LÖVE

Lua is great and everything but like everything else it has its limitations. I'm thinking of learning another scripting language to help open up my mind a little as well. I read somewhere that Lua can "spoil" you with its eccentric table methods and loops beginning at 1 e.t.c.

Basically what I want to know is what other scripting languages are available that preferably support Unicode (UTF-8), by support Unicode I don't mean simply passing them up in strings (I know Lua already does this) but I want some decent string library functionality or at least the ability to compare, iterate and match Unicode characters.

I think Python or Ruby has such support but this is based of an assumption and this
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4149 ... es-it-work

are their are any good frameworks that work with Ruby anyway. maybe RoR but ...(<m<)...I don't really know. Ruby has crap garbage collection (maybe that was the older version).

If any of you guys know any scripting language with Unicode support please let me know. Thanks.
(Please note this is just for interest, I'm not ditching Lua (^_^))

I love ruby. I manage my local ruby user group in my city (Madrid). Learning ruby has helped me in lots of ways, and I think it has made me a better programmer, even when I program in other languages. Learning ruby is never a bad option.

I have also done some python. I find it a bit less elegant than ruby, but I recognize it's a matter of taste, nothing objective. It gives ruby a run for its money on games (with pygame) and science/math (with numpy). Learning it can not be a bad thing either.

I am going to suggest another language though: javascript. While its unicode support is not complete, and the language has some very rough corners, it makes it up with its ubiquity. If you are able to live with its shortcommings, you will find that at its heart it's very similar to Lua.

I like ruby. Python is not too bad either. Both of them have such great libraries. Ruby's rake and gem are great. I find Python to be more readable. Python has a fast JIT (pypy).

Anyway Ruby 2.1 has a generational garbage collector, which is better than before.

Ekamu wrote:Basically what I want to know is what other scripting languages are available that preferably support Unicode (UTF-8), by support Unicode I don't mean simply passing them up in strings (I know Lua already does this) but I want some decent string library functionality or at least the ability to compare, iterate and match Unicode characters.

Anything that has an interface to ICU is nice in my opinion.

I used JavaScript before (never fully learned it though).To me it feels a lot more like a browser based scripting language, perfect for those kind of games too but I found it a little irritating somehow (probably because I never learned it properly). I agree though it does feel a little like Lua and I will learn it properly like how I did Lua but for now I'm going for Python. I will be able to use Pygame, Renpy and Blender also it has Unicode support I think.

Ruby has always caught my eye too. I however don't really have use for it right now but I've been wanting to learn for sometime.

I sort of have a list:

Python
JavaScript (for websites and browser based games)
C language (probably C# becuase of XNA and Unity)
Ruby ( Just for fun really )

Python still takes my top priority.

Thanks.

Make sure you use Python 3 as opposed to Python 2, it is much better, especially regarding Unicode.

Alright, one issue though Pygame and RenPy support Python 2.7.6... I might need to learn one and then transition into the other but I read that they are very different.

Between which two things do you want to transition? Pronoun confusion kicked in.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not transitioning from anything, I like everything about LOVE and Lua besides one small thing. Unicode support. If it was for that I probably would learn something completely unrelated to Unicode support like some C language.

I really like Python 3 compared to Python 2. It generally feels a lot more syntactically neat and it offers great support for Unicode, the problem is that I don't know where I can apply it. If I learn Python 2 I can at least apply that with RenPy and Pygame, It would be nice if there where engines that worked with 3.3 but I can understand why some older versions might be better implemented such as Lua 5.1 in LOVE (while 5.2 does have some better features.)

So generally I'm sort of stuck between the two, learn something I can apply or learn something that is interesting... Therefore I might probably just learn both and hope I dont get completely confused. I'm sure their not THAT different. just some things here and there right?

The differences are pretty minor, syntax-wise. Things like: in Python 2, print is a statement, in Python 3 it is a function, so in Python 3 parentheses are required. Or in Python 2, bytestrings are called str, while in Python 3 they are called bytes, but the basics remain the same, really.