Should I be using scripting in this circumstance?

I am writing a game. it is in c++ an direct x and I think I am making my own engine as I am programming from winproc up.

I have made large amounts of progress such as sound, collision detection, AI specific to my game settings, dynamic graphics creation from tile sheets.

after doing some research on event programming I have been told to "script it". I have researched this and as far as i see scripting is used开发者_JAVA百科 so non programmers can add to the project.

I an a prety good programmer and I have no intention of having anyone else work on the game except on outside things such as graphics or map design. I already had a function where I can read in maps from csv files. these contain not just the tile layout but the npc data, entrances/exits. other files of the same nature control monster and item data so I can update the contents without a recompile.

So I am asking for the view of experienced programmers and maybe real world examples that relate to my circumstances as to why I should or should not use scripting in my game?

The NPC and monster data need to be able to contain some simple logic like "if the player has this item", "if the player has been to somewhere", "if the player is comming from the right" etc. And for this you'll need ability to define some composed actions and conditionals. That is called scripting and is best done by incorporating some existing script language interpreter like Lua, Python, some variant of JavaScript, whatever.

There are several reasons to use a scripting system in a game, not just as you pointed out, to allow non-programmers to add game content. The first game I worked on professionally used a scripting system and the only people who were writing scripts were the programmers who created the scripting system. There were two reasons they used it:

1. build times

   New data files/script files can be tested quickly. This particular engine didn't support it, but some allow for script files to be reloaded while the game is running. The more times you can iterate through the build-deploy-test cycle, the more you will be able to tweek your game and end up with a much better game.

2. power of expression

   A custimized scripting system can allow you to easily express/code concepts that are cumbersome in traditional programming. For example, the game engine I am working with now allows me to easily control concurrent animations in script.

I don't think scripting is entirely necessary in your case. The bonus behind adding scripting support an engine have been listed up and down this page.

• It gives you a simple langue to work with
• It is more accessible to someone without training
• It can be compiled on the fly, hot swapped at runtime

For lots of high end games with large teams these items are very important. But it really comes down to the goals for your engine. If you are not considering sharing your engine and plan to work on the game just yourself then scripting does loose some of its benefits. Adding a scripting language also has some down sides.

• Add complexity and creation time to your engine
• Increase debug time, even if the scripting language has a wonderful debugger, switching between 2 languages is never smooth.

As long as you still have a data driven design (keeping stats and types in separate files which can be swapped out during runtime) you retain the ability to hot-swap out data for rapid iteration.

definitivly add scripting. Its a pita to recompile the whole game, just because your player does 0.8 damage instead of 1.0. Also, If you want to have a door open under certain circumstances, you need it definitfly. I would do most of the game in a scripting language, Its just more flexible.

Big names are using scripting languages. For example Eve Online is written in stackless python. Other examples can be found here: http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonGames