General Changes and Additions

KatieLib makes some (largely non-breaking) changes to the game’s scripting API, mostly to make it easier to work with.

Upgrade to Lua 5.3

KatieLib upgrades the version of Lua used in Smash Hit to version 5.3.6. This brings several great quality of life updates for script writers, like bitwise operators and real integers. While it is a little rough around the edges technically speaking, almost any script that was working with the built-in version 5.1.4 will continue work in the new version. (However, tweaks may be needed.)

If you need to, you can still keep using the built-in version of Lua by deleting liblua.so from your APK.

Known Issues

The upgrade to Lua 5.3 may break some custom scripts:

• The separation of floating point numbers from integers can cause issues. For example, putting a number in the registry (which converts it to a string) then converting it using tonumber() can now result in a number that, when converted back to a string, has an extra .0 appended to it. This could, for example, manifest by displaying an extra 0 at the end of number when output to a text object (since Smash Hit is not able to display the . with 4x4 fonts). The solution is to replace all uses of tonumber() with math.tointeger() when working with integers.

shutdown() function

KatieLib automatically calls the shutdown() function on script destruction, allowing you to easily detect when scripts are being deallocated:

-- In an obstacle, for example
function shutdown()
   knLog("The obstacle is being destroyed!")
end

Keyboard and Mouse Implementation

While Mediocre games do have support for keyboard and mouse - and even check for some keyboard shortcuts for debugging - neither are properly “wired up” on Android. KatieLib changes this by properly implementing keyboard and mouse support, allowing you to implement custom behaviour with them, in addition to making the existing debug functionality available.