scripting languages

How could an embeddable visual scripting language look like?

Once, during my work on the sadly never published game Reptoads – a round-based deterministic multiplayer cooperative card game, I got asked by different members of the art and design team: why can’t we have a visual scripting language such as Blueprints or Shader Graph for either the gameplay code or the visuals? My answer was always the same: we don’t have enough time to implement such a tool. This question, however, got stuck in my mind and I started searching for a “Lua” of the visual scripting languages just to find… nothing.

Investigation into the criteria of embeddability of visual scripting languages within the domain of game development.

This paper investigates potential criteria to identify visual scripting languages as embeddable within the domain of game development. We explore the criteria of embeddability for scripting languages and use them as the base line for the study.

What is a scripting language?

Have you ever stumbled upon job offers where companies are looking for “coders” or “scripters”? Every time I see those, I ask myself: what is the difference exactly? How can “scripting” or “coding” be different from programming? Is there even a difference? I could keep listing questions, but I am sure you get my point. With this in mind, I got asked a few times why I am using the term “scripting language” and “programming language” interchangeably, since they represent different concepts.