Lua. What is it yand why?
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Beginners Area/Lua. What is it yand why?
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| Please excuse my ignorance, but I have read some wiki, searched the forums and skimmed the lua manual but all I want to know is, what is it useful for. I gather it is a scripting language, but what does that mean exactly? |
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| LUA isn't compiled, but is read and interpreted from the file. You can use it in conjunction with games to do stuff that you do not want to hard code. Like for missions for a game. Or, as Im gonna do for my current project (MegaCake), use LUA to add plugins into my application. It's very useful. |
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| as i see it.. It makes modding 100% easier. i.e. I mean people can edit the scripts and diectly change somthing that happerns in a game - or they could make more content. It depends on how much of the game elements you would want scripted. |
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| Scripting is also used in large games to reduce the number of times a program needs to be compiled. Rather than set a value, compile and test, you can keep set the value in file and read it from your compiled program. |
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| Lua also has some useful features. For example, if you want to parse a date string (or indeed, any text at all) in BlitzMax, it's actually easier to write a function in Max that calls Lua. |
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| To see a good usage of LUA: WoW AddOns are all LUA ... the stuff added there should give you some idea of what potentially is possible. Or directly checking out Nebula / Nebula 2 Engine ... full 3d engine scriptable through lua. so in the end, with usefull functions you give it, there is theoretically nothing you can't do :-) |
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