Re: [GD-General] JavaScript as a scripting language

[Noel L. <ll...@co...>]

On Fri, 06 Dec 2002 12:23:09 -0800
Brian Hook <bri...@py...> wrote:

> All that said, I'm pretty down on game scripting in general, but I'll
> leave that for another post.

Oh, please, don't leave us hanging. Tell us what is in your mind.

I've been wrestling with the idea of scripting for years. My reasoning
goes something along these lines. I'll be in one of these states
depending on the current month:

- First I really, trully, think it's the best way to put the power in
the artist's and designers hands without involving the programmers. 

- Then I start thinking that a programmer should be involved anyway, but
it's still a great way to decouple game behavior that changes all the
time from engine code.

- Then I realize that if we're going to have a programmer involved, the
pain and suffering we go through for a scripting language might be
totally moot. Debugging goes from non-existent to sucky (compared to the
C++ debugger), performance needs a lot of tweaking and has to be done
carefully... so we might as well write all that code in C++.

- Then I realize that the programmers are in the way and I go back to
step one.


Some side thoughts are using C++ as DLLs, which helps with some of the
flexibility for the game code. Other thoughts is to use a scripting
language as a middle layer. Designers and artists don't have to ever
touch it unless they want to. All the tools generate that intermediate
language (for behaviors, triggers, GUI, etc), which can also be examined
and edited directly.

All in all, when it comes down to it, I still haven't made up my mind.
It's a potentially very complex and time-consuming system that could
make things worse for everybody if done wrong.


--Noel
ll...@co...