Re: Writing games in interpreted languages

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Christoph Reichenbach wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, 27 Dec 1999, Davis, Daniel wrote:
> 
> > Perl isn't a compiled language and therefore not suitable for gaming.
> 
> I disagree. The fact that Perl (or Python, Scheme, etc) code is
> interpreted in software rather than being executed on an actual processor
> just means that this particular piece of code will need a few more
> processor cycles to be executed.

A *few* more?!?  Try 50 times slower than C or C++ !!  (For python at least).

If most of the execution time in your game is spent in some other library
(which *is* written in a compiled language), then you may not lose too badly,
but in a sense, that's cheating!

> On the other hand, it will give you all
> the advantages of sand-boxed development, like powerful in-game
> debugging, increased stability, and portability (if done right).
> Of course, it's too slow for doing high-performance graphics "manually".
> But running the actual game logic in an interpreter makes a lot of sense
> and has been done in many historic games (All of Sierra's AGI and SCI
> games, LucasArts SCUMM games, Quake 1 and 3, and IIRC all Infocom
> adventures).

For the very top levels of the logic, that's true - but that's a long
way from saying that you should write games in an interpretive language.
 
> (Binary compatibility is another reason for interpreting code. But Binary
> compatibility is a kludge, and hardly worth mentioning).

If you rely heavily on compiled language libraries, then those won't
necessarily be portable, be developable in a sand-box, have in-game
debugging or any of the other things you advocate.

In the end, you'll just be re-scripting someone else's game - that's
about the limit of what you can do with interpretive languages - except
in the rare case of a game where performance is not an issue.
 
-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
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