Topic: Newbie struggling with message box syntax

I am trying to get the hang of scripting and want to use one of my favourite debugging techniques: a pop-up box at start and end of each function so I can trace what is happening. But I can't work out how to use send_to_inbox or message_box or campaign_message_box. I either get an error about trying to index a string or index a number null values or an outright crash saying "FATAL ERROR: Received signal 11 (Segmentation fault)"

I have tried using:

include "scripting/ui.lua"
include "scripting/messages.lua"

and various forms of:

send_to_inbox(plr, _("xyz"), _("ABC"), {popup=false}),
message_box(_("xyz"), _("ABC")),
campaign_message_box(_("xyz"), _("ABC")),
campaign_message_box({title = "xyz",
    body = p(_("ABC")),    and    body = "ABC",
    position = "top"}
 ),

and also wl.game.Player.message_box() and player:message_box() without success.

Q1. Is there a better way to trace program execution than pop-ups for the start and end of programs and functions?

Q2. Can someone point me at an example of working code for inclusion in an init.lua that provides that sort of functionality?

Yes, I have tried looking at the wiki and at existing scripts, but cannot work out what I am getting wrong, despite spending about four hours on just this one thing.

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I have tried:

campaign_message_box({title = "This is the title", body = p("Hi, this is my first scenario")})

from the Scenario Tutorial, but that causes a "FATAL ERROR: Received signal 11 (Segmentation fault)" crash.

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Working with lua can be hard …

If this is just for you you can leave out the localization function (_()) which makes the code more readable. Some functions need the text to be richtext formatted which requires including richtext.lua

Personally i use just print() statements which prints the output to the console, or i use a debug version of widelands which provides a "debug console" directly within widelands but unfortunately print statements ar not printed to this console. Anyway using this console testing scripts can be easier by loading and executing a script-file directly by writing dofile("full/path/to/script.lua"). If something doesn't work as expected you can change the script and execute it with dofile() again without restarting widelands. Also testing small pieces of scripts can be tested directly this way. So i did for the examples below.

This works for me:

include "scripting/messages.lua"
plr = wl.Game().players[1]
send_to_inbox(plr, "title", "message", {popup=true})

Shows immediately a messagebox. With popup=false the messagebox is not shown.

Easier might be to to use show_messagebox():

wl.ui.show_messagebox("title", "message")

If you are struggling further you need to provide the full command chain, e.g. with all includes and commands before the failing command.

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