[TerranUp16]

Out of a bit more than curiosity, among the developers here what triggering/scripting languages have you used, what ones do you like/prefer and why, what ones do you dislike and why, and what style of triggering/scripting appeals to you most?

To start the discussion, I've used multiple kinds of GUI triggering, JASS (custom scripting language for WC3), C4 and Quest3D GUI scripting, and Lua. GUI scripting definitely has caught my eye as very interesting- the languages I've worked with have been more effective than a lot of proprietary languages like JASS but provide a mix of the approachability of GUI triggering while still emphasizing more normal programming/computer science methodologies (as opposed to pure, "It's much closer to English and thus accessible"). At the moment though, I'm probably most comfortable with Lua. My preference though would be Sandbox C++, which is C++ used as a scripting language pretty much.

[cyb.tachyon]

I've used flipping everything. My faves: Python, Sandbox C++, Javascript, and Lua
Abstraction (like CryEngine's Nodes) can be very powerful combined with easy access to the actual script.

Oddly enough I'm finding that using Javascript is becoming a more and more attractive option for game devs, especially when a web experience is integrated into the game itself. Here's a project that uses Javascript and even goes as far as to integrate webkit into the engine that I've been following intensely (blog): http://blog.wolfire.com/ Overgrowth

I feel this is where the biggest pull is for scripting in the industry, and we'll start seeing more Javascript enabled games in the future.

[TerranUp16]

Yeah, Javascript is definitely interesting. Probably my question with the progression of Javascript is that GUI Script placed on top of Sandbox C++ or some other sandbox and/or scripting language seems to also have a lot of potential and there do seem to be a lot of people who *require* GUI to script. I do suppose you could make Javascript available beneath the GUI script but I kinda feel like if I were to spend the time and effort to make a really good GUI scripting platform for newer users to utilize that I'd polish that up as much as possible so that would be the primary form of scripting and then I'd keep something more powerful under the hood, like Sandbox C++, since ostensibly the only people interested in going under the hood are people that really know what they're doing, at which point Sandbox C++/C#/etc would be most effective.

Of course, as mentioned Javascript is only starting to make its way in so I guess it remains to be seen how it is received by variously skilled scripters.

[Avalon]

I notice you guys both like LUA, and I recall that NS2 is being developed mostly in LUA.

[TerranUp16]

Avalon said:

I notice you guys both like LUA, and I recall that NS2 is being developed mostly in LUA.

Yeah, I read about that. A lot of games use Lua extensively (and/or some proprietary form of it) for scripting. I'm not quite sure if NS2 uses Lua any more so than most other games that use it do. Lua is nice as it's a rather effective traditional scripting language. It has the advantage of being used in a lot of games and applications so among scripting languages, familiarity with it is quite good and it's not overly complex to learn either (still a notch above Javascript and GUI systems though). Still, not quite on par with Javascript and C++ familiarity though.