dusty_one,

Good question. The answer is completely irrelevant of the language you're embedding however, whether it be Lua, Python, Pike, &#106avascript, etc...

In general, the scripting language is the embedded language within a host environment or host language, such as C++. Then, using the host environment you introduce new data types, external methods, etc...and bind them to their equivalent within the scripting language.

For example...

Lets say I want to kill a player from a script method called "KillPlayer(Player)."

I introduce this method and the 'Player' data type into the scripting language via whatever mechanism the language exposes to the host environment. This is different depending upon the embedded language, and what language it's interpreter is written in.

Usually, data types are mapped to structures or classes within the host environment, so a "Player" type within the scripting language might be associated with a Lua_Player C++ class. Similarly methods or functions within the scripting language are registered as callbacks within the host environment.

So when I say "KillPlayer(Player thisPlayer);" in the scripting language, it actually has created a C++ (depends on the host language of course) object which it associates with the object thisPLayer and when I pass it to the KillPlayer method, it actually passes it to a C++ method called something like Lua_KillPlayer().

So the short answer is, the constructs and methods used within the scripting language are parsed and interpreted by the embedded language, and then acted upon by the host environment or language via callbacks and associated data types.

Although I didnt do a very good job of explaining it, you can find the Python documentation for Extending and Embedding Python Here.

Cheers!

So that's how it's done. Is there any noticeable downfall in terms of performance? I would imagine that if some script feature is executed very often it would have some sort of lag, though I could be wrong.

M.