Why the hell force me into LoomScript when Lua would have given a readily available source of learned game developers? Delegates, are you kidding me? I refuse to program in a language that doesn't treat functions as first class citizens.
var f = function():void { Console.print("Hello world!"); }; f.call();
Not sure how much more first class it gets, but I'm open to your suggestions!
That said, we went with LoomScript over Lua because we did not want to use a language where OOP is an idiom. And we support one development path because, in our opinion, it is the best option - and because, in our experience, great platforms choose a "right way" to do things and run with it.
You do get the full source code, so if it really bothered you it would not be hard to "fall back" to plain old Lua. But I think that would be overlooking a lot of benefits.
* Simple yet powerful
* Supports multiple paradigms
* Fairly concise
* DSL friendly
* Very robust
* Small footprint
* About as quick as they come in this language space, even without LuaJIT
* Supported by tools, debuggers and a community
If I were contemplating building my own dynamic language to support something like a game engine there would have to be some pretty compelling arguments not to just use Lua. I'm sure you've thought about it - so what's the reasoning?
However I hope the $500/license doesn't show that they are planning to emulate Adobe too closely...
We feel our licensing terms are very fair: http://theengine.co/license