Can Lua be used to write a AAA video game?

[Andreas Jonsson <mail@...>]

Can Lua be used to write a AAA video game?

This is a question a lot of people is asking. I'm sure many people reading this list is already using Lua to programming games and that they don't need any convincing on this subject. However there might be people "outside" interested in reading this.

I have worked on several big game titles that has the entire gameplay code written in Lua. Some examples are:

Bionic Commando (http://www.bioniccommando.com/)

Wanted (http://www.wantedthegame.com/)

Terminator (http://www.terminatorsalvationgame.com/)

All these games uses the same engine. The only thing that differs them from one and another is the content (textures/models/sounds/etc.) and some Lua code. Actually it is quite a lot of Lua code. :) This mean that you could in theory take the game engine (the exe file written in C++) and copying it between the three games and it would still work. Since all code that defines the game is written in Lua.

You can't actually use the same exe file because they differ a little bit. Because those games was not finished the on the same day. But they are basically the same and they contain nothing game specific. Not even a generic player, enemy or weapon class.

I think this is a prof of concept that even though you might not be able to write the entire game engine in Lua you can definitely use it to write AAA games. Also bare in mind that these games were all released on X360 and PS3 so LuaJIT was not used in any of the versions.