Game Scripting With Python

P. Staurou writes "There is very interesting article about game scripting with Python over at Sylphis3d.com. It talks about how game engines should be structured as operating systems with actors being the processes. The proposed design is based on a special version of Python called Stackless and already successfully implemented in their own Sylphis3D game engine."

Comments

Civilization 4...

[Fortress]

..supposedly will use Python scripts for most of the AI behaviour. It's supposedly the most easily and thoroughly modifiable game ever. I can't wait to see what the community produces. In fact, I'd say that the developers will incorporate user-generated content in the official patch system.

Not limited to Python.

[indy]

TFA is talking about the use of coroutines to avoid programming state machines. Coroutines are really very useful, as they allow code as simple as the following:

void Airplane::flyLooping() {
    levelOut();
    centerStick();
    pullElevator();
    while(!flyingUpsideDown())
        yield();
    while(flyingUpsideDown())
        yield();
    centerStick();
    levelOut();
}

The code, which is supposed to make an airplane actor fly a looping maneuvre, is much simpler than the corresponding state machine code, which would consist of four states. I used this sort of programming in my hobby flightsim project Thunder&Lightning using this C++ implementation of coroutines. There is also Io, an embeddable language with a very small footprint which is easy to learn and nice to program with and which supports coroutines as well (actors in Io's terminology).

Ogre 3D engine and Python

[gsherman]

Last weekend I pulled in the latest Python (2.4.1) for Winblows, the Ogre 3D engine binary , and PyOgre (http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option=com_remosi tory&Itemid=57&func=selectcat&cat=1).

This combo rocks fairly hard.

Run a 27 line Python script, and boom, you're looking at a working 3d engine. It's fast, too, probably because the heavy lifting is being done in the Ogre runtime binaries.

For developing and prototyping, there's no time wasted (re)compiling changes; tweak some Python and away you go. And there's no reason the code or scene objects can't be tweaked while the engine is running, perhaps by means of a some sort of IPC, whether it's via a telnet/socket-type connection, or an XML-RPC daemon process, or whatever. Some people have even worked up demo on-screen overlays akin to the Quake console.

I'm looking forward to the day I can interact with a 3D environment and manipulate 3D objects with the same immediacy I'm accustomed to manipulating data in the Python interactive prompt. Heck, I'd even learn Smalltalk if they plugged Ogre directly into something like Squeak. But for now, Python + Ogre (PyOgre) seems to show a lot of promise.