[gameprogrammer] Re: LUA and gameplay programming

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 9:18 PM, Dominic McDonnell <telarau@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Hi, I'm a student studying games programming in Australia, as its half way
> through our last year the local games companies have just started pitching
> themselves to us. A few of them have said that they use LUA for all or most
> of the gameplay programming.
>  Is that a new trend, or has it been around for a while? I can see the
> advantages of using a scripting language for gameplay, with no recompile
> times, and the possibility of not even having to restart the game to see the
> effects of changes. Does anybody know how widespread the use of scripting
> languages are?
> Thanks in advance,
>  Dominic McDonnell
>
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The first commercial game I ever worked on back in the '90s had a scripting
language built in. The use of scripting languages in game development goes
back at least to the 70s. Now days I can not think of a single major game
engine that does not have a scripting language built into it. So, it is very
common and has been the normal way to do things for 30 years or so.

Over the last 10 years LUA and Python have become the most commonly used
scripting languages. LUA feels a lot like C/C++ so people familiar with
those languages feel comfortable working with it. Python is just so widely
used that finding people who know Python is no great challenge.

As for performance... well it just isn't an issue. If you find a function in
the scripted code that is taking up too much time you just recode it in
whatever language the engine is written in and add it to the engine. Modern
engines are designed to let you add code and make the code usable as
functions and object visible in the scripting language.

So, the use of scripting languages is very wide spread and has been a part
of game development for decades. If your course of study did not include
information on game engines and scripting languages I'd say you have a good
case for suing your school for false advertising.

Bob Pendleton



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