Re: [M-dev] On Lua

[Alex B. <bol...@um...>]

> EMR has existed for the Marathon engine since the original Marathon. 
> It would have been far FAR more trouble and effort to have ported EMR 
> to a completely different engine.
>
> You might want to actually *play* EMR before commenting on it.
>
> For the poser that wrote that post on the forum in his little rant 
> against Solra and Jon, he also should try playing EMR to get a better 
> feel for the cool things that you can do with Lua.  Admittedly, we 
> didn't do a *lot* with Lua for net maps, because we believe net maps 
> should remain simple.  For a story-driven solo scenario, however, Lua 
> allowed us to do some really really cool things that I would consider 
> major improvements to playability and fun factor.
>
> When we ported EMR from Infinity to AlephOne, there was a lot of 
> effort involved, but it wasn't just with Lua.  It was re-doing all of 
> the textures to hi-res, converting all the sounds to 16-bit, revising 
> maps to take advantage of some of the limitations AlephOne removed, 
> and taking advantage of a lot of the other MML features, like 
> animated textures, fog, changing ambient sounds, adding more weapons 
> than Infinity supported, and a ton of other stuff.  We added a few 
> more new maps as well.
>
> Try playing EMR for Infinity, than play EMR for AlephOne, and you 
> might begin to see why we ported it to AlephOne.
>
> If you don't have Mac OS X, you can play the last beta of EMR, 3b8, 
> on Windows and Unix.
> http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/35919
>   

I've played the Infinity version of EMR. I'm fully aware that the game 
has changed a /lot/ since then... but then again, I'm not commenting on 
/it/ so much as I'm commenting on the mentality that, rather than using 
an engine that already exists that would suit your purposes, you have to 
weasel with the developer until they make Aleph fit. From what I've 
heard, it sounds like what you have is a fairly snug fit, but only after 
changing the mold a million times. Whatever, though, that's your 
prerogative, and good for you that you did it. You may know (but you 
probably don't) about my own scenario; it doesn't really use much Lua at 
all, but I'm still proud of it as a great way of using the engine as it 
existed.

Anyway, about that rant and the opinions therein:
1. I wrote it.
2. It's not against Solra and Jon, but against Solra and CraterCreator. 
I'm fairly good friends with Jon, and I am actually quite aware of just 
what Lua can do. Having mapped using just Forge ever since it came out, 
and having seen some damn fancy tricks with Lua, I'm still unimpressed; 
to me, it seems like a waste of energy, mostly for what I've said 
already. I mean, if you had decided to make EMR for UT, you'd have a 
larger base of players, you'd have even more fancy tricks (horizontal 
platforms, B&B, sloped surfaces, etc), and they would have already been 
implemented. On the flip side, I can understand /why/ you kept it in A1, 
but still.
3. I don't want to play EMR again. I didn't like it for Infinity.
4. I guess I'm kind of resistant to the idea that fancier tricks equals 
more fun gameplay. Marathon 2 is still a ridiculously fun scenario, and 
obviously there's no Lua there. So (and this might be poor judgment, 
since I haven't played it), the way I'd see EMR is that, well, yeah, you 
did some neat tricks, but is the game fun? If they don't really improve 
on the method of killing monsters -- and that's really where the fun 
is... right? -- then it's sort of superfluous. But that's just me.