There are two main ways that you can get your Lua scripts evaluated at runtime.

At regular, pre-determined points in each game's initialization, main loop, and shutdown processes, the Stingray game engine calls out to a small, preset number of global functions in the Lua environment.

If you have code that you want to be run periodically every frame, or when the game starts up and shuts down, you can implement these functions yourself.

You can do this in a boot script -- a script file that the game engine loads on startup. For details, see Starting Lua from scratch: using a custom boot script.

The Lua Appkit, which is provided in the core Stingray resources and which is used by default in all the Stingray template projects, is already set up with a boot script that runs some helpful code for managing the game. You can extend or override these default modules with your own code. For details, see Starting Lua from a template: using the Appkit.

Flow is the name given to the node-based visual programming language provided in the Stingray level editor tools for visual scripting of game behaviors. See also Visual programming using Flow.

Although Flow already contains a variety of built-in nodes for carrying out common tasks and handling common events, you can also create your own custom Flow nodes that call out to your Lua code when they are triggered.

This approach is useful if you have code that needs to be called in response to a particular event during the lifespan of a game level or a game unit, or if you want to set up your level designers with the ability to call your custom scripts at a time of their choosing.

For details, see Create custom Flow nodes in Lua and Communicating between Flow and Lua.