Lua as a language for writing bots

[farooqkz]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
This game could serve well as an educational game for children to have both fun and profit. But the current languages Tank Royale support, including Typescript which is planned are the simplest. The best current choice is Python. But Python has some complexities where what you expect doesn't happen.

Describe the solution you'd like
Lua has got the following advantages:

• The language is very small and simple and thus very easy to learn. In fact, Lua was created with non programmers in mind.
• Thanks to the simplicity, many other languages can be translated/compiled to Lua code. So supporting Lua means you also get support for many other languages for free.
• Because of the reason above, that is the simplicity, it's possible to create languages which compile to Lua and are not based on English language. This brings new advantages for people and children who don't know English. Coding in their own language will make it more natural and fun for them, spending less mind power, which results in more free mind power for the robot algorithm.

Describe alternatives you've considered
N/A

Additional context
N/A

[flemming-n-larsen]

Tank Royale already supports Java, C#, and Python, with TypeScript on the way (being tested these days). Web support was planned from the very beginning, and Python was my take on the educational/beginner use case, and has already been well received.

Adding Lua would mean yet another API to build and maintain in parallel — and any change made to one API must be replicated across all the others, which is a significant ongoing effort.

That said, if someone is motivated to implement and maintain a Lua API themselves, I'm open to it. I would prefer it lives in a separate branch rather than the main line, or as an independent project maintained alongside Tank Royale.

[farooqkz]

Tank Royale already supports Java, C#, and Python, with TypeScript on the way (being tested these days). Web support was planned from the very beginning, and Python was my take on the educational/beginner use case, and has already been well received.

Adding Lua would mean yet another API to build and maintain in parallel — and any change made to one API must be replicated across all the others, which is a significant ongoing effort.

That said, if someone is motivated to implement and maintain a Lua API themselves, I'm open to it. I would prefer it lives in a separate branch rather than the main line, or as an independent project maintained alongside Tank Royale.

It's important to realize target audience of the game. If the game is supposed to act for newbie programmers and/or kids, I think Python might not be a good idea. Not that it's total bad. But I think Lua is much better. The same goes for Typescript.

Java and C# sure target more experienced developers.

And also something worthy of note, is that there are other languages like Fennel which compile/translate to Lua. I think Typescript can also be translated to Lua.

In the end, I agree it's a huge effort and might not be worth it.

[flemming-n-larsen]

@farooqkz It is a fair point, and you might be right. 🙂
I have not closed it yet, and might have a look into it later. And I also keep it open if somebody wants to pick it up at some point.

[flemming-n-larsen]

A quick follow-up: the position I gave here in April is now written down, so it is no longer only in this thread.

See Contributing a Bot API in the contributing guide. In short, the official Bot API language set is closed at Java, C#, Python and TypeScript, and Bot APIs for other languages are welcome as community projects maintained by their authors, which we link from the API documentation.

Nothing has changed about my answer to you. A Lua Bot API is still welcome as an independent project alongside Tank Royale, and I am happy to link it when one exists.

I have relabelled this issue community project and removed help wanted, because that label suggested the work would be adopted into the main line rather than the independent project I had in mind. The issue stays open so that anyone who wants to pick up a Lua Bot API can find it, along with your reasoning about Lua for beginners, which I still think is a fair point.