Garry's Mod 2

[Stickly Man!]

Uh oh. Garry started a thread of suggestions for what could be improved in a potential Garry's Mod 2- they've been discussing it internally.
http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1474548

A brief look at the first page shows some interesting things.. Not sure if I'm fully liking where it's going though.

[MrPresident]

I don't know how I feel about this either.
I am excited to see gmod move to the new Source2 engine since it's pretty much outlived the Source1 engine, but having to redesign everything is a bit daunting.

If we plan to continue support for ULX/ULib into Gmod2, I think it's worth considering waiting on our planned recode of ULX until then.

[JamminR]

If we're going there, we do everything we can to find time to start designing/coding/porting for it now. Surely we can get our hands on API/beta (I've not yet read article discussion)
When Gmod 10 came out, we had a quick dirty port of ULX 2.2 ready within a few days. We then released ULX 3 a month later.

[MrPresident]

Right now, it's just a discussion over in Facepunch land. I don't even think Source 2 is publicly available to developers yet, except for Dota 2 which they're using as a test bed for it.

[MrPresident]

Also, they're talking about changing lua completely. Redoing a lot of the commands and making you use his C style syntax. Also, something about how he wants lua addons to run in their own lua instance.

It's going to be interesting to say the least.

[Stickly Man!]

Indeed. It's still all speculation, and I doubt anything will really get moving along for at least a year. I'm just monitoring the thread for any of Garry's responses, since those might actually carry some weight.

Many people are suggesting to use a pure non-modified lua or switch scripting languages, which is interesting.

[JamminR]

I did glance after posting here.
I just keep shaking my head when he wants to use lua, but with his modifications.
Someone went so far as to say keep using != instead of ~= because it took longer.
*sigh* Some people.

[MrPresident]

At least now you can choose not to use his modifications.
He stated in the thread that if they choose to modify lua in the new version, he is going to remove the old (proper) ways to do it and force people to use his methods.

Then he proceeds to say, they could just not call it lua. -_-

gCode... it's basically lua... but with some C style syntax.

[Stickly Man!]

Yeah.. Garry's argument is that Lua doesn't teach beginners "good coding skills" that can apply to other languages in the real world. As a developer that works with many different languages for my job, that's utter nonsense. Sure, Lua may be the odd one out when it comes to arrays beginning at 1 instead of 0, but the fact is that every language is different for various reasons. You can't possibly expect languages to be perfectly identical to make it easier for developers. In fact, being able to work with the differences in two languages gives you more experience, and helps you adapt to new languages in general (A big plus in the software industry).

/End rant

Garry just ended the debate on other languages, simply stating "We have decided our priorities". No idea what that means, and no hint as to what their decision was.

[Megiddo]

Argh, Garry's tendencies towards that have forever frustrated me. Instead of doing something the standard way, which has some quirks but has been shown to be good overall (and has massive support and libraries), he decides to do it his own way and introduce way more quirks that he hand-waves and breaks everything. Grrr.

I had already been planning on making ULX4 have as few "touch points" to Garry's API as possible to address these frustrations, but if he doesn't even support Lua, that's a hopeless road to follow.

Did Garry's sudden reversal on his policy for paid mods surprise anyone else?