Common Issues

This page covers a few common issues that you may face, when developing mods for Sapiens.

Copy/Pasting Files

Sapiens modding requires a special kind of coding style called shadowing. This is required. If you just copy/paste source files into your mod and edit them, they won't have any effect at all!

Running Server logic on App Mods

There are two mod types in Sapiens: app mods and world mods. You must be aware of the limitation that doesn't allow App Mods to operate on the server thread. If you need the server thread, make a world mod instead.

Confusing module.function() with module:function()

In lua, you define a module like local foo = {}. Functions can then be defined like:

function foo:bar(arg1)
	...
end

This is a shorthand for the longer form (don't use this except for shadows)

foo.bar = function(self, arg1)
	...
end

As you can see, there is a mysterious 'self' argument getting passed around when using the : syntax. This roughly represents the current object (?).

Now imagine that you've defined a function as in the first example, and then attempted to call it like this:

local value = foo.bar('baz')

This would be incorrect, since you've essentially put 'baz' for 'self' and 'nil' for 'arg1'. The correct way to call it would be local value = foo:bar('baz').

Recursive mjrequire

If you have foo.lua which requires bar.lua, then you can't require bar.lua in foo.lua because it would cause an infinite loop.

Workarounds:

• mjrequire inside of Functions
• rework your architecture
• pass bar as a parameter to foo (init function)