Game Scripting Mastery

What Hacker News says

1. markus_zhangApr 2026
   Crafting interpreters. Very well written and free of cost, but ofc I’d recommend purchasing a copy.

   If you find it a bit hard to chew, there is a simpler book using Python: https://www.amazon.ca/Anthony-J-Dos-Reis/e/B001KE4SU8/ref=dp...

   Another book: Game Scripting Mastery.

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2. markus_zhangApr 2022
   Definitely not in compiler field (and actually makes my recommendations more legit as field professionals tend to overestimate other people's ability to learn), but can recommend three books, ordered by difficulty asc:

   Writing interpreters and compilers for the raspberry pi using python by Anthony J.Dos Reis

   Crafting Interpreters by Nystrom

   Game Scripting Mastery (Forgot the author and too lazy to Google)

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3. markus_zhangMar 2021
   I think books that teach through projects is a relatively recent trend. C is too old for that, and already phased out of mainstream (in the sense of everyone's daily programming language) long before the trend picked up.

   There still exist such books. C is a system programming langugage so you have to look in that direction. There is a compiler book called "Game Scripting Mastery", which was an early 200X book that holds your hand through making a working Virtual Machine of a C-like scripting language. It is written in C and has the full code for that Virtual Machine. This is definitely a "learn-by-project" book.

   I think you can probably find more examples by looking in that direction. There is another trick: Browse the websites of top 20 CS universities and find all their system programming labs. You will guarantee to find many mid-size C projects.

   Last but not least, here is the famous awesome-C project list. Treat yourself. Many of them are walkthrough type tutorials (e.g. write a text editor in C) and can be very fun to code.

   https://github.com/oz123/awesome-c

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4. markus_zhangNov 2019
   Have you tried the book "Game Scripting Mastery"? It lays out the detail steps to construct a C-like scripting language and a Virtual Machine to run on top of a customized byte-code.
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5. CorvusFeb 2017
   One of the most memorable experiences of my life was building a small 2D RPG named Dungeon Of Despair from the book "Game Scripting Mastery" https://books.google.ca/books/about/Game_Scripting_Mastery.h... by Alex Varanese.

   The game teaches you to build a simple game for Win32 from scratch. The graphics would be pretty dated now, but the scripting system for enemy AI and quests is a Turing-complete programming language. I learned more from that book than from my compiler course in university.

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6. vescheSep 2016
   Neat series. Another book to add to the recommendation list is Game Scripting Mastery which is a great text for learning to create scripting languages, compilers, and virtual machines. Don't judge it by the title, it's a gem. https://www.amazon.com/Scripting-Mastery-Premier-Press-Devel...
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