After having been a Zmud user for some years and now currently using Atlantis on my Mac (which I'm not completely happy with), I thought I'd try out MUSH now, on a Windows XP partition of my computer. So far, it seems great, and I think I might stick with it.

But before I go into making myself a curing system and everything, I want to decide on a scripting language to use. I don't really want to code a whole system in one language, then realize it's not optimal and having to redo the whole thing, so I'd like a bit of advice:

Lua is supposed to be the "recommended" language, and I hear lots of good things about it, in terms of speed, easy access and possibilities. Python is big and powerful. Personally I don't have a clue about Lua and Python at all, so I'd have to learn that first, but I'd be perfectly willing to do that if it's considered useful enough. I am however quite fluent in Jscript and it's a language that feels very natural to me because of its similarity to some C-like languages I've dabbled in. (I'm just so used to curly brackets and ending lines with semicolons!)

So my questions are:
- Is Jscript significantly slower than Lua (or even Python), when using it in MUSH?
- Are there some things you can do in Lua (or Python) that are considered very useful for the purpose of making MUSH-scripts which you can't do in Jscript?
- Are there any other downsides to using Jscript in MUSHclient?


Thanks!

EDIT: Ack, I keep forgetting these forums don't like the term "J...script". I'll just use "Jscript" then!

All three languages are turing complete! What you can do in one of them, you can do in all of them!

To be serious though, for the "purpose of making MUSH-scripts" any of those 3 languages are fine (although I prefer Python myself), the only thing that really matters is what you are more comfortable with, what you think looks better (yes, looking better is important), and for that I like Python because it looks cleaner than the other two. People mostly use Lua because it's the default, and it works without any additional installations in Windows, not because they have some solid reason for thinking it's better than every other language you could use with MUSHclient.

Speed wise, who knows, does it matter? I don't believe that the speed of your scripting language is going to be the bottleneck in what you're going to be doing. All of them are fast enough.


Edit: I am curious though, what about Atlantis did you not like? What about MUSHclient makes you like it better? What features did MUSHclient have that Altantis didn't? What would you rather see in a mac mud client? I ask these questions because I too do not really like Atlantis and I've been considering making my own in the style of MUSHclient, but I don't really know if there's a real point.

I think the only thing that matters is that Lua is installed with MUSH, I believe, while the others you have to install yourself.

To get ruby working you need to find some obscure rubyCOM bull- that barely works and is buggy as -.

Thanks everyone! I guess I'll just stick with the one I already know then. (Btw: Jscript also doesn't need to be installed.)

As for Atlantis: For one it is the lack of good documentation that puts me off. I want to be able to quickly look up how to script a certain thing, without having to browse through various forums. I also find it too cumbersome to do simple things like adding a new trigger. Certain very common things just seem to take too many (sometimes counterintuitive) steps which becomes annoying over time, and the way it is all displayed just doesn't agree much with me. It's some sort of general dislike of the interface, which I can't even explain completely. It just doesn't suit me. And I know Riashain is hating me for not liking it I simply can't help it!

I was ecstatic when mushclient pushed three updates out this month.

I prefer Lua. If you have a preferred language, for any reason, use it! If not, I usually recommend Lua because it's most portable - you can pop MUSH on a flash drive and use it on any computer without needing anything else, if you use Lua.

Is a program needed to create xml files using lua? Or do you just write it in a word program and save as xml?

I prefer python, but I'd recommend Lua because it is supported by more MUD clients in case you feel the need to switch again

That's great and all, but it doesn't answer my question.

You can write it in notepad and save it as an xml file. I would recommend using Notepad++ actually for this sort of work.

Thanks....again.

Google SciTE if you would like a Lua IDE with debug/command line features.