apparently jak&daxter (on the ps2) was mostly written in lisp

...well, i thought that was cool, anyway :)



Julian Squires wrote:
> 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.
>



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