Lua development

Runtime and limits

Libraries, state lifetime, execution budgets and output behavior.

Local Lua 5.4

See scripting/scripts.cpp, specifically initialize and execute. Every execution creates a fresh Lua state and closes it on completion. Globals do not persist across separate runs.

Available libraries

Library or function	Current behavior
Base, table, string, math, utf8	Registered
io, os, package, debug, coroutine	Not registered
dofile, loadfile, load, collectgarbage	Removed from the global environment
print	Custom implementation writing to the editor output

A local-only example

This example uses only a table and string formatting. No game backend is required.

local palette = { "Galaxy", "Mars", "Aurora" }
for index, name in ipairs(palette) do
    print(string.format("%d: %s", index, name))
end

Execution budgets

Budget	Value	Meaning
Lua allocation	8 MiB	The custom allocator caps the Lua state.
Deadline	250 ms	Checked by the Lua hook, not a hard interruption of arbitrary C++ calls.
Instructions	200,000	The hook checks in batches of 1,000 instructions.
Output	16,000 bytes	Older text is discarded once the buffer exceeds the limit.

Errors and completion

Load and execution errors are appended to editor output. Budget cancellation reports Script stopped: cancelled or execution budget exceeded. A working local runtime does not demonstrate that the game backend is ready.