If you want non-programmers to be able to write your scripts. Why ask which existing programming language the scripts should be written in? Non-programmers won't know the difference between them or have any experience with them (by definition of being non-programmers). So perhaps you are asking programmers which would be best for non-programmers?
When you ask which existing language to use, are you asking "which is easiest to learn for non-programmers?" or "which would be most suitable to write missions in?".
I think you're doing it wrong.
I think the questions you should be asking are more like:
"What kind of things/missions should be possible to script"
"How can I make it easy to scrip them, in a way that's intuitive and easy to learn for non-programmers" - note you don't need to dumb it down (think of the type of people who learnt core making in ICE - allegiance cores weren't designed to be readily understood by the average player (they were designed to be used efficiently by computers), but people do learn them when they put the effort in).
I think you should be thinking of making your own scripting language give it a load of useful functions (compare how you do things like move the mouse pointer to the location a matching image on screen in a web page in autohotkey vs how you would do it in C++ C# python etc). I'd also suggest you make it event driven, maybe you should play with starcraft's mission/map editor (the original starcraft, I haven't tried the new starcraft's mission editor) - that's one of the most successful mission creation tools ever I think.
A simple text based language could work
See if you can figure out what's going on:
Code: Select all
EVENT: INIT
DO:
objective=1
EVENT: INIT
DO:
DISPLAY MESSAGE "Go kill that miner and wait for further instructions"
EVENT: PLAYER kills 1 MINER ANYWHERE
DO:
SET myFlag1
ISSUE ORDER PLAYER move 150,30,0
EVENT: PLAYER within 1000m of 150,30,0 //event is triggered whenever player is close to some x,y,z
CONDITION: isSet(myFlag1) //and player has previously completed the objective
DO:
UNLOCK Aleph2
objective++
DISPLAY MESSAGE "Nice work move onto your next objective"
TRIGGER EVENT myCustomEvent
See if what you think the above does matches what I was thinking (i.e. is it obvious what it does and how):
Script is made up of blocks of the form:
EVENT: some event
[CONDITION]: Optional condition - only execute the DO bit if this condition evaluates to true, if condition is not present always execute DO on the event firing
DO:
script actions here
script is determined to stop when either the next event block is reached or the EOF is reached.
INIT is an event that is called automatically once at the start of the mission, can be used to initialise variables, trigger the mission briefing etc.
You can have multiple event handlers for the same event (in above e.g. there are two handlers for the INIT event), both execute concurrently (neither "consumes" the event in a race condition type of manner).
Script does the following
Initialises a variable objective to 1 (mentioning a variable creates it) and displays a message.
When a kill event is triggered which has the local player killing a ship that is capable of mining at any location another variable is created and set and a move order is issued to the player
When the player moves within 1000m of 150,30,0 (some x,y,z position in the sector the player is in - as the sector is unspecified) a condition is tested - if myFlag1 has been set. If the miner hasn't been killed then that flag doesn't exist so condition evaluates false and nothing happens, if the player has killed the miner (or otherwise done something to set myFlag1) then an aleph is unlocked (why shouldn't we be able to enable/disable passage through alephs in scripts?), the objective variable is incremented, a message is displayed then some other user defined event is triggered.
Well, there's a bit of a simple mission written in a made up scripting language that resembles english in ~20 short lines. Do you think something like the above would be easier for non-programmers to use than say python or javascript?
You could even make a GUI script editor with drop down boxes with the available options etc in.
MrC, I'd suggest avoiding a visual programming language is only because they can get very messy (even if they have auto tidy-up tools,
here's some labview I did as a side project in my PhD), also not everyone has 3 24" monitors. I'd also suggest against them because they're good for sequential operations on data (though array manipulation in labview can get pretty wtf when looking at code you drew a while ago) but mission writing is more event driven.
. Anyhoo I do agree not having to climb the mountain of Allegiance code would make it more attractive to others to do stuff. Then to C++ expertise isn't something we seem to have in abundence.
