LUA question, sorry if it's been answered

Search isn't working for me so I don't know if this was asked.

I am starting to learn Lua to start making my mods, how powerfull is it usualy? Can I do anything I want with Lua and will PA support Lua coding? :mrgreen:

Lua scripting is only as powerful as the developers allow it to be. If every single function in the game engine is bound to a Lua equivalent, then one can effectively use the entire engine. It's quite powerful and quick, and tends to be used in a lot of game engines (and other software) for modding and customization, so it's definitely worth learning.

However, according to the devs, PA will not use Lua. The scripting language of choice has yet to be announced, but with the focus on modability in PA, I'm pretty sure it will cover a wide range of functionality.

I hope so, thank you :mrgreen:

If i´m not correct pls feel free to say.

They said Lua will NOT be in Plannetary Annihilation in any form because they don´t like it. The Game(Engine is written in C#)

C++, not C#. (At least, I sincerely hope not . . .)

I am pretty sure Neutrino wrote somewhere that they use C++.

C++? Should I move to that instead?

C++ is a lower level language that is used for the actual engine implementation. Learning it is always handy from a programming perspective (In fact, I always recommend that it be a new programmer's first language, but that's just me), but when it comes to modding, few games actually expose their C++ api for modders to use. (Unless they are open source.)

More commonly, an intermediary language is used to interface with the C++ api, which allows the developers more control over what the modders can do with the engine. These are generally chosen to be Lua, Angelscript, Pawn, Scheme, Javascript (surprisingly), Python, etc. Lua tends to be the most popular, but the language to learn really depends on the game you are modding.

You don't learn a language.

You learn how to program. Once you know how to program, working out how to do that in a new language only takes a day or so.

What I suggest you do is pick something that you want to work on (for example, FA) and code like all hell. Push yourself as hard and as far as you can.

If you need to jump to C++ to mod PA, then so be it. The more experience you have beforehand the easier it will be. That said, C++ certainly isn't a beginners language.

True but learning how to program includes getting some experience with different languages. Still some languages are hard to master even for programmers with experience. C++ for example is a very insane language that requires extreme discipline to use well.

This is literally how I learned how to program. I picked something I wanted to build and figured out how to build it a piece at a time. The first thing I ever wrote in C was a paint program. It ran at 640x480 16-color mode. Since I wasn't doing animation I had room for two full pages that I could quickly toggle between. One was the canvas and one was the tools. Paint programs are a great place to start because they are fundamentally simply (sample mouse position and draw a pixel).

None of the C++ stuff will be exposed directly because it's hard to do cross platform. I considered embedding LLVM and just using C++ for scripting but chucked that idea after some internal discussions. It's possible that we may end up with more than one scripting language in the game although we currently only have one. For a while we actually considered writing the client and server in different languages (e.g. something like Go for the server). I partially rejected that because I know that I can make it work in C++ and I don't want to take on more technical risk than I already am. C++ is definitely starting to show it's age.

Well, now that the C++ standards committee is starting to work on more frequent revisions, I suspect its longevity will increase.

Also, embedding LLVM in the game engine? That's an interesting concept indeed . . .

Excuse my ignorance but what does FA stand for? Also I'll probably try to make some very basic programs in C++, where can I find documentation for it? For Lua I'm using going to use "Love 2D" in order to learn how to program with that.

I'm already used to Pascal so I know some of the basic stuff anyway.

What is this I don't even
It stands for Forged Alliance BTW
Mike

Ah, I only played at the first Supreme Commander but I never played at the expansion....

Thanks I guess...

Glad to help ;p

Mike

Indeed, I asked Bjarne Stroustrup (creator of C++) about it, and he said he would not create C++ today. Also, admitted that it would probably take 10,000 years before they got a decent syntax.

Oh, Go would be an excellent choice for server. Well, I find it an excellent language all around; it is one of the few languages that has recently gotten me very excited, and excited as I am, I am writing a game I'm developing in Go.