RE: Timing out LUA programs

[Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@...>]

>This has been discussed over and over, and doesn't seem like it's going
>happen - Lua is just not going to be _the_ game scripting language, it
>seems, and that's that.

Being a game scripting language was not part of our original goals for Lua.
We were pleasantly surprised to see Lua adopted in several games, even if it was
not advertised as a game scripting language. Of course, the original Lua goals
(simplicity, efficiency, portability, small footprint, easy of embedding) are
directly related to its success in games, which shows that languages with such
features certainly have a niche, including games and embedded systems.

Lua 5.0 will have Lua coroutines (or whatever you want to call them) and support
for external multi-threading and coroutines. These developments have certainly
been prompted by comments from game experts here in lua-l. (The existence of a
more-or-less working implementation by Thatcher Ulrich certainly helped.)

The implementation of a better garbage collection scheme, for instance using
generations, will certainly help game scripting, although probably will fall
short of being an ideal solution for hicup-free scripting in demanding games.

In summary, Lua may never be _the_ game scripting language because it was never
designed to be so, but with the help of all you game experts here we may build
a tool that is very well suited to many demanding applications, including games.

Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to have a wiki page describing the needs for game
scripting and why Lua does not meet them and how it could. Anyone?
--lhf