Re: A few questions about scripting

Hi Hao!

It totally depends on the game you're doing, and the purpose you want to use
the script for.

Some games use it more deeply than others, but generally the core base is
kept intact in C/C++ (the performance sensitive side), and only the gameplay
part (the "content" of the game) is written using a scripting language.

Most of the time you'll want to use scripting to simplify things, that is
for your designers (that do not have deep programming skills), or your for
your programmers (to simplify a lot of what's going on the back).

For example, many games (like the old Maniac Mansion, etc) have their own
scripting language which only handles the game dialogs and events ("if
secret-brick moved then open door"), this is very simple for designers to
add or delete, and have a rapid testing approach, if you add a new mission,
then just let your designer to add a few lines and done!..

on the other side, some games like Unreal insert more of the game logic into
the script (but still keeping the heavy side on the C++ code).. but Unreal's
Script abstracts a lot of common GameDev task's for the programmer like
state machines, network server-client communication, etc. (but your game
will hardly make it over the 35fps), and your designers would be terrified
to work with it (though Unreal has Kismet as a visual 'scripting' tool for
them).

A good book for you to get a more deep insight into Game Scripting and get
started would be "Game Scripting Mastery" from Alex Varanese (at least the
first part, the second part is more about making the interpreter for your
own scripting language, which is cool, but if you studied Computer Science
then you have already seen those topics in class).

Cheers!


Jacobo Ríos <http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacoborios>
Development Lead*Larva Game Studios*www.larvagamestudios.com
---------------------------
Phone: +52 (33) 31223242
Av. Tepeyac #54-2B
Guadalajara, Jal.
México





On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 1:01 PM, Hao Wu <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi, there,
>
> I noticed that there was a heated discussion regarding to game
> scripting. I just have some general questions about it.
>
> Since I don't have experience on industrial development, I am curious
> about scripting, hoping someone could show me some real numbers. My
> questions are,
>
> 1. What parts of game development are written by scripting?
> engine base code/gameplay/or others? can anyone specify more details?
>
> 2. For an entire game, how many percents of codes are written by scripting?
> I know it varies dependent on many aspects, but could anyone show some
> real numbers? or maybe a range?
>
> Any comments are welcomed. Thanks in advance!
>
> Best,
> Hao
> _______________________________________________
> Sweng-Gamedev mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.midnightryder.com/listinfo.cgi/sweng-gamedev-midnightryder.com
>

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