I''m exploring scripting languages, specifically LUA and Python. I ''ve got them working and they seem really decent. But I''m wondering if there are performance issues/hits to consider when creating my engine. How much code can one consider reasonable to bind into these languages? Would it be inefficiant to have opengl or d3d bindings and write some of the engine in python?

There are some libraries to write machine code on flipcode. You could make your own scripting language compile directly to machine code and it would probably be a lot faster than Lua or Python =-)

Yeah, Extrarius is right ... although I must say that this is WAYS too much work to do ;-) ... I have developed several script compilers/interpreters on my own, and a virtual machine as implementation turned out to be efficient enough to handle even some time-critical parts with scripts, but still it is not as fast as it could be ... I thought that over a while ago, and I came to the conclusion that it was practically not worth the effort, because my code would have executed only 2-3 times faster ( estimated value! ;-) )
Anyways, using scripts is IMHO a good way to make your program more "open-hearted", as thehurricane suggested ... it is DEFINITELY worth the effort !!!


Indeterminatus

--si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses--