[q2x] OT: Lua questions

Nick Trout nick at rockstarvancouver.com
Mon Feb 9 13:39:17 EST 2004




BH> > I suppose part of my motivation for tackling the game part is to
> > play Q2 with Lua monsters!
> Well, there's still a lot of interesting game-specific stuff that
> isn't monsters, e.g. weapons.  Lua weapons would be fun as well =)

The whole thing is fun! I really loved Quake and Quake2. For some reason
I never got round to Quake3, maybe too much work at the time. I'm
possibly more of a Doom2 fan! That would be fun in Lua! Would probably
run on handhelds as well. Mmmmm. Anyway, one thing at a time.


> CTF is just a separate game DLL, i.e. game_ctfx86.dll or something
> like that.

I was wondering if any code from that DLL would have to migrate to the
game DLL in order that CTF could be done in Lua in the game DLL (i.e. as
Lua implements game features, not the system stuff). This is something I
wouldn't be too keen on moving if there is anything. I don't really want
to get sucked into maintaining the "system" stuff.

> > Guess the noise levels are rising about the Lua C API.
> You mean the fact that it's poorly documented and confusing? =)

It is, and after doing work on Q2X I'm finding parts of it are quite
cryptic and you need to have insight to understand why something is like
that (which perhaps I have more of because I've been on lua-l for a
number of years), which is a classic sign of a lack of documentation!

> > emails asking questions now. Should try and fill in some blanks on
> > the wiki about Lua C programming.
> the lua_pcall thing is a big one, it seems like that has caused a lot
> of confusion for people (myself included).

Hopefully there is a clearer picture now.

> > I have this crazy idea about
> > writing a book about it at the moment.
> 
> Go for it!  It's hard work with little payoff, but hey, you can you're
> published, and it increases your marketability on the off chance you
> end up out on the open market someday.
> 
> Roberto's book is "pretty good", but it's, um, "concise".  It could
> have really stood to be twice its size covering the same area.  Common
> Lua idioms are something that people don't know enough about.

Perhaps I could use q2x as a working example for a book as well. Mmmm.
We'll see, perhaps I could fire off some emails to Roberto asking him
how the book is working out.

Nick




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