Scripting language vs C++

[Ruudjah]

Tim Sweeny, lead dev of Unreal engine made the following comment. Obvisouly UE is a very different beast than OpenTTD, but I wonder how much merit the comment holds when applied against the OpenTTD codebase. There are some similarities, mainly C++ and being a game engine.

The post personally triggered me since interop turned out a suboptimal experience in all the cases I had to use interop code (in my experience about 6).

[Eddi]

there is certainly a lot of truth in this, but OpenTTD's scripting part has not yet grown this far, so the benefits still outweigh the costs.

[FLHerne]

Tim Sweeny, lead dev of Unreal engine made the following comment. Obvisouly UE is a very different beast than OpenTTD, but I wonder how much merit the comment holds when applied against the OpenTTD codebase. There are some similarities, mainly C++ and being a game engine.

The post personally triggered me since interop turned out a suboptimal experience in all the cases I had to use interop code (in my experience about 6).

OpenTTD doesn't use scripting in the main game-engine though, the Squirrel interpreter is only for third-party AIs/gameplay scripting. Those can't be compiled in for obvious reasons, and the scripts use a fairly limited interface that's mostly equivalent to the player's UI - it doesn't duplicate the entire game state for core functions like a few games I've seen. If you don't use an AI or GS, the scripting engine doesn't do much/anything.

NewGRFs are a bit more intrusive into core stuff for performance/feature reasons, but they're not really a 'scripting language' as such.