add `AfterMain` run context or similar

[XertroV]

Problem: there are a few cases where I'd like to structure something like this:

• RenderEarly: set references to CSmPlayer and CSceneVehicleState
• Render / Main: use references
• AfterMain: clear references

The goal is to store references to nods but only while it's safe. This prevents looking up the nods each time I want to access them, but also ensures they're null during the times they might be destroyed.

Not sure if AfterMain is the best way to go, but seems reasonable.

Particularly: from what I understand, dependents will always run after their dependencies. So for MLFeed, for example, there's no way to safely expose references. Though maybe BeforeScripts or something works well enough?

[codecat]

Assuming this is for something like MLFeed which other plugins depend on, couldn't you do something like this?

Foo@ g_someHandle;

void Main()
{
  while (true) {
    if (g_someHandle !is null) {
      g_someHandle = null;
    }
    yield();
  }
}

Foo@ GetSomeHandle()
{
  if (g_someHandle is null) {
    @g_someHandle = ResolveSomeHandle();
  }
  return g_someHandle;
}

Or am I misunderstanding the problem?

[XertroV]

I think you're misunderstanding a bit.

• ResolveSomeHandle is expensive to do ad-hoc (like looking up a player or vehicle -- O(n))
• to avoid needing ResolveSomeHandle, I set CSmPlayer@ player on some object early that frame because I'm already looping through all the players, so it's basically free
• I can then use that handle through all my coroutines (in that execution context at least) without worrying about crashes and while avoiding expensive lookups. I might get null ptr exceptions, but that's okay because they're safe.
• But at the end of my exec, it's nice to clear them so that there's no chance of keeping them hanging around (because they won't be set if the vehicle/player disappears).
• I can't clear them at the end of main exec ctx, because that runs before dependents' main exec ctx.
• So I'd want to clear them after main, but before the next frame.

Does that make more sense?