Lua 5 is out

if anyone doesn?t know what lua is, its the best, its a scripting language design to be used through something like C/C++, not designed to be a standalone and then hacked to be used by something else (*cough python)
and its very low level and powerful, writing a good c/c++ wrapper for it isn?t that hard, and there?s a few out there already.
its my scripting language of choice.

how does lua compare to writing a game specific script?
does it have support for nifty things like latent functions and virtual object states?

I've checked it out briefly, but currently for my projects I am developing a unique scripting system langauge and associated utilities set. I'll release it when its finished to an appropriate level.

I would be interested in looking at stuff like Lua, Ruby, Tcl, and Python more, but I don't have enough free time at the moment.

Lua is designed to be embeded into a host program, as lava_monkey says. It is small, fast, and very simple and clean (is the way that you make me feeeeeel toniiight... er.. *cough*), and is gaining popularity very fast as a game scripting engine. It can also be used on XBox or PS2, except for the garbage collection problems, which are top priority for 5.1.

As a measure of how easy it is to integrate, I had it running in less then a day after writing a simple wrapper for it.

Let me see if i got this right...
step 1: build lua lib files
step 2: make project that uses them
step 3: scream in pain as it causes linking errors with msvcrt.lib... for stuff it shouldn't
step 4: failing to fix step 3, perform the strong-bad patented computer desk vault on your keyboard.

no seriously, is it meant to be this hard to get an interpreter that can write hello world to work?

the biggest problem i had with lua to start with was compiling the lib + dll files, once thats done getting started shouldnt be too hard.
I havent looked at redwyre's project files yet or lua5 cause i been so busy, but i'll give it a go and see what happens

yay!!! lua works, now to add stuff!

my personal preference is ruby which i use for a game i'm developing at home, very nice c++ integration, but a very high level, and elegant language.

we used python for freedom force, the next best choice imo -- but LUA, it does seem to be a bit lower level than what i want, but i'm sure its much faster and better suited to embedding in a game than either python or ruby, but how ELEGANT is its syntax? is it OO for example?

cheers

GameDev have a new article on lua.

[url]http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/lua/[/url]

It's targeted at people who have never used lua before...

Woo yay & houpla to you sir! That is a very handy article.

nice article, thanks

hmmmmm i looked at its syntax, its got ; at the end of each line, ghey :)

i use scripting languages to escape from such C-isms, lua is not for me =)

i'm sure its more efficient than ruby tho, cheers

err... the ; at the end of each line is optional... does nothing

If you don't link with msvcrt (and why the hell not??), then you will have to goto http://lua-users.org and find the win32 source there. Otherwise you will get lots of linking errors.

oh thats nice then, i cant understand why the guy in the example felt compelled to put a redundant char after every line tho, cheers :)

Gaffer:

C is good tho :}
It's actually slightly more like pascal than C

boo c! ruby is the best ;)

sorry for necro-ing this thread...
sould anybody still happen to have redwyre's vc6 project files?
i found this thread a bit too late it seems [:D]

heh, I'll upload them again when I get a chance :)