RE: [GD-General] Off the shelf scripting languages

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I agree with Tom here. I fail to see the great advantage of boost over swig
in this case. After trying both under VC++ (and therein lies boosts
problem - speed) swig wins hands down. It really isn't any more effort than
using boost and is certainly easier to debug if things go wrong.

Andrew Perella

-----Original Message-----
From: gam...@li...
[mailto:gam...@li...]On Behalf Of
Tom Forsyth
Sent: 22 April 2003 13:59
To: gam...@li...
Subject: RE: [GD-General] Off the shelf scripting languages

Python works well for us on all the consoles (NGC, PS2, XBox). We're using
SWIG as a C++ interface rather than Boost, simply because Boost depends on
fancy stuff that compilers don't necessarily deal with properly. Whereas
SWIG is relatively simple code, but seems equivalently powerful - mix and
match between C and Python classes, call either from the other, stuff like
that.

You need some custom allocators on consoles, otherwise fragmentation is a
problem, but I'm sure that's true of all scripting languages, and indeed
true of most problems. Python's garbage collector is actually pretty smart,
and we've not had any problems with "free cascades" or anything scary like
that. Don't believe the hype.

Python may be overkill if you just want a level-simple scripting language.
We're using it for the majority of high-level gameplay as well as level
scripting - basically everything but rendering, sound, world management and
all the fairly low-level stuff like that. For that, it's very good.

Tom Forsyth - Muckyfoot bloke and Microsoft MVP.

This email is the product of your deranged imagination,
and does not in any way imply existence of the author.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: brian sharon [mailto:pud...@po...]
> Sent: 17 April 2003 19:09
> To: gam...@li...
> Subject: Re: [GD-General] Off the shelf scripting languages
>
>
> JavaScript: x-platform if you grab the Mozilla
> implementation; not sure
> what the footprint would be on a console, and of course you have the
> garbage collection issue.  Language is very nice though and of course
> there's plenty of reference material out there.
>
> Tcl: Not my cup of tea but may be someone else's?
>
> Simkin: Language features are nice, but I don't want to write
> script in
> XML.  And the other file format looks even less clear, if that's
> possible: look at http://www.simkin.co.uk/Docs/Simkin/Example.s.txt.
> What goes in the brackets?  Well, brackets seem to group method
> arguments with the method body.  Except when they're  used to
> block out
> comments.  But comments can also follow double slashes.
> Hmmmm.  Well,
> I'm sure I can count on my designers to sort it all out...I
> mean, they
> already *almost* understand what a source control system
> does, so this
> should be cake.
>
> Python: if it proves to be viable on consoles (I'm watching
> others and
> hoping for the best) I would be very happy.  I haven't seen other
> languages with anything close to Boost.Python for
> ease-of-integration;
> it is seriously impressive: http://www.boost.org/libs/python/doc/.
> Other positives are same as JavaScript: lots of reference
> material, very
> readable, etc.
>
> --brian
>
>
> Gareth Lewin wrote:
>
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: Marc Fascia [mailto:ma...@ma...]
> >>It seems that Python, Lua and Ruby are
> >>popular choices in that topic.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Other good choises are tcl, and javascript/vbscript if this
> is a win32 only
> >product.
> >_______________________
> >Regards, Gareth Lewin
> >Programmer, Climax Solent.
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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