[ANN] Lua Alchemy v0.3.1

[Alexander Gladysh]

Announcing Lua Alchemy v0.3.1 release.

Demo: http://lua-alchemy.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/demo/index.html
Official site: http://code.google.com/p/lua-alchemy/
Sources: https://github.com/lua-alchemy/lua-alchemy/

Lua Alchemy is a MIT-licensed Lua implementation for the Adobe Flash
VM. (More correctly, it is the classic Lua 5.1.4, compiled under Adobe
Alchemy[1], with some pleasant sugar frosting on top.)

One of pleasant features is that with Lua Alchemy you can access
Action Script objects from the Lua code:

local label = as3.class.mx.controls.Label.new()
label.text = "Hello World"
canvas.addChild(label)

(See more examples in the demo application linked above.)

Some changes in this version were sponsored by the DragonRAD:
http://dragonrad.com/.

See full list of changes here:

https://github.com/lua-alchemy/lua-alchemy/blob/v0.3.1/HISTORY

One interesting thing in the new release is the demo, demonstrating
how to run Lua Alchemy code as AIR application on iOS (or anywhere
really, where AIR is supported).

All and any feedback welcome.

* * *

Note on compatibility with upcoming Flash Player 11.2:

Adobe is phasing out old Adobe Alchemy, to be replaced with a new,
paid Alchemy 2 (of which almost nothing is yet known).

As of Flash Player 11.2 (not yet released by Adobe), Adobe Alchemy
(and, consequently, Lua Alchemy) would not work when compiled to SWF
13. It still would work when compiled to SWF 12. Lua Alchemy v0.3.1
build settings do not take this in account, so, they are, at this
point, broken under Flash Player 11.2 if built with Flex SDK 4.6.

Anyone interested should track this ticket:
http://code.google.com/p/lua-alchemy/issues/detail?id=160

I hope to fix the issue before Flash Player 11.2 is released.
Meanwhile, building Lua Alchemy (and your application, I guess) with
older Flex SDK versions should help.

* * *

Note on Alchemy 2 support: I do plan to support Alchemy 2 when it
would be available. Since I do not know anything about its API yet, I
can't estimate anything.

* * *

Note on Adobe AIR: I see that Native Extensions for Adobe AIR provide
introspection interface similar to what Adobe Alchemy provides. This
means that it should be possible to create an AIR native extension,
that would provide API similar to Lua Alchemy, but would be much
faster. I plan to poke this, but no ETA as well.

* * *

Remember, if you want your pet feature to be implemented in Lua
Alchemy faster, you may want to sponsor it. ;-)

* * *

Thank you, everyone, for your support,
Alexander.

[Axel Kittenberger]

NIce,

couldn't you do this in HTML5/Javascrtipt? That would be faaaar more awesome.

[Alexander Gladysh]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 09:55, Axel Kittenberger <axk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> NIce,

Thank you.

> couldn't you do this in HTML5/Javascrtipt? That would be faaaar more awesome.

You could — with emscripten etc. I wish I had any time to code this...
Lua Alchemy now continues to be developed mainly because of sponsors
(for which I'm grateful, of course).

Alexander.

[Bobby Parker]

You could, but there wouldn't be much point. JavaScript provides a way to do in-place evals(). Lua's advantage is that it gives you a nice lightweight scripting language that can execute at runtime, as opposed to be compiled like flash is. Flash's "compiled format" makes it challenging for someone to do make runtime effects with scripts like lua does. Lua's also got a nice procedural approach that you can use, vs. Flash's OOP methods.

Including Lua into Javascript really does nothing for you, except for maybe you get some advantages with metatables. Other than, I don't think it would be "far more awesome"...I'd rather regard it as somewhat pointless, since JavaScript has native "eval" built into it, and if performance is an issue for you, you'd just be slowing everything down even more than it already is with JS by adding more execution layers.

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 1:55 AM, Axel Kittenberger <axk...@gmail.com> wrote:

NIce,

couldn't you do this in HTML5/Javascrtipt? That would be faaaar more awesome.

--
Bobby Parker
sh0r...@gmail.com
http://www.stormwind-studios.com