What Will Lua Do?

[adam_0]

See, I'm still particularly not sure what Lua's going to do for us. As
I've been reading and learning about it, I've seen nothing
particularly helpful and different about it (although I will admit, I
still don't know that much about it). I know that Alastair wishes to
use it for game logic, but I don't see what particular advantage Lua
has over C++. Can you shed some light on the situation?

Adam

(ps, I changed the group's picture to the Apollo / Ares, which looks
pretty cool, but if you guys have a better one, by all means, post it)

[LANS]

Wait, so are we building a graphics/multiplayer engine in C and using
lua for everything else? Or are we also doing physics in C?

[Alastair Lynn]

I see no reason not to do physics in Lua, although if it proves slow
we can always move it across to C(++).

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[Alastair Lynn]

Hi Adam-

It has the usual advantages of any scripting language. It's easy to
understand, it's easy to do stuff in, it means people can write
interesting maps and mods for the game without having to recompile the
game.

[Adam]

Ok, so scripting will be the method by which users make plug-ins?

You're going to have to show me how some of this stuff works, I think
I understand Lua well enough, but some real application work will help
to solidify my knowledge of what's going on.

Adam

[Admiral Grammaticus]

For what it's worth: if your plan is to essentially rewrite the game
logic in Lua, you should check out http://www.biggerplanet.com/playkode

It's my bleeding-edge, woefully undocumented, save-often-because-it-
might-crash hobby/game programming environment. Basically, it's a
simple IDE that uses Lua, with graphics and sounds.

It's not cross platform (it's Cocoa), it doesn't produce cross-
platform executables, and as an IDE it's basically a toy, but at the
very least it's a fun way to learn Lua. The project structure is very
simple, so in theory you could write a cross platform executor for its
projects.

Here, for example, is a just-for-kicks example:
http://www.biggerplanet.com/download/ares/Ares-Sprite-Test.app.zip

It's a universal app produced by PlayKode I whipped up in about 30
minutes, showing use of the Ares media I released.

I don't want to unduly influence your project, and I'm not suggesting
you should necessarily rely on PlayKode for a project the size of Ares
-- but I couldn't let the intersection of Ares and Lua pass by without
mentioning PlayKode.

[Alastair Lynn]

Hi-

That's a great app you've got there. I'm sure it's possible to emit
system-neutral files: there's a module for lua which integrates with
LLVM, which would be able to spit out target-neutral code. That just
needs to be linked against some kind of standard library and moved
into whatever container format each target system uses. Anyway, I
don't think it's likely we'll end up using PlayKode, but it could be
useful for randomly testing out ideas in prototype form.

Ares is your game, and obviously your input is very highly valued -
as, incidentally, would be your models - so thank you for mentioning
it. It certainly highlighted for me the need for a good Lua IDE. >.>

Alastair