Lessons Learned

This page is for sharing information, ideas, and experience from using Lisp for creating games.

SBCL

• The fix for "Your kitten of death awaits." on Windows SBCL Distributions.

cl-opengl

The cl-opengl interface is usually quite close to the normal C one, but lispier (function names without type suffixes, functions with optional args, etc). However, there are some places where the normal OpenGL interface does C things that don't map nicely onto lisp. cl-opengl will provide a more lispy interface, or provide a lisp interface instead of a C one. In rare cases, OpenGL features are not supported.

• with-macros are provided, like gl:with-pushed-matrix and gl:with-primitives. These are always in addition to the two-function way of doing things, like gl:push-matrix/gl:pop-matrix and gl:begin/gl:end.

• The interface to Vertex Arrays, Vertex Buffer Objects, and other kinds of OpenGL buffer objects is very different. Many C functions (gl:bind-buffers, gl:buffer-data, gl:vertex-attribute-pointer) are not exported and you should use the lisp ones (gl:bind-gl-vertex-array, gl:define-gl-array-format, gl:glaref, etc) instead. The main difference is in how data is represented, which on the lisp side uses a new type called a gl-array and much magic and macrology to make these map to the right C types and functions. cl-opengl has a usage example for the new interface in "examples/misc/opengl-arrays.lisp". You can also read the source (gl/opengl.lisp, search for "2.9 Buffer Objects"), but it's rather hairy.

• Some more uncommon parts of the OpenGL API with some of the harder to bind interfaces are unimplemented. You probably won't need or want them or even know they're not there. But if you run into the lack of them, good luck. Examples:
  • The GLU tesselator.
  • Feedback and selection render modes.

• CL-OpenGL with SBCL on Linux may lockup your computer IF you do not include (declare (optimize () (speed 3) (size 0) (debug 0))) for the main loop.

Questions

• What is the best way to render (straight functions, compile to primitives, etc.)

• What are the strongest parts of Lisp Game Development?
  • In-engine read eval print loops. They are made of pure interactive rapid-development win.

• What are the weakest parts of Lisp Game Development?
  • There can be an impedance mismatch between the lispy hardware interface you'd like to see and what the OS provides to C programs. Many libraries have CFFI bindings avalible that pave over the gaps, but it can be really hard to do correctly for everything. The places where they're missing - or 'raw' and un-lisp-like - will *hurt*.

• What is the best Lisp to use for various goals?

• What is the best way to distribute your game?

• Are there ways to abstract game development?
  • Component-entity frameworks are a way to abstract out game logic and game object managment. Object Orientation is nice, but doesn't quite map to the way game entities/objects tend to be. Component-Entity Frameworks are designed to provide the advantages of OO (abstraction, encapsulation of data, coupling of data and the code that uses it, behaviours that any object can implement), but in a way more suited to game devlopment.