CS Department Lunch Game Scripting Languages Jessica D. Bayliss, Ph.D. Rochester Institute of Technology Computer Science Dept.

CS Department Lunch

Game Scripting Languages

Jessica D. Bayliss, Ph.D.Rochester Institute of Technology

Computer Science Dept.

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Game Programming

o Early on (Atari 2600): o Hand coded assembly

o PCs: o Higher level coding o A file system meant that content could be loadedo The advent of the game engine concepto Recently this has led to greatly increased game

costs

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The Content Problem

o It's expensive - over 60% of a game budget.o Need for games to be replayable

o New levelso New characterso New games

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Mods

o A "modification" of an existing gameo May just look differento May be another gameo May add interface features not available in

the original game (i.e. close captioning)

o User driven: o one solution to the content problem

o Some of our students are involved in mod creation outside of class.

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How Different?

UT Before UT After (Thievery)

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Game Scripting

o Used for:o Character AI and creationo Special interface commands and changeso Object properties

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Languages

o Game specialty languageso Second Life scripting language (Second Life)o UnrealScript (Unreal Tournament)o NWN script (Neverwinter Nights)

o Customizing other languageso Lua (World of Warcraft)o Python (Civ IV)o C/C++ (Half Life II)

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Second Life

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Second Life

o It isn't really a gameo There is no end goal except what users

createo Scripts are written in a C-like languageo Almost all items, games, etc. inside the

world are user createdo Second Life is the first massively multiplayer

platform to give users copyright privileges to what they create

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Examples

o [Paul Wheeler's scripting work]

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Unreal Tournament

o Another game with a custom scripting language

o UnrealScripto Java-like, complete with garbage collectiono Contains specialty constructs for state

transitions in the game engine

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Gamebots

o A client/server mod that enables bot clients written in any language to connect to Unreal Tournament serverso Works on UT, UT2003, and UT2004

o Messaging protocol is simple text messages:o "GAM {PlayerScores {CTF-Command.FriendlyRemoteFemale1Bot7

0.000000} {CTF-Command.FriendlyRemoteMale1Bot7 0.000000} {CTF-Command.FriendlyMale1Bot0 0.000000} {CTF-Command.FriendlyMale2 0.000000}} {TeamScores {0 0.000000} {1 0.000000}}"

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Conclusions

o Modern games quite often contain scripting

o Many opportunities for learning different scripting languages from within games

o Some of these have made their way into courses (Gamebots)

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Questions?