Hi. My two cents.

On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 04:55:19AM -0000, Damian Yerrick wrote:
> What is the fundamental difference between scripts and C anyway?

In theory, not too much. In practice, overhead -- scripts are generally
interpreted, usually at a bytecode level; scripting languages usually
have all the storage issues hidden from view, usually with automatic
variable creation (on a stack) and a garbage-collected memory allocator;
scripting languages almost always have a larger runtime support system
than C, especially if they support lisp-ish eval and similar.

IMO, the real issue is that if you really want to push the boundries on
the GBA, you can't always afford those overhead issues. A game like
Maniac Mansion is the perfect example of the style of game where
scripting is great... you're unlikely to be doing all that much in
realtime except some decompression, there's lots of special case game
logic for different areas, and the game's entities don't have much to do
in terms of AI.

Also, scripting languages are often used with the consideration that the
designers can write in them, and test with them, more easily than they
could in C. Of course, this only applies with a certain set of games.

There will always be people who frown on any language that isn't C,
especially languages with the overhead of the typical scripting
language; but on the GBA, for many games, they're right.

(What I don't get is why no one considers any of the nice modern
languages for their game logic code, like modula3, or even ocaml or
sather)

Cheers.

--
Julian Squires