Re: Scripting

[Chris <chris@starforge.co.uk>]

Jan Ekholm wrote:


>>Not necessarily easier - just no harder.   And if it's no harder to
>>write in C++ than in a scripting language, you should use C++ because:
>>
> 
> Oh, please. You can't possibly say that C++ is easier to use than a
> script language? 


That depends. I've found a lot of things easier to do in C/C++ and even 
assembler than in interpreted lanugages because interpreted languages
tend to be rather restrictive, at least for the things I do. Ever tried to 
pick up a pin while wearing boxing gloves? That's what programming in an 
interpreted language feels like to me - too restrictive, too much work to
do something I know I can do in another language with little effort. The 
interpreted solution may well be "simpler" - easier to understand, or less 
syntactically complex, but it is often easier for me to write the more hairy
version because it lets me do things in a few lines that would otherwise 
need many.

But then I'm also a speed and binary size freak. I cut my programming teeth 
back in the days when 128k of memory was unheard of in a home machine and 
much of my programming life has been dominated by getting 120% of the 
performance out of a machine in the smallest possible space. Despite the 
fact that my machines are fairly high spec, that habit it hard to break. :)


>>In action games, you tend to want to use all of the resources you
> True. But more and more of the actual gfx is just a call to OpenGL/DX to
> draw some pre-setup vertex array or display list. Which can be done as
> fast in any language. So for static data the difference isn't huge. 


You've never really gone near the innards of a fast 3D game have you? They 
tends to be very far from static inside - there are all manner of routines 
applied to the underlying map before you ever get near creating the data to 
send to the card. Grab a copy of the Quake2 engine source and have a look
at it, some of the stuff going on in there will surprise you. Or have a look
at some of the stuff on www.vterrain.org, especially the LOD stuff...


> 99% of games aren't too complex. 


Only because 99% of Linux games are tetris clones. I doubt that the vast 
majority of people on this list make tetris clones - they are here to make 
real games, not toy programs. So maybe 99% of Linux games aren't too 
complex, you'll probably find that 99% of the people responsible for the 
other 1% are on this list.

Chris
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