OpenMW-CS Plugins

[Zini]

I thought the plan was going for Python. I don't want to talk down another developers project, but I do not see the attractiveness of this approach, at least for us.

[DestinedToDie]

I am for Python as well. I´ve learned it, it´s easy to learn and use. Would love to write my scripts in Python.

[psi29a]

I thought the plan was going for Python. I don't want to talk down another developers project, but I do not see the attractiveness of this approach, at least for us.

Will you integrate the long-lived out-of-tree python branch?

Perhaps this is the wrong thread, but I meant as an engine scripting language, not just for OpenMW-CS.

[Chris]

I'm not for Python. It's pretty ugly the way it uses whitespace indenting for blocks of code instead of {}... even mwscript at least has 'endif' markers to specify the end of blocks. It also doesn't have strong types, which makes things quite messy and slow to manipulate.

I'm curious what exactly his reasons were for being against AngelScript. AFAIK, it integrates directly with the engine code, that is scripts can directly call engine functions that are set up for it, and it can properly share data structures. It also compiles right to bytecode, and gets some optimizations. The lack of JIT compiling shouldn't be a big problem, since compiled code modules can be shared between instances.

[psi29a]

Ask him!

[Ace (SWE)]

AngelScript does have JIT support built into the base engine, used it myself for several projects even.
Sadly there's no reference implementation for it, and the implementation that I used to use - by Blind Mind Studios, makers of the Star Ruler games - doesn't work for AngelScript 2.30 and upwards.

[nnayo]

I'm not for Python. It's pretty ugly the way it uses whitespace indenting for blocks of code instead of {}

surprising how I find the python formatting quite nice and how you dislike it.
different people, different tastes

[Zini]

@psi29a No chance for python as a scripting language for OpenMW. My position on this hasn't changed. Switching to a different scripting language is a very bad idea. Also, I don't see a reason why the editor and OpenMW should use the same scripting language (it seems that was implied here). The requirements of a in-game scripting language and an editor extension language are very different.


Regarding python indention: Don't want to get into a language war here, but I think a point can be made that the python approach is objectively superior. In languages like C and C++ we express control flow structures in two ways: Through indenting and through {}. This is clearly redundant. Worse, keeping both expressions of structure in sync is (at least by default) not automatically enforced, meaning it takes additional effort from the coder to keep them in sync.

As for the duck-typing I agree that it is a problem, but it is also a pretty nifty feature. For my personal experience in small and medium projects the downsides of duck-typing can be dealt with easily and they don't outweigh the advantages. I haven't used Python in anything bigger though and I would be hesitant to do so.

[psi29a]

Understood, I think that is fair.

I thought there was still talk about additional scripting languages for OpenMW itself, like AngelScript, to avoid having to deal with morrowind scripting language (MSL).