Cervator said:
Also cool to be able to write Groovy in the in-game console and have it execute, how would you / can you even do that with JS?
Assuming you're running Chrome, press CTRL-SHIFT-J, and type
Code:
console.log("hello world");
So yeah, it's pretty easy to have a Javascript REPL console. It's literally a less than a dozen lines of Java to take a string, feed into the script engine, and display the result.
Cervator said:
I do like Groovy (and the potential for Scala) and how they run native on top of the JVM quite.
Nothing stops you from using Scala alongside Java (besides performance), and if you *really* want to, you could write some of the non-critical pieces in Groovy. However, the more languages you have in a project, the shittier it is. There's exceptions to that, of course, but if you're looking for a quality end product, don't throw the kitchen sink into it.
Cervator said:
Yeah I'd like some opinions from other team members too
That's what's stopping me from diving in pell-mell, and ripping into the code base to pull out Groovy and replace it with Javascript. To me, it seems a no brainer. If you're looking for popularity in a modding language, there are 200,000 questions tagged "Javascript" on Stackoverflow... and 4,000 tagged Groovy.
But this ain't my project, and I've currently contributed zero lines of code to the repository. Others can decide what direction to go, only thing I can do is toss out suggestions. From a technical standpoint, Groovy would make a fine modding language, and if the current developers are more comfortable using it, then that's the right way to go. Better something usable now, than something perfect later.
You might want to run a formal poll. Ask people if they prefer
- Java as the modding language
- Groovy as the modding language
- Javascript as the modding language
- Java and Groovy as modding languages
- Javascript and Groovy as modding languages
- Javascript and Java as modding languages
- Some other combination
Personally, I think you'd get the best development bang for your buck by picking a single language, and then making the modding API *excellent* for that one language before supporting more, but that's just like my opinion, man.
Cervator said:
Either way first step is getting the shiny ES integrated to develop soon, since it comes with an initial event system
Right, that's the other reason why I'm not touching the codebase, as it's in a state of flux right now.