In the last 2 weeks, I looked over (not actually tried) all the scripting languages known to man (ok, known to google ). The one that stood out most was, of course, Lua. Everyone said a lot of nice things about it, and it seemed like Lua is the cure for cancer. I spent quite some tiem looking at how to bind it with my code, how it''s syntax looks like, etc. What I didn''t like was the stack mechanism used to pass values lua<->host. I also didn''t like the syntax at ALL. I mean, I know 2 assembly languages, I know C, Basic, and I know PHP. Knowing 3 different grammar sets (php/c and z80/x86 ASM are relatively gramatically equivalent) is enough, I don''t want to learn somethign as unstanadard as LUA. I skipped over Phyton because it is ugly looking, BIG, and I heard it''s slow (I even seen it in action, as a Blender plugin, and it IS slow). Next I looked over a Forth dialect scripting engine, and I kind of liked it, but there were 2 problems: 1. There was no (apparent) way to call various functions, from the host (only one entry function) 2. Forth is very low level, so a lot of people might not like writting scripts in Forth. Ruby had a syntax nightmare, and a pure OOP design, and I totally disliked that. Then there were some GPL C like languages, but I didn''t like the fact they were GPL (couldn''t live with the GPL license). I looked over the SpiderMokney JS thing, but no matter how hard I tried to find out, I couldn''t determine if it was an interpreted thing, or it actually had a VM. For safety reasons, I decided not to use it. Finally, I found a language, called SMALL, that has ALL the things I wanted: 1. It''s fast 2. Is multiplatform 3. Very easy to integrate in your host program, and it''s easy to call any function from/to your scripts. 4. It is very C (or PHP) like. 5. Has a very fast VM (especially the ASM build) 6. It''s under the Zlib license, which allows you to do pretty much everythign with the code, as long as you mark your modifications, do not claim you wrote it, and include a copy of the license with your distribution. Anyway, if you want a flexible, robust, lightweight, free, c like scripting language, then Small is the way to go! I am very very happy with it

hey, that''s pretty cool. And to think, I''ve been rolling my own all this time.

Actually, writing scripting languages isn''t as hard as it seems (of course, they will be ungodly slow, for the most part). The hardest thing is actually integrating them into your game.

Max Payne, from what I understand, ran off of a C backbone with Pythong (my spelling) scripts out the wazoo. Pythong is a very interesting language, and you are right about it being incredibly slow. However, it''s developement time is very fast, almost making it a RAD language.


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I contemplated writting my own, but I realised that I have more important things to do (like actually working at my game) than writting my own scripting.
Also, a scripting language that is developed for years is better than a scripting language written in 1 month, as a small side project.

Yeah, only LGPL allows you to include the library in your code without having to release the source of your code.
I think a scripting language is usefull if you want to allow your users to change stuff without giving them access to the source code. Scripting also adds security to your application, as opposed to the DLL way, which makes your application insecure (malicious users can include viruses and such).

What I meant was, if you make an engine that allows mods (such as Quake, Unreal, NWN, etc.) there will be modders around, sharing their newest modifications. If you use the DLL way to extend the engine, then malicious people can add malware to their mods, and the game engine will happily execute the binary code that contains the virus.

As for the "yuck" factor, associated with having 100 DLLs or code files, this is where Small (but other scripting languages as well) makes a difference: You don''t include the sourcecode of your scripts, but you compile them first. For example, my way is to put all the script files into a single file (keep thems eparate but include all of them in the main file), compile it as p-code, and include that p-code file in the distribution.

You lost me at: "I skipped over Phyton because it is ugly looking, BIG, and I heard it''s slow "

For one, its PYTHON... (but, hey we all typo.)

And for two, its a beautiful language. Clean syntax, somewhat standardized formatting.
I cringe to hear it called slow (What would that make java then? ... Frozen molasses?)

Anyway, all that aside - it has a huge following, is widely used, and is definately not something that should be skipped over.
Perhaps you should jump on by http://www.python.org/ again and take a second look.
I did, and I am thankful for it.

- Jacob

Yes, sorry for the typo
Well, the problem is, a lot of people, including me, don''t like the fact that you have to obey some strict allignment rules, or else your code gets messed up in various unfunny ways.
Second, it is slow, I seen a Phyton script exporting an MD2 out of Blender, and it took like 6 seconds to do that, on a XP 1.7 GHZ
I need all the speed I can get, because the scripting language is embedded in an MMORPG server (which is not threaded).
I also heard that it''s kind of complicated to embed it in your host, and that phyton is meant more as a programming language which you expand with external modules than as a glue language (which is what most of the games need)