Re: game developers?

[Peter Wang <tjaden@...>]

Brandon Van Every <vanevery@3dprogrammer.com> wrote:
> I'm aware from the Lua projects pages that several game developers,
> both hobbyist and professional, have used Lua as the game engine's
> embedded scripting language.  I am wondering what drove your
> decision to use Lua instead of other embeddable scripting
> languages?  Most notably Python, as in my brief survey of what's
> available that seems like a good candidate.  Anyways, tell me what
> your overriding concerns were, and also what they are now, having
> gained experience with Lua.

First, let me just say that although I've been playing around with
Lua for about two years now, I still haven't got anything to show
for it (hence, I haven't submitted anything to the projects page).

The two best reasons I can think of for using Lua are: (1) it is
very fast, which is incredibly important for games (as I'm sure you
are aware) and (2) it is very small, which may or may not be
important to you.  It also has a flexible and easy to use API.

You mention Python, which is interesting because, for me, it fails
in the above two aspects.  Although I like the language more than
the Lua language, the implemention is (1) extremely slow (possibly
due to the nature of the language) and (2) extremely big (most of
the modules are unnecessary for games).  Python is great as a
stand-alone language for quick'n'dirty scripts or full-size
applications, but I wouldn't use it as an extension language.

If you need more speed, I'd suggest you look around at a few Forth
or Lisp/Scheme interpreters (e.g. QScheme).  Unfortunately, most
end-users are used to infix notation, which may limit your choice.

(This is my first post after lurking for a *long* time.  No flames
please :-)

-- 
tjaden@psynet.net - http://www.psynet.net/tjaden/
The steady state of disks is full. -- Ken Thompson