Game Programming
So I’ve been programming- seriously programming- for about 15 years. I’ve written some small diddly games: A pair of text based games in GWBASIC, a graphical side-scroller in QBASIC, and a minesweeper-esque whack-a-mole-esque game in Visual BASIC. Yeah, when it comes to DOS/Windows, I’ve used SomethingBASIC for everything gaming. I have done substantial C++ programming on Windows, just not in the “gaming” space.
So, in all my whacked-out wisdom, I decided to write a game- a big game- in Windows… Using C++ and the DirectX system. I decided a few weeks ago to blog about the progress … and, well… I am. 
So, to catch ya’ll up, I’ve written several thousand lines of C++ thus far (6412). Writing a number of parallel engines: 3D, 2D, Input, Networking, Inventory Control, and… my favorite… wait for it… wait for it… Scripting. I, uh, embedded the Perl interpreter into my scripting engine… So I can write Perl scripts to implement game-related shit. My A#1 goal is to expose absolutely as much as possible to the scripting engine, thus minimizing the amount of C++ I have to write, and maximize the amount of Perl. This has the added benefit of making the game infinitely configurable/scalable/adaptable by myself.
NPC AI is done through scripting. Assembling the world is done through scripting. Rewards and punishments… Scripting. Random encounters….. Yeah, scripting. Mission database? 100% scripting. I’m doing a series of little test gamelets that show off various pieces in order to make sure my engines- and scripts- actually work. I may post some here for the fun of it… soonish…
