Guile for Game Scripting

Guile for Game Scripting

[Luiji Maryo]

Hello,

As a side project, I am developing a free software game engine and IDE
for 3D games aiming for rapid application development, portability,
and quality even on old hardware.

The gaming industry de facto standard for game scripting is Lua.
However, I want this to be a GNU project at some point, and the GNU
official standard scripng language is, as you know, Guile.

The problem is that Guile is not nearly as easy to learn as Lua, and
most game developers will already know Lua.  Guile also does not seem
fitting for game development, as it leans more towards mathematical
computer science and artificial intellegence.  However, both math and
AI are essential to game development.

Another thing is that I don't think Lua is at all good as a markup
language compared to Guile-parsable SEXPS, and even XML and YAML.

My questions are as follows:

- Would it be bad to use Lua?  The GNU standards say to use Guile
unless it is very unsuitable, and it appears that it is very
unsuitable with Lua being so much more known.

- If I use Lua as a scripting format, would it be bad to use Guile for
a markup language?  Or would it be better to implement a short,
50-line SEXP parser.
-- It appears to me that implementing a SEXP parser would be much more
efficient since many of Guiles features would be wasted.

- Would Guile actually be better for game development then Lua?

I currently want to use a SEXP/Lua combination, but I am open to suggestion.

Thanks!
- LM

Re: Guile for Game Scripting

[No Itisnt]

Guile is gradually coming to support multiple languages, including a
Lua 5.1 implementation which I am working on right now. So they are
not necessarily mutually exclusive.

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:34 PM, Luiji Maryo
<luiji@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> As a side project, I am developing a free software game engine and IDE
> for 3D games aiming for rapid application development, portability,
> and quality even on old hardware.

Cool! Good luck.

> - If I use Lua as a scripting format, would it be bad to use Guile for
> a markup language?  Or would it be better to implement a short,
> 50-line SEXP parser.
> -- It appears to me that implementing a SEXP parser would be much more
> efficient since many of Guiles features would be wasted.

Yes, Guile would be a huge dependency if all you want is the
s-expression reader. Look at Chibi Scheme
<http://code.google.com/p/chibi-scheme> for a tiny S-expression
reader.

Re: Guile for Game Scripting

[Andy Wingo]

Hi Luiji,

No Itisnt has already mentioned that Guile will support Lua, but I don't
think there's a problem with using the canonical implementation of Lua,
no. Basically the thing is, use what you want, but GNU suggests Guile;
and in the near future Guile will have decent support for a couple other
languages, Lua included.

On Fri 23 Jul 2010 20:34, Luiji Maryo <luiji@users.sourceforge.net> writes:

> - If I use Lua as a scripting format, would it be bad to use Guile for
> a markup language?  Or would it be better to implement a short,
> 50-line SEXP parser.

But I'm responding to you over this paragraph. It's not about parsing,
it's about (eventually) turning your application inside-out. See

  http://hydra.nixos.org/build/565540/download/2/guile.html/Programming-Overview.html#Programming-Overview

for a discussion.

Happy hacking,

Andy
-- 
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