Re: A few questions about scripting

I asked this and discussed with several developers all around the world, so
i'd like to wrap up my experience.

Several (and I mean SEVERAL) developers are completely against scripting in
any way or form.  I even heard this argument
from tech leads of "large" studios. Their reasoning is simple "Why
bothering? It's slow". That seems to be a common
position. I even heard some claiming that they implemented their own
language based on connecting logic blocks and forcing content developers to
use it because it's faster than a VM. Some propertary game engines i worked
with also use this, and even force it to the developer.

>From other developers i think i've heard more flexible answers, such as that
it doesn't make much of a difference performance-wise to write scripting or
native, as long as the code is not critical. A common approach seems to be
having a design that allows to transparently refactor components from
scripting to native when they are showing to be a performance bottleneck, so
based on their experience i've always done this.

About the benefits of scripting over native code, I've usually heard the
following arguments:
1) Hacked code (not nice looking or comprehensible) is often written much
faster. If the engine architcture is nice and organized , hacking away
scripting over it is a very optimal approach, given that most scripting
languages have more flexible data structures.
2) Scripting is easier to debug (and I mean, dynamically typed languages,
not C# used as scripting) and can be changed/reloaded on the fly.
3) In most scripting languages, the bytecode is often much smaller than
compiled native code, allowing to have a lot more content loaded (I've heard
this from GBA/DS developers who are very limited in memory and physical
storage).
4) Most scripting languages are MUCH easier to learn than C or C++ to
newcomers, so less experienced programmers (read: easier/cheaper to
hire/find) can be used to write content.


Cheers.

Juan Linietsky




On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Tim Stowell <[email protected]> wrote:

> argh, sorry I meant "which parts might be best left to scripting and which
> parts might best be a fit for native c++/c etc"
>
> -Tim
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 8:23 AM, Tim Stowell <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I don't think it's pointless to ask about how much of a game is written in
>> a scripting language because for someone who may be trying to design their
>> own engine, it's useful to know how much of the engine's functionality might
>> best be left to scripting and which parts would be a better fit for
>> scripting. While it's true that it's all programming, implementing a
>> scripting engine takes a whole different work flow as compared to just
>> hitting the c++ compiler.
>>
>> -Tim
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Thaddaeus Frogley <codemonkey.uk@
>> gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> UnrealScript is compiled to bytecode, and executed by the UnrealEngine
>>> virtual machine.
>>>
>>> The distinction between "scripting language" and "not scripting
>>> language" is arbitrary and not clear cut.  Getting your nickers in a
>>> twist about how our pet language is "not a scripting language" does
>>> you no favors.
>>>
>>> Trying to work out "what percentage of a game is written in scripting
>>> languages" is as pointless as asking what percentage of fixing are
>>> nails rather than to screws.
>>>
>>> At the end of the day, it's all programming.
>>>
>>> Thad
>>> --
>>> Thaddaeus Frogley
>>> Senior Programmer, Climax Games
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>>> Sweng-Gamedev mailing list
>>> [email protected]
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>
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