PIXELFALLS Lua Sugar

PIXELFALLS supports a small set of Lua syntax sugar operators. These are transformed into standard Lua before runtime/export.

For which standard libraries the runtime opens (math, string, table, and others), see Std Lua Libraries.

Supported operators

• x++ -> x = x + 1
• x-- -> x = x - 1
• x += y -> x = x + (y)
• x -= y -> x = x - (y)
• x *= y -> x = x * (y)
• x /= y -> x = x / (y)
• x %= y -> x = x % (y)

These also work for table/index targets, for example:

• player.score++
• stats["hp"] -= 10
• items[i] *= 2

Comments and decrement

Lua uses -- for comments, so decrement support is postfix only.

• Supported: x--
• Supported with comment: x-- -- this is a comment
• Not supported: --x

What this means for portability

These operators are PIXELFALLS sugar, not standard Lua syntax. If you copy code into a plain Lua environment without this transform, you must rewrite them to explicit assignments.

Shared global state

PIXELFALLS runtime also provides a built-in shared table:

• state — global table for data shared between main.lua and nodes.
• Define any global fields you require in main > init() method.

Example:

Copy
-- main.lua
state.score = 0
state.currentLevel = 0
state.playerName = "Unknown"

-- player.lua
state.score += 10
state.playerName = "Dave"

drawText("Hello " .. state.playerName, 1, 1)