Generic engine implementation notes

Just some thoughts on the organization of the general framework we arrived at in the [2013-01-17 conference call](Conference call notes 2013-01-17).

C++ side

• Contains renderer and input subsystems
• Contains utility functions, things that need to be fast etc.
• Contains general notions of:
  • Game objects
    • Area (city, building, room)
    • Item
    • Vehicle
    • Creature
  • Map
  • Controls
  • Modelling
    • e.g. ecology, water
    • On several levels
  • Data files
    • Save files
    • Config files
    • DSL for attributes (see below)
    • Scripting (see below)

scripting side

There are two possible cases here, need to investigate which is best / easiest

• Parameters are in data files, behaviour is in scripts
  • Allows suitable file formats for either instead of one for both
• Everything is in scripts (likely winner)
  • Everything in one place
  • Lua allows for nice syntactic sugar

Scripting

• Basic unit of behaviour: component
  • Consists of code and parameters
  • Possibility of same code, different parameters
• Undecided: API??? Options:
  • Events?
  • Selectors or something?
• Random scripting language feature wishlist
  • Possibility for adding syntactic sugar (e.g. instead of data/config files as above)
  • Functions as first-order objects (this makes programming so nice)
  • Integrated basic data structures like strings and lists
  • Lua satisfies all these!