gives me a URL not found message. Is this resource no longer available? In the meantime, I'm studying MAID to see how the general concept works.

/racecar/ is now /racecar2/, see http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/29602