Of course, this isn't as realtime as other engines, but other engines don't exactly provide MOD teams with the level of tools that Valve does either. Most of them only release a scripting kit rather than a C++ base SDK. Makes me wonder what they're hiding? Parts of the HL2 code (or other games) maybe?
in my humble opinion(*), hummm.....
no*. Around 500 MB of CPP generated with Visual C++ ***WITH THE MFC*** (YES, you can start a game with the project wizard of VC6, or at least exist people FOOL enough to do that).
You can see the src for a few modern largue projects legally. Allegiance (Microsoft), Golgota (?), System Shock (?), Homeworld, heee.... a few more, whas code release to able linux guys to do the conversion to his OS... the license its restrictive, able only that, but able you to read the src and learn a bit.
You can also check real open source games, like FreeCiv,Battle for Wesnoth, and try to "steal" some AI ideas, etc... IMHO its better to read articles on Gamasutra than try to learn something from the src of other guy.
I am really impresed by Gamasutra articles quality.
. . .
About scripting on games, has sense*. The gamelogic dont really need to be C or other compiled lang, can be interpreted, bytecode, etc.. often its faster to write scripts than apps, so can be fastest to write mods for a scripting powered engine than for a dll based engine. BUT the fun about engines like HL1/HL2 its you can do a lot more than other engines. And this its WHY some people swich from Battelefield 1942 to HL2, because feel need the extra power and can handle the extra dificult
OF COURSE, a good idea* can be to add a small scripting engine to HL2, .. Its that AMX?, .. other good interpreters can be Javascript, PHP, Python, anything .NET, etc.. You can do that because you can encapsulate the engine API on another API you provide to the interpreter lang. The problem its: its a very long and boring process. You have to tweak type conversions back and for from to engine/interpreter and its boooooooring. Of course, the result can be interesting: modability on the fly, you can edit your mod alive, adding more code, full control for debugging (pause, step, run) etc...
I myself like Spidermonkey (javascript) that its easy to install, but the license its not compatible* (its GPL) and I am not a lawyer, I dont know other license compatible with the SDK_EULA, maybe BSD?, maybe exist some interpreter BSD licenses out here :]
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