Exploring Modding Systems: A Journey With Lua and Rust

Making a cargo project and integrating Lua

Let’s embark on this journey by creating a new Cargo project and setting up a simple Lua script.

First, create a new Cargo project and navigate to the project directory:

cargo new modding-example && cd modding-example

Next, add the rlua crate to your project:

cargo add rlua

Now, let’s create a main.rs file with the following code to execute a Lua script:

// File: src/main.rs
use rlua::{Lua, Result};
use std::fs;

fn exec_lua_code() -> Result<()> {
    let lua_code = fs::read_to_string("game/main.lua").expect("Unable to read the Lua script");

    let lua = Lua::new();
    lua.context(|lua_ctx| {
        lua_ctx.load(&lua_code).exec()?;

        Ok(())
    })
}

fn main() -> Result<()> {
    exec_lua_code()
}

If we try to run this, we’ll notice that the script can’t execute because the game/main.lua file doesn't exist yet. Let's create the necessary directory and file:

mkdir game
touch game/main.lua

Now, let’s add some flair to our Lua script by printing some information:

-- File: game/main.lua
print(_VERSION)
print("🌙 Lua is working!")

With this setup, you should see the Lua version and the “Lua is working!” message printed to the console when you run your Rust program.