4 ms·

Because if it succedds, it needs to be supported long term. If you're doing that inhouse, chances are slim of original designers staying 10-20 years at the same

Because if it succedds, it needs to be supported long term. If you're doing that inhouse, chances are slim of original designers staying 10-20 years at the same company. Then what you have in your hands is a legacy monolith neglected over its life which might double as core of your stack and it's awful to move away from down the line. Been there, don't recommend it.

jimmaswell 5y ago
In my experience it's fine if you keep its scope limited. The scripting language for an MMO I worked on for example is simple and effective.
- Scramblejams 5y ago
  Mind sharing which one?
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    Legends of Equestria
- TillE 5y ago
  Writing your own scripting language is really not something game developers should be doing for the past decade or so. There are so many good off-the-shelf options ranging from Lua to C#, plus a litany of obscure (but good!) ones. For performance-critical code, even a tiny DSL is not a solution I like unless you're transpiling to C++ or something.
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    Hooking LUA or similar can introduce a lot of unwanted complexity, be harder for an untrained implementation team member to understand, and be less of an exact fit to the purpose. There are other cases where it makes sense though.
mcguire 5y ago
Oh, my god! If it succeeds you'll have to support it forever!" Unfortunately, that's rather true of all software.
- DoctorDabadedoo 5y ago
  Indeed, but maintaining software that is a core part of your business is a very different game than supporting (complex) internal tooling. They don't bring revenue, are a time/money sink and not many companies can spare the resources to do it properly. Anedoctal experience: a company I used to work for had all the core stack developed inhouse: programming language (yeah), compiler, database, etc. No one worked on it apart from the founder and a couple of other engineer that were no longer there. A few years down the line a big client asked if we were able to integrate our software with their PLC and this had to be developed from scratch, as it wasn't in the scope of the programming language. The quote sent to them was in the six figures and up to 2 years for it to be ready. Every major programming language has a library that does this. Eventually the company lost the client.

jimmaswell 5y ago

In my experience it's fine if you keep its scope limited. The scripting language for an MMO I worked on for example is simple and effective.

Scramblejams 5y ago
Mind sharing which one?
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  Legends of Equestria
TillE 5y ago
Writing your own scripting language is really not something game developers should be doing for the past decade or so. There are so many good off-the-shelf options ranging from Lua to C#, plus a litany of obscure (but good!) ones. For performance-critical code, even a tiny DSL is not a solution I like unless you're transpiling to C++ or something.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  Hooking LUA or similar can introduce a lot of unwanted complexity, be harder for an untrained implementation team member to understand, and be less of an exact fit to the purpose. There are other cases where it makes sense though.

mcguire 5y ago

Oh, my god! If it succeeds you'll have to support it forever!" Unfortunately, that's rather true of all software.

DoctorDabadedoo 5y ago
Indeed, but maintaining software that is a core part of your business is a very different game than supporting (complex) internal tooling. They don't bring revenue, are a time/money sink and not many companies can spare the resources to do it properly. Anedoctal experience: a company I used to work for had all the core stack developed inhouse: programming language (yeah), compiler, database, etc. No one worked on it apart from the founder and a couple of other engineer that were no longer there. A few years down the line a big client asked if we were able to integrate our software with their PLC and this had to be developed from scratch, as it wasn't in the scope of the programming language. The quote sent to them was in the six figures and up to 2 years for it to be ready. Every major programming language has a library that does this. Eventually the company lost the client.