1

I am not familiar with what C# can do, especially in the context of a Xbox 360 game, but is it possible to execute Python scripts from within an Xbox 360 Indie game?

I've read several times that you'd want to write the game graphics and logic in a quicker language like C#, and then use Python as a scripting language for fast iteration. Is this sort of thing possible for development on the Xbox 360 platform?

TankorSmash
  • 12,186
  • 6
  • 68
  • 106

2 Answers2

2

You should be able to use IronPython to use Python from .NET, and it integrates with other .NET languages (including C#) nicely. However, the Xbox 360 uses .NET Compact Framework, which IronPython doesn't seem to support at the moment, and it seems non-trivial to implement. So unfortunately, at the moment, it doesn't seem that there's any way to use Python on the Xbox 360, at least not without getting a full Xbox Live Arcade license, instead of targeting XBLIG, which lets you use native code as well as the .NET Compact Framework (the .NET CF is your only option for XBLIG titles).

dririan
  • 305
  • 1
  • 8
  • 1
    At the moment, if you're going to use C#/XNA and target an Xbox 360 release, you pretty much just have to get by without a scripting language. There have been some attempts at creating Lua interpreters (see XNUA and SilverLua), but I don't think any were fully developed enough to rely on. Luckily, C# is a fairly simple language to learn and allows for pretty quick iteration. The only thing you really lose out on is having a simple way to execute the scripting logic on a separate thread, but you can work around that. – Chaser324 Aug 02 '12 at 00:47
  • I agree. It'll be much easier just to do everything in C# (at least for XBLIG), even if they did have a scripting language for it. XNA makes things very simple, and I'd much rather use C# and XNA than C++ and DirectX, even. – dririan Aug 02 '12 at 00:50
  • Bummer, XNA does make things very easy though. Thanks. – TankorSmash Aug 02 '12 at 01:28
0

Well although C++ is the language of choice for gaming industry, I have seen really good games written in C# using the XNA framework. In terms of your scripting question, I believe Blizzard uses Lua for UI in games like WoW. But going back to your question it's possible to have Python integrated to C#, there is an open-source implementation of the Python programming language which is tightly integrated with the .NET Framework called IronPython.

jlisam13
  • 93
  • 10
  • Like I said in my answer, IronPython won't work on the Xbox 360, because it uses the Compact Framework, which IronPython doesn't work with. – dririan Aug 02 '12 at 00:40