Limitations and troubleshooting

Limitations

• Paladins 8.1 Win64 only. The five engine signatures and the engine-core layouts are pinned to that build. On another version the log says which signature failed, and nothing hooks.
• Maps cannot grow. map:set replaces the value of an existing key; inserting keys would need the engine's set re-hash.
• out parameters of hooked natives are written back for plain kinds (numbers, names, objects, vectors). String and array out parameters are not.
• Spawning follows engine rules: bStatic and bNoDelete classes (lights, static meshes) return nil. Use the *Spawnable classes or a class of your own.
• Unqualified hooks ("Func") do not catch natives. Natives are hooked per function and need "Package.Class.Func".
• 64 native hooks at a time per process.
• Input covers keyboard, mouse buttons and wheel. No gamepad.
• No DLL unload. The runtime stays until the game exits; scripts reload, the DLL does not.
• One runtime per process. If several mods ship the DLL, the first one loaded runs everything and the others log that they are idle.

Troubleshooting

The log is %TEMP%\tempest-scripting.log. The console window shows the same lines. (Both can be changed through the environment the game is launched with: TEMPEST_SCRIPT_LOG=<path> and TEMPEST_SCRIPT_CONSOLE=0; a configuration file is planned.)

symptom	what it means
no log file at all	the DLL was not loaded; check the launcher's [inject] line and that the mod is enabled
xor signature not found or any ... signature not found	wrong game version, or the executable changed
GNames never became readable	the anti-cheat key table did not decode; game version mismatch
GEngine still null; running scripts anyway	the game took more than two minutes to load the Engine package
ProcessInternal unresolved	script-function hooks are off; only engine events hook
cannot hook native X: has out params and GPropAddr is not resolved yet	retried automatically once the game thread runs; a later line says (deferred) when it succeeds
GPropAddr probe found nothing	out-param natives stay unhookable on this build
[mod] handler for X failed: ...	a Lua error in that mod's hook; the call itself still ran
X has no property \Y``	typo, or the property only exists on a subclass; check obj:class():path() and obj:prop("Y")
no game window yet; will keep looking	key bindings wait for the game window; normal during startup
another Tempest.Scripting instance already runs	a second mod ships the DLL; harmless
[VEH][crash] ACCESS_VIOLATION ...	the game faulted; the address and the last script line before it narrow it down

Useful checks from the DLL console or lua in the game console:

=tempest.status().notes            -- anything that failed to resolve
=tempest.status().subscriptions    -- every hook, with its owning mod
=tempest.status().native_hooks     -- natives currently hooked
=tempest.local_player()            -- nil outside a match
=tempest.local_player():prop("Pawn")

Reporting a problem

Attach the log from the start of the session, the mod's scripts, and the game version. The resolve lines at the top identify the build; the last lines before a crash identify the script.