I am new to Lua but know some C++ and Java and know the standard for loop[ ex. for (x = 0;x < 100;x++)]. What does the for loop in lua do? [for player = 0, self.PlayerCount - 1 do]. Is it even a loop or just a statment?

It does the same thing. Ex:
Gibs every actor in MovableMan.Actors
That is if you have a table of something though. Your syntax is correct for if you are going by variables.

Thanks!

Most of the time, however, in Lua, you won't need loops; an if statement inside an update function is going to run every single time the sim updates, which means that the only time you need a loop is to do more than one thing per frame.

If you need to do accumlating loops (like in your C++ example) you do:



for x=1, 10, 1 do end ---> for(x = 1; x <= 10; x+=1) { }

Thanks for the visual Kyred. Grif talked abou the update activity repeating itself. What causes the update activity to run, or what has to happen for the code to be executed?

Anything in the update function of a particle will be executed on every sim update.

What is a sim update.

Every time the game's physics engine calculates anything.

Each "step" the game goes through (roughly equal to a frame) the game recalculates the position of everything, collissions, etc.

If it helps, the sim update is also run through a loop by the program itself.
It's basically every time the screen's image changes at all. It's like a frame in an animation.

Thanks so much!!!!