On Friday 08 August 2003 14:56, Colin Brown wrote:

> these things are IMO not easily applicable to gba:
>
> * porting a gba game to other platforms: the gba is so different to
> most other gaming hardware that it seems like it would be better to
> just do a total re-write anyway.

not really...many games can work by just rewriting the actual graphics part.
imagine anything along the lines of point-and-click adventures for example.

> * making changes during program execution would require either an
> interpreted language(too slow)

who tells you that its to slow? maniac mansion uses interpreted scripts on the
c64 (1mhz,8bit cpu) and it obviously works ok.

> or compilation on the fly (on a gba?)
> you would also need a console and some way of hooking up a keyboard.

self modifying code?

> * a safe sandbox virtual machine would surely have too big an impact
> on performance for the puny gba cpu

no, thats just an assumption - have you ever tried? it would for sure kill
*some* performance, but not much. and unless you are writing an action-filled
hi-tech shooter/arcade/whatever you can live with that.

> * not having an interpreter or a normal file system makes it kind of
> difficult to add scripts without compiling and linking.

load them to SRAM ? (and who's telling you that you cant have a "normal"
filesystem? i'd assume that most real dev-environments actually DO have that)

> * there will also be resource issues related to having to keep and
> environment(stack etc) for each active script...

not more than for a usual c-compiled program. probably even less.

> Ok, i'm sure there are ways to deal with the above points (i'd really
> like to here them :)) but in the end even if there are work-arounds
> and this stuff is doable, what extra does a scripting language give
> you that is really worth the inevitable dent in performance? (and the
> cost in implementing the scripting and learning to use the language?)

with scripts you can usually develop your stuff much faster than without one.
bugs in scripts can be located more easily (the script interpreter can help
with finding them by itself, printing ill-conditions to console, whatever).

i'd personally suggest you to think about how you would write a graphical
adventure thingy (like maniac mansion) _without_ using some sort of scripting
- you'll answer all your questions yourself

gpz