They implemented pretty much what Steve is describing for Dungeon Siege. (Presentation was in 2002, so they started on it probably around 2000. Take that for "no earlier references", Steve ;)
I vaguely recall that Thief used a similar system, too. There's also at least on "NextGen" game that uses that system that I'm aware of. It's pretty powerful (and makes it incredibly easy to shoot yourself in the foot)
As for the "Chieftain" example - it's usually solved by providing multiple prototypes for an object. With all the ensuing uglyness.
Thanks for the link! I actually saw something almost exactly like this by someone who was working for Looking Glass, but it didn't go in depth about the scripting layer, it just mentioned that you could either go with "static" classes, "data-driven" classes, or a hybrid. In my own development, I've generally gone with hybrid just because the value of flexibility surpasses any sort of performance hit, but I still keep some of the very simple stuff (object position, velocity, etc.) in the static layer.
They implemented pretty much what Steve is describing for Dungeon Siege. (Presentation was in 2002, so they started on it probably around 2000. Take that for "no earlier references", Steve ;)
I vaguely recall that Thief used a similar system, too. There's also at least on "NextGen" game that uses that system that I'm aware of. It's pretty powerful (and makes it incredibly easy to shoot yourself in the foot)
As for the "Chieftain" example - it's usually solved by providing multiple prototypes for an object. With all the ensuing uglyness.