Nice Language for Testing GUI Apps
“Sikuli is a research project developed by User Interface Design Group at the MIT […] Sikuli Script automates anything you see on the screen without internal API’s support. You can programmatically control a web page, a desktop application running on Windows/Linux/Mac OS X, or even an iphone application running in an emulator.“ [Project SIKULI homepage]
From the paper, it shows that Sikuli Script is motivated by the desire to address the limitations of current automation scripting languages like: AppleScript, Windows Scripting, DocWizards, Chickenfoot, CoScripter, and macro recorders like Jitbit9 and QuicKeys. On Slashdot it is promoted as quite a bit more. See [MIT Offers Picture-Centric Programming To the Masses With Sikuli]. Personally, I think, picture-centric programming for the masses will have to wait, but Sikuli is perfect for writing test programs for GUI applications. Thank you MIT for a scripting language that is reasonable indifferent to GUI element alignment changes.
Cool that you’re using Lua. Have you considered impnemelting a system that will allow lua files to be compiled on the fly, so you can be in the game, change some variables, send an event and thinks update dynamically? Gamebryo had something similar and it helped us speed up the time it took to find the right variable value that felt right.