I am working on a First Person Shooter game as a fun side-project, and started considering marketing the game, and adding scripting support for modding. I was wondering if I should use a traditional scripting language like LUA, Javascript, or Python, or If I should use C#/.NET instead. C# is known to be a “faster” language since it is compiled, whereas the languages mentioned above are not. (I could also add a dependency on another framework like Java as well). The game is written for Windows, and I was wondering if it would be “too much” to expect end-users to install the .NET framework, or if this would be a reasonable requirement.
I’d like to add that compiling C# code could be done in-game (just like LUA, Python, and JavaScript) using the Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider interface.
If you want to use .NET, it’s pretty safe to assume that end users will have a fairly recent version already installed. Windows Vista came with .NET 3.0 baked in; Windows 7 came with .NET 3.5. And of course, there have been a number of recent, popular games (Magicka, Terraria, Bastion, etc.) that were written entirely in .NET, so the gaming community has proven that they aren’t particularly averse to the idea of installing/using it. Adding it to your game’s installer should be fairly unobtrusive.
Just remember that this is one more thing that’s tying you to the Windows platform, so if you ever decide to port your game to other OSes in the future, you’re going to have to come up with a replacement (or see if Mono is good enough to meet your needs).