LUA in roguelikes - yes or no?

[PaulBlay]

I admit to a certain degree of confusion as to exactly what LUA does for you (and how it should be added to a project). There are a number of variants that use it, and many that don't. And I don't see that ones 'with' are doing things that ones 'without' can't (but maybe I'm missing stuff).

Anyway, your thoughts please.

[Psi]

As WinCE is one of the few platforms that LUA does not compile on, I'd rather it vanished from the Roguelike landscape.

[PaulBlay]

Originally Posted by Psi

As WinCE is one of the few platforms that LUA does not compile on, I'd rather it vanished from the Roguelike landscape.

At least that's a nice clear opinion and reason. Thanks.

[zaimoni]

The only Angband variant that clearly uses Lua to do things that are painful in C, is ToME. (Not impossible, just painful: casting function pointers around to what they need to be.) Lua's prioritization of backward compatibility makes it a very reasonable choice of C-extension language, in spite of its feature similarity to C.

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Psi

As WinCE is one of the few platforms that LUA does not compile on, I'd rather it vanished from the Roguelike landscape.

That's more a deficiency of the C compiler for WinCE than it is of Lua, though...

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by PaulBlay

I admit to a certain degree of confusion as to exactly what LUA does for you (and how it should be added to a project). There are a number of variants that use it, and many that don't. And I don't see that ones 'with' are doing things that ones 'without' can't (but maybe I'm missing stuff).

Anyway, your thoughts please.

First, it's not LUA, it's Lua, the Portuguese word for 'moon'. Don't shout.

Second, there is nothing that can be done in one Turing-complete language that can not be done in some other language. So you can do the same things in C, C++, Python, FreePascal, Lua, etc. since they are all Turing-complete. The reason people add scripting is because generally, higher-level languages (Lua/Python) make certain things easier in ways that lower-level (C) languages don't. It's also very much a matter of personal preference. If you don't want scripting, then you don't want Lua; if you prefer to put item effects outside the compiled game, then you want to use Lua (or some other scripting language).

[Pete Mack]

Originally Posted by takkaria

That's more a deficiency of the C compiler for WinCE than it is of Lua, though...

That may or may not be the case. It's not constructive though, and a quick google shows that it is possible to use lua on WinCE, with a little effort.

[Psi]

Originally Posted by takkaria

That's more a deficiency of the C compiler for WinCE than it is of Lua, though...

WinCE lacks some of the standard C library functions that Lua depends on. I'm not going to defend WinCE - it just happens to be the platform that I always have available

[CJNyfalt]

I just refuse to have to learn a little used scripting language like Lua. If I add scripting I'll choose a mainstream one like Python, which has 50 times more use and is easier to get documentation for.

[Variaz]

In Portralis, I use lua a lot to make customizable monsters, abilities, complex quests with events, etc... So in my case, LUA has proven to be very useful, especially since sometimes, you can post fixes to very annoying bugs without having to make a release just for it.