Game Scripting Mastery
by Alex Varanese · first published 2002
75% recommend13% neutral13% critical
Why HN recommends it
Hands-on, step-by-step guide to building a C-like scripting language, compiler, and bytecode virtual machine for a game engine; praised as practical and light on theory, good for learning how interpreters work.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Oh sorry, basically treating code as any other media file. "Game Scripting Mastery" by Varanese and LaMothe goes into a lot of detail about creating your own language and compiling it to I-code and then running the scripts in the game, the same way you would load images or sounds.…
on “The State of the Art is Terrible” ↗Neat series. Another book to add to the recommendation list is Game Scripting Mastery which is a great text for learning to create scripting languages, compilers, and virtual machines. Don't judge it by the title, it's a gem. https://www.amazon.com/Scripting-Mastery-Premier-Press-Devel...
on “Let's Build a Simple Interpreter, Part 1 (2015)” ↗One of the most memorable experiences of my life was building a small 2D RPG named Dungeon Of Despair from the book "Game Scripting Mastery" https://books.google.ca/books/about/Game_Scripting_Mastery.h... by Alex Varanese. The game teaches you to build a simple game for Win32 from scratch. The graphics would be pretty dated now, but the…
on “Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?” ↗…number of AI techniques and the implementation of examples for each one (very much a sort of "Seven AI Architectures in Seven Weeks" kind of affair). ~ Not on the list, but two I'd really recommend: Game Scripting Mastery by Varanese is basically "Compiler and Interpreter Design and Implementation for High Schoolers". It's a massive tome, and covers both Lua integration and then rolling a scripting engine from scratch…
on “Books For Game Developers” ↗I learnt the basics of compilers from Game Scripting Mastery. I wasn't trying to write a compiler for game scripts, I'd just read it was a very practical (Light on theory) book, and my naive younger self thought this would be a good thing. I'd also recommend…
on “Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?” ↗Have you tried the book "Game Scripting Mastery"? It lays out the detail steps to construct a C-like scripting language and a Virtual Machine to run on top of a customized byte-code.
on “GNU Compiler Collection Internals [pdf]” ↗…daily programming language) long before the trend picked up. There still exist such books. C is a system programming langugage so you have to look in that direction. There is a compiler book called "Game Scripting Mastery", which was an early 200X book that holds your hand through making a working Virtual Machine of a C-like scripting language. It is written in C and has the full code for that Virtual Machine. This is…
on “Ask HN: Why are there so few good resources for learning C in 2021” ↗…ability to learn), but can recommend three books, ordered by difficulty asc: Writing interpreters and compilers for the raspberry pi using python by Anthony J.Dos Reis Crafting Interpreters by Nystrom Game Scripting Mastery (Forgot the author and too lazy to Google)
on “Ask HN: Which books in your field do you think are perfect for self study?” ↗…cost, but ofc I’d recommend purchasing a copy. If you find it a bit hard to chew, there is a simpler book using Python: https://www.amazon.ca/Anthony-J-Dos-Reis/e/B001KE4SU8/ref=dp... Another book: Game Scripting Mastery.
on “Ask HN: Best books on building a programming language” ↗…top 30: #21 Linkers and Loaders - John R. Levine #22 Assembly Language Step-by-Step - Jeff Duntemann #23 The Garbage Collection Handbook - Richard Jones, Antony Hosking, Eliot Moss #24 Game Scripting Mastery - Alex Varanese #25 Domain-specific Languages - Martin Fowler, Rebecca Parsons #26 Computer Architecture - John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson #27 The Elements of Computing Systems - Noam…
on “The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow” ↗…first say that this is an excellent book and IMO is as good as a Compiler book for laymen as it can be. It is way better than the other books with the same focus IMO (I compared it to two other books: "Game Scripting Mastery" and ""Writing Interpreters and Compilers for the Raspberry Pi using Python"). I really appreciate the efforts the author put into the book. This is one of the few CS books that I actually purchased a…
on “Ask HN: Recommended change to the book "Crafting Interpreters"” ↗