The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Everything about development and the OpenMW source code.
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psi29a
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by psi29a »

Python is pretty easy to learn and more importantly to get something up and running quickly. The number libraries available in Python are breath taking and considering that most scientific, compute and big-data are tooled towards Python is a great plus point in having it in the editor. So having something that goes through and systematically (and/or proceduraly) add trees, grass and plants based on biomes (land types), someone can whip that up in a weekend.

That being said, I see no issue with "tools" being developed in Python (access to disk, internet, etc.) for the editor and having in-game scripting and "mods" being Lua and sandboxed.
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wareya
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by wareya »

Python is absurdly difficult to embed in a secure way. Lua is popular exactly for the reason that it's a prebuild language designed for secure embedding.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by AnyOldName3 »

We don't need the CS' scripting language to be secure as it's likely to need to do stuff like access files and potentially even web services.
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psi29a
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by psi29a »

wareya wrote: 18 Jun 2018, 21:23 Python is absurdly difficult to embed in a secure way. Lua is popular exactly for the reason that it's a prebuild language designed for secure embedding.
Agreed (that's what I said) :)
onionland
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by onionland »

We seem to be getting a bit off-topic, but it appears that most developers seem to be in favor of newscript.

Or more distinctly, there seem to be a good number of contributors willing to spearhead the implementation of newscript, whilst, with the exception of Zini, no contributor seem to be ready to spearhead the implementation of oldscript+, and, quite frankly, intending no offense and with a great amount of appreciation, I don't think Zini would be able to dedicate the effort to spearhead such a project himself whilst also acting as the project lead. Whilst he is free to prove me wrong, I think it would be unwise to attempt to go ahead with oldscript+ over newscript without anyone stepping up to that role as people already have with newscript.


Another quite important point which has been brought up, but not quite emphasized enough is the fact that any newscript which is chosen will be much better documented than oldscript ever has been, and documenting oldscript+ would be a considerable effort.
As a personal anecdote, as someone which did not develop mods back in the old days of dealing with oldscript, I have ABSOLUTELY no intention of ever familiarizing me with it, regardless of any feature you add to it, short of a complete overhaul, and I would be surprised if many newer modders do not share my opinion.
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psi29a
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by psi29a »

Just a FYI... this isn't a dead thread. Zini started the discussion and he'll respond soon. (That's not in Valve time)
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Zini
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by Zini »

I don't think Zini would be able to dedicate the effort to spearhead such a project himself whilst also acting as the project lead.
Actually, I had planned to see if I can take a week off for this (possibility of that would have been highly depending on the timing of 1.0). That would have been enough to get at least a few core features ready, enough for 1.1 to proceed.

Anyway, it looks like that will not happen. We are currently working out some other details in regards to post-1.0 development. I'll post an update as soon as all the parts are in place.

Really curious to see how many people will actually show up to help with newscript design and later newscript implementation.
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by psi29a »

Will there be a oldscript to newscript translator in openmw-cs? Would this also be used to translate oldscript at runtime to newscript in openmw itself?
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Thunderforge
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by Thunderforge »

I guess the question is whether or not it would be easier to have oldscript and newscript as parallel APIs or if it would be better to have an oldscript to newscript conversion process (either during runtime or as part of the mod installation process). My thought is that having parallel APIs that don't mix with each other would be the simpler route, but I'm not entirely sure.
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Zini
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Re: The Future of OpenMW Scripting

Post by Zini »

That is a far future topic. A translator would be a major undertaking. Not on the table, short-term. But if and when we get to it we will run the translation on the fly, i.e. both in OpenMW and OpenMW-CS.
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