20.5 Scripting

The flexibility of the scriptable NSIS installer means powerful install processes of all kinds can be made with relatively minimal effort. Scripting has some significant influences on computer games. In an attempt to make games more flexible, programmable, and reusable, many developers have integrated scripting into their games to handle various decision-making processes and to perform all kinds of external processing so it does not become necessary to recompile the game code each time changes are made to the game. In order to integrate scripting into a game, two SDKs can be used: Lua and Python. These SDKs are beyond the scope of this book, but there are a number of other books and tutorials around to help you get started. Following are brief descriptions of each.

Lua

Lua is a Portuguese word meaning "moon." Like many of the SDKs featured in this book, Lua is cross platform, open source, and free. It offers various classes and functions to integrate the scripted language into compiled applications. Lua can be downloaded from http://www.lua.org.
Python

Like Lua, Python is a free, open-source, and cross-platform scripting language that offers tools, functions, and classes to integrated scripted code into compiled applications like games. Python can be downloaded from http://www.python.org.