Recently i began developing a game with a small team, all a hand full of n00bs =P. Anyways there's one question that hunts me. What would be better to imply lua or python ai. The concept of the game is that it's gonna be a large scale MMORPG. We have three options for the server - A full standalone version in C++ - Addon-AI scripts with python - Addon-AI scripts with lua I know python is a powerfull language to so duch stuff with but lua is rissing fast as well lately. What do you guys think would be a overall better solution?

Neither will be 'better' - it all depends on what your requirements are. Python and Lua are just languages and have no specific benefits for AI. Therefore your choice will come down to which language suits you more. If you really do just have a "handful of n00bs" then my first recommendation would be to abandon the MMORPG, but since you'll probably ignore that, my second recommendation is to read some sample Python and Lua code and make a decision on which one looks better to you.

Consider how much time you might use up to implement the embedding of the LUA/Python (and interface layers to your engine) and the time to learn another language, versus just doing it all in C++ (possibly use C Macros to make a simplified language and use DLLs if you need the quick edit&run that scripting supposely is good for.)

It all depends how complex the scripts get (ie- do you even need control statements). The slower execution of Lua/Python as compared to native C++ code probably wont matter (you would be doing all the costly things like A* pathfinding in C anyway unless you were insane).


Actually take time to write in pseudo code what you will want to have the script doing (actually write examples), so that you will have an idea what abilities your script system will need and how much of the game engine will have to be exposed to it thru an interface layer.

[Edited by - wodinoneeye on February 15, 2007 9:04:28 PM]

I can't speak to the ease of embedding python, but we use Lua in our MMOG (first M is a lie...) and it was relatively easy to setup. Since then we have had very few problems with it.

Most of our audience is kids aged 7-15 and some of them have been smart enough to figure out how Lua works and write their own scripts to control in-game objects, which is kindof amazing.

One nice thing about Lua (again, not sure about python) is that we can have a thousand Lua threads running at once without there being a performance issue. It's a nice system.

AI Specific: I would be surprised if it mattered which language you used.