Every game engine, at some level, needs to be able to compile and run code at runtime. You need, for example, to trigger a custom event when the hero pushed a button. The button should contain a bunch of code that may call an elevator or/and open a door or/and even kill the hero. All these custom events are possible by embedding a scripting language on top of the native language the game uses. Most of the game developers use native languages like C/C++ (very popular), Objective C (iPhone) and Java (other mobile platforms and rarely on PC). As for the scripting languages, the developers face many more choices with custom scripting languages (Unreal Script), lua, javascript (through various implementations), Python, Squirrel and more.

AnKi, just like every other game engine, needed a scripting language and the searching/prototyping started almost a year back. We have made prototypes for lua, javascript (V8 and SpiderMonkey), squirrel, Qt script, Python and others. Lets see why we chose boost python over others…
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