Welcome to the Hollywood Software Development Kit (SDK). This package contains all the
necessary information and files to write your own Hollywood plugins. Plugins can
greatly enhance Hollywood's functionality. They can provide load and save support for
additional video, audio, image, icon, and sample formats, they can extend the command set
of the Hollywood language as well as enable Hollywood to use real vector graphics and
it is even possible to write plugins which replace core parts of Hollywood like its
inbuilt display and audio driver with custom implementations provided by plugins. It
is also possible to write plugins which convert project files of other applications like Scala or
PowerPoint into Hollywood scripts so that Hollywood can run these project files directly
although they are not in the *.hws format.
Hollywood plugins use the suffix *.hwp. On all systems except on AmigaOS and compatibles,
plugins must be stored in a directory named "Plugins" that is in the same directory as the
main Hollywood program. On AmigaOS and compatible systems, plugins must be installed to
LIBS:Hollywood instead. On macOS, the "Plugins" directory must be inside the
"Resources" directory of the application bundle, i.e. inside the HollywoodInterpreter.app/Contents/Resources
directory. Note that HollywoodInterpreter.app is stored inside the Hollywood.app
application bundle itself, namely in Hollywood.app/Contents/Resources.
When distributing a compiled Hollywood program, plugins required by your program must
simply be put into the same directory as your program. On AmigaOS and compatible systems,
plugins in a compiled program's directory have a higher priority than those in LIBS:Hollywood.
So if a plugin is present in both locations, Hollywood will load the one from the
program's directory. When compiling application bundles for macOS, plugins
need to be put in the "Resources" directory of the application bundle, i.e. in
MyProject.app/Contents/Resources.
Plugins will be loaded automatically by Hollywood on startup. If you do not
want this, you can disable automatic loading by renaming the plugin: Plugins
whose filename starts with an underscore character ('_') will not be loaded
automatically by Hollywood on startup. As an alternative, you can also use
the ‘-skipplugins’ console argument to tell Hollywood to
skip automatic loading of certain plugins. Plugins which have not been loaded
at startup, can be loaded later by using the @REQUIRE preprocessor
command or the LoadPlugin() function.
The Android version of Hollywood also supports Hollywood plugins. You have to copy
them to the directory Hollywood/Plugins on your SD card. Hollywood will scan this
location on every startup and load all plugins from there. If you want to compile
your own plugins, make sure that you compile in thumb mode.