VSLua - Lua for Visual Studio

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VSLua - Lua for Visual Studio

Trango Interactive announces the release of VSLua, an integrated Microsoft Visual Studio editor and debugger for the Lua, the most popular scripting language for video games.

VSLua is the first and only product that seamlessly integrates Lua scripts into MS Visual Studio environment thus making powerful Visual Studio features available to game programmers using Lua. Currently, most Lua developers use print statements and guesswork to debug their scripts. VSLua changes all that by providing a modern and efficient solution for debugging Lua scripts. Lua developers can now use Visual Studio and its familiar commands to edit, debug and manage Lua script projects making VSLua the only practical Lua development solution in the market today.

Some of the salient features of VSLua are:

  • Use of Visual Studio editor for Lua scripts with syntax hi-lighting and intellisense
  • Full Visual Studio native debugging support with commands such as run time breakpoints, step in, step out, including stepping in and out of C/C++ game code
  • Watch and Stack window support for Lua variables and scripts.
  • Workspace, project and integrated Visual Source Safe support for Lua scripts.

VSLua provides a level of productivity that developers expect from modern programming languages but was not available for Lua, even though it is the most widely used scripting language in computer games”, said Ovais Ashraf, CEO of Trango Interactive. "VSLua will not only simplify Lua development but also allow developers to produce more robust game code by giving them ability to debug and fix complex bugs efficiently.

Beta releases of VSLua were enthusiastically received by the Lua community. According to Mark Manyen, co-author of "Game Development with Lua" and a beta user, "VSLua represents a breakthrough in the usability of Lua. Writing complex scripts in Lua without VSLua is now unthinkable." VSLua under went three month of extensive beta test and is now available as a commercial product.

VSLua supports all official versions of Lua and is available for Visual Studio 2002, 2003 and 2005. Custom versions of Lua are also supported. More information about features of VSLua can be found at Trango Interactive's website.