Re: Using Lua for Video Games

["Sebby " <beast@...>]

> > I'm a software engineer for a video game company. We currently 
need a
> > scripting language to control various parts of our next 
generation of
> > games (AI, SFX, animation, GUI, ...). Oour original plan was to 
write
> > our own compiler + VM (i have written some in the past so it's 
not an
> > unfamiliar territory for me).
> 
> I have exactly the same problem. Why reinvent the wheel? Spend all 
that
> extra time on gameplay and improving other code. As you must know 
the
> overhead of designing and coding a language is fairly large. Yadda, 
yadda,
> yadda it's all be said before on here. :-)

I agree. Especialy with my current time constraints, what ever time i 
cna save with the implementation of a scripting engine can be usefull 
to me in implementing other features. So far, besides a few issues 
that may araise (especialy with PS2 compatibility). I'm seriously 
considering Lua

> Benchmarks for Lua and a few other languages:
> http://www.chat.net/~jeske/Projects/ScriptPerf/

Tnx.

> > * Lua being dynamicly typed, i can see the advantages especialy
> > considering some of the code might be written by non programmers.
> > However, since type determination is moved from the compiler to 
the
> > VM, what is the actual runtime cost of dynamic types?
> 
> I'm not sure that its a problem at all. You should worry more about 
garbage
> collection.

True, i didn't think about GC. I guess i'll have to take control of 
the GC to some extent to avoid the collection to occur at bad times 
in the game :)

> > Sebastien St-Laurent
> > Z-Axis ltd.
> > www.z-axis.com
> 
> I like the web site. Space Inavders looks great. Are you still in 
San
> Mateo???

Tnx. I did some work on Space Invaders myself last summer. Right now 
i'm working on a Dreamcast port of Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX. And no, 
the company moved across the bay a few months ago, it's now located 
in Hayward.

Sebby