Re: Scripting

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Jan Ekholm wrote:

> Why not write the game logic in Python/Perl/whatever and call C functions
> for stuff that needs more speed? Games that get developed for Linux aren'
> too complex and don't anyway need all the power that current machines can
> offer, so why not make the development process easy?

I'd object to the idea that development is easier in Python/whatever than
C++ - and once you take away that, why write slow code when for the same
effort or less, you can have fast code?  I know a lot of Python/whatever
enthusiasts are going to object to that view - but for me personally, it's
CERTAINLY true.

I'd also object to the idea that games that get developed for Linux aren't
too complex...if we give into that idea then it will become a self-fulfilling
prophesy.  Games I'm working on certainly *do* use all the resources of a
modern PC.  I *want* to write the most complex game I can within the mental,
temporal and physical resources at my disposal.

Yes, you can write yet-another-Tetris without concerns for performance - but
you CAN'T write a game like TuxKart, FlightGear, etc in a scripting language
without the script being little more than a loop that calls compiled code
that does 99% of the work and probably contains 99% of the sourcecode.

The reason (IMHO) for using a scripting language for AI and things like
high level scenario management is that it makes the kind of parallelism
that I described earlier much simpler.  This makes it much easier to think
about how the mental state of 50 computer-controlled characters might work.
It's hard to program with a state-machine approach - and running 50 parallel
pthreads isn't going to play well with a realtime game.  If there was a
reasonable way to get extremely lightweight threading into
a compiled language - I probably wouldn't be interested in scripting.

There are (as far as I know) no large commercial games that are written
in a scripting languages.  Many use scripting for AI and Scenario setup
though.

There is a reason for that.  Those guys aren't stupid.

----------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------------
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