Version 13 of BOOK Programming Linux Games

Updated 2005-11-06 16:50:26

Name: Programming Linux Games

Authors: [Loki Software, Inc.], [John R. Hall]

Publisher: [No Starch Press]

Publication Date: 2001

URL: http://www.nostarch.com/plg.htm

Full text available as PDF: http://www.overcode.net/~overcode/writing/plg/


    *Programming Linux Games* is a new book which features Tcl.
    A just-released excerpt shows how to build a simple scripting
    engine and design a game script.
        http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=1420/urmb29/book29.htm

They do however also say this in 'conclusions': "In hindsight, Tcl was not an especially good choice for the scripting engine. It works in this case, but it's not a very good solution for number crunching or managing large amounts of data. If I were to rewrite Chapter 6, I would probably choose a Lisp variant such as Scheme."

Which is possibly kind of strange: if I were to bring non-coders into a project I don't think I'd stick a Lisp interpreter in front of them. --setok


LV I'm rather surprised to hear that scheme is better for managing large amounts of data and number crunching. What does Scheme do to manage this? Is there something that can be doing to Tcl to give it a better handle? Perhaps something like la or BLT's vectors?

Lars H: I suspect the conclusions in the book are to a great part about Tcl 7; certainly there are plenty of Tcl7isms in the descriptions of the Tcl language (no braces around expressions, lists are claimed to be "just strings", etc.).


See also Programming Linux Games.


Category Book