Reply to ramble for people who are considering it
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>My problem with Novashell is that there really wasn't enough example code for me to work with.
This is one of the main problems with it coupled with the overall lack of documentation. Novashell uses an entity system rather than the horrible mess that Dink uses, however this requires one to properly understand them first along with stuff like class instances and other things that Dink doesn't have. Furthermore, one may trawl through the documentation and realise that half the stuff there has nothing written for it meaning that it's basically undocumented meaning you'd have to go through the C++ source to find out what it does. Otherwise it does have some very nice features.
Its versatility allows you to do stuff like telling entities to walk somewhere without specifying co-ordinates, as well as having music files fade in and out. It also uses individual XML files with proper animation options rather than a global "dink.ini" meaning you don't break everything by writing a line wrong.
The problem that would arise is how one would implement something like a Dink script's main() when you don't have individual screens. Do you make it proximity-based or do you have it run as soon as its drawn while off-screen? Those sorts of design challenges are also quite annoying, however the extensive camera control abilities would allow one to make a Zelda-like screen-based game if he wanted to.
Overall, NS is really just a Lua wrapper for the rather dubious ClanLib which happens to also include a map editor. I imagine it's how Seth would have written the Dink engine back in the 90s had he known how to do things properly. RTSoft has more or less halted development on it since 2009, closed down most of its forums and moved onto ProtonSDK and then Growtopia. It isn't really worth using as it never developed a particularly active development community which is unfortunate.
This is one of the main problems with it coupled with the overall lack of documentation. Novashell uses an entity system rather than the horrible mess that Dink uses, however this requires one to properly understand them first along with stuff like class instances and other things that Dink doesn't have. Furthermore, one may trawl through the documentation and realise that half the stuff there has nothing written for it meaning that it's basically undocumented meaning you'd have to go through the C++ source to find out what it does. Otherwise it does have some very nice features.
Its versatility allows you to do stuff like telling entities to walk somewhere without specifying co-ordinates, as well as having music files fade in and out. It also uses individual XML files with proper animation options rather than a global "dink.ini" meaning you don't break everything by writing a line wrong.
The problem that would arise is how one would implement something like a Dink script's main() when you don't have individual screens. Do you make it proximity-based or do you have it run as soon as its drawn while off-screen? Those sorts of design challenges are also quite annoying, however the extensive camera control abilities would allow one to make a Zelda-like screen-based game if he wanted to.
Overall, NS is really just a Lua wrapper for the rather dubious ClanLib which happens to also include a map editor. I imagine it's how Seth would have written the Dink engine back in the 90s had he known how to do things properly. RTSoft has more or less halted development on it since 2009, closed down most of its forums and moved onto ProtonSDK and then Growtopia. It isn't really worth using as it never developed a particularly active development community which is unfortunate.
