Re: [GD-General] Re: Scripting

[brian h. <bri...@py...>]

> It is more like "glue"....The designers use the scripting language 
> functions just like public interfaces to game objects.

Does this mean then that you're only using it to provide coding-like 
functionality to the designers without requiring them to actually write 
code or harass programmers?

> SetPlatformDestination( 'BigFloatingRock', GetMarkerPos
>( 'CenterMarker01' ), 1.0 );

Right, this kind of gets back to the example me and Thatcher were 
using -- instead of a "function call" interface, a data description 
interface could probably do the same thing without actually requiring 
there to be language constructs:

PlatformXYZ =
{
   type = 'platform',
   destination = 'BigFloatingRock',
   pos = 'CenterMarker01',
   value = 1.0
}

> The main problem we have is the designers request the ability to do 
> more and more complicated tasks with the scripting language, but do 
> not enjoy the requisite increase in script complexity. 

Two issues here.  The first is exactly one of the concerns I have with 
generalized scripting -- there is a tendency for the entire engine to 
become part of the scripting language as designers ask for more and 
more stuff.  The second is that you often get a lot of exposed 
facilities that are never taken advantage of and, conversely, a lot of 
simple features end up getting (ab)used in interesting ways to get 
specific types of output.  For example, in Quake3 there were "regen" 
fields that were created when one of the designers realized you could 
assign a negative value to a pain field.

> To avoid creating Yet Another Crappy Parser I used flex & bison to do 
> the hard work of creating the script compiler.

Eewww.  I'm leaning towards just using Lua as my syntax for, er, 
everything, and letting it handle the heavy lifting.

-Hook