var bool bIsItRaining;

The var tells the game that we're declaring a variable. After that, is the variable type, in this case bool for boolean. After that, we tell the game our variable's name, bIsItRaining . Spaces can't be used in variable names, but underscore characters ( _ ) are allowed. The semicolon finishes the line. It's important never to forget the semicolon at the end of the line. Without it the compiler will think any lines after it are part of this line and will look at us confused, as well as give us an error.

function PostBeginPlay()
{
    'log("Is it raining?" @ bIsItRaining);
}

This will output our text as well as tell us the value of bIsItRaining. The @ operator combines the text with the value of the variable into one sentence which the log uses. This is known as concatenation and will be discussed later in the chapter.

Our AwesomeActor class should look like this now:

class AwesomeActor extends Actor
   placeable;

var bool bIsItRaining;

function PostBeginPlay()
{
   'log("Is it raining?" @ bIsItRaining);
}

defaultproperties
{
   Begin Object Class=SpriteComponent Name=Sprite
      Sprite=Texture2D'EditorResources.S_NavP'
      HiddenGame=True
   End Object
   Components.Add(Sprite)
}

Open the editor and open our test map with the AwesomeActor placed, and run the game. Nothing obvious will happen, but let's close the game and see what our Launch2.log file looks like:

[0008.59] ScriptLog: Is it raining? False

Our variable is working! As we can see, even without doing anything to it our variable has a default value. When created, booleans automatically start out false. This is a good thing to know when creating variables, especially booleans. It's best to avoid words like Not or No in boolean names to avoid having double negatives. For example, if we had a bool named bIsNotActive, and it was False, would the object be active or not? In this case it would be active, but to avoid confusion it would be better to have a variable named bIsActive so it would be easier to tell what it means when it's true or false.

bIsItRaining = true;

Now our function should look like this:

function PostBeginPlay()
{
    bIsItRaining = true;
   'log("Is it raining?" @ bIsItRaining);
}

[0007.68] ScriptLog: Is it raining? True

There we go!

bIsItRaining = false;
'log("Is it raining?" @ bIsItRaining);

Now our PostBeginPlay function should look like this:

function PostBeginPlay()
{
    bIsItRaining = true;
   'log("Is it raining?" @ bIsItRaining);
    bIsItRaining = false;
   'log("Is it raining?" @ bIsItRaining);
}