RE: [GD-General] DLLs for game objects

[Tom H. <to...@3d...>]

At 02:38 PM 3/25/2003, you wrote:
> >One thing that bears consideration is what you allow those external
> >DLL's to do.
>
>Well, I'm thinking of this from a server side type of thing (a la
>MUDs), which I should have been more explicit about.

Personally, I can't stand DLLs. There's simply far too many problems with 
them and things you have to watch out for. For anything complex you 
invariably you end up painting yourself into a design corner when something 
comes up you didn't anticipate and you end up having to hack your way out 
in one way or another.

If I was interested in doing something like this (server side only makes 
this reasonable .. wouldn't suggest this for clients yet), with the goal of 
having lots of small dynamic "pieces" that could be fitted together at 
run-time in some form of OOP manner I'd be looking at C# and .NET as a 
solution. From what I've seen the stuff is built from the ground up to 
cleanly operate with a C/C++ engine, and C# "scripts".

If I using *nix as my platform, then I would look into the C# stuff that's 
being done there (I think it's called Mono), and if that didn't work, then 
I'd seriously consider going through the (relative) hell of JNI and using Java.

Failing that, I'd look at scripting languages like Lua, or just say to hell 
with it and do it all statically linked to a single executable.

Basically, anything is better than DLLs in my book ... There's a reason 
it's called DLL hell.

Tom