Quake Lua

[JasonX]

[JasonX]

[ceriux]

[mh]

[Sajt]

I imagine that it was a lot of fun to code the lua compiler and interpreter because it and the language specs were so small and simple. But like I said in some other thread, I don't think dynamic-typed languages (i.e. lots of obscure runtime errors, less errors caught at compile time) are good for game programming. Also Lua is a lot slower than QuakeC, but probably not slow enough to notice on modern machines, unless you have a ton of monsters in a map.

I think most games that use lua have most of their gamecode in C++, and just use lua for small extensions and scripts. (Maybe comparable to Duke3D's USER.CON.) It wouldn't be a very practical language to do all the gamecode in. (About as practical as using JavaScript...) There is or was for a while some kind of 'chic' appeal of using Lua in games, but you must look past that and determine if it's practical for your particular game. It's probably used as a quick-fix for games initially built without scripting/modding support (like USER.CON). In that case, Quake with QuakeC is already beyond that.

Ceasing my unsolicited rant and finally answering the thread topic: Nope, I don't remember ever hearing about Lua in Quake.

[Karatorian]

I haven't heard about this either. However, I've been kicking around an idea in the back of my head to integrate Python into Quake. I've got no real compelling reason, it's just an idea I had.

I guess the real reason is that Python's been my language of choice for quite some time now. Nothing else I've used seems to fit what I want out of a language as well.

The other reason is that it'd be a two-birds-one-stone learning experience. Despite doing a bit of QuakeC modding off and on over the years, I've never messed with engine internals, (other than tweaking a few things to get supposedly portable code (I won't name names) to compile on Linux). I've also never embedded Python in anything. So if I embedded Python in a Quake engine, I'd learn about both.

That said, Lua seems to be an ok language and really easy to embed. I ported it to the GBA in about a day once, just on a lark.

I think if someone was to bother with this sort of thing, it'd be better to think a little loftier than just replacing QuakeC. Once you've thrown out compatibilty on that deep a level, you might as well go all out. Like try and strip game specific stuff out of the engine and make it more generic.

[Sajt]

Go get 'em, tiger! (Just don't expect people to suddenly start making mods for it...)

[mankrip]

Some of my main problems with QC are:
- It hates strings (even with extensions, it isn't as flexible and easy to use as plain C).
- It doesn't have arrays and matrices (any custom compiler's implementation I've seen is buggy).
- It doesn't have pointers.
- It doesn't run while the game is paused or disconnected.
- It can't read a lot of engine-side information, such as keybindings.
- It can't read raw input data (both digital and analog).
- And... well, it just wasn't designed for anything else other than what Quake is.

[Spike]

[Feared]

[r00k]

[Feared]

[frag.machine]

[gnounc]

[leileilol]