MAGES: The .NET Scripting Engine Born from a Game and a Thiel Grant

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Developer Florian Rappl details the origin story of MAGES, a lightweight expression parser and interpreter for .NET, in his ongoing open-source project series. MAGES evolved from an earlier project called YAMP, a reflection-based math parser that powered SineRider, a 2013 Unity web game where players graph equations to navigate a sled through checkpoints. When YAMP's performance proved insufficient for a more ambitious real-time, function-driven game world envisioned by SineRider's creator, a Peter Thiel grant helped fund the development of a faster successor. The result was MAGES, which retained YAMP's MATLAB-like syntax but replaced its reflection-driven internals with a more performant architecture suited for real-time use. MAGES is available as an embeddable scripting engine for .NET applications, requiring minimal setup and no heavy runtime dependencies.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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