Many of you probably use Notepad++ to edit your Lua scripts, and that's great! But there's an even better, more functional tool out there for Lua scripting, and that's the aptly-named Lua Development Tools (LDT)!
Lua Development Tools is an IDE (interactive development environment) dedicated to Lua scripting. It's built on Eclipse, so if you've ever used that, you'll be familiar with LDT's interface right away!
Check out the list of LDT's features here:
https://eclipse.org/ldt/
Download links
You can download LDT from one of the following links:
Download Lua Development Tools 1.4.0 (32-bit)
Download Lua Development Tools 1.4.0 (64-bit)
Getting started with LDT for SWBF2 modding
1. Download and install the latest version of the Lua Development Tools via one of the links above if you haven't done so already. I strongly recommend you install the 64-bit version.
2. Once LDT is installed and running, go to
File, New, Lua Project.
3. Enter a name for the LDT project in "Project name". I like to make mine the same name as my mod's data folder (e.g.,
data_ABC).
4. Select "Create project at existing location (from existing source)" and browse to and select your project's data folder (e.g.,
data_ABC).
5. Make sure "Targeted Execution Environment" is set to "lua-5.1" and "Target Grammar" is set to "Default".
6. Once your "New Lua project" window looks something like mine, click Next:
7. In the next screen, choose the folder to use as the source folder. To do so, right-click it and select "Use as Source Folder". I recommend using your project folder as the source folder so LDT can access the addme script and any shell scripts.
8. Click "Configure inclusion and exclusion filters" in the "Details" pane.
9. Click "Add Multiple" in the "Exclusion patterns" pane.
10. Select each directory that you know will never contain Lua scripts (Ctrl+click to select multiple) and click OK.
11. Click Finish in the "Inclusion and Exclusion Patterns" window.
12. Click Finish in the "New Lua project" window.
13. You're done! Now go and take advantage of LDT's many great features!