Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#1

Post by todsacerdoti » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 12:53 PM UTC

Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch
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Re: Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#2

Post by colingw » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 1:35 PM UTC

I have being using Trial[1] for the past few weeks to test out game development in Common Lisp, and have been having a great time. Being able to alter (almost) all aspects of your game while it's running is a blessing.

I hope this port succeeds.

[1]: https://github.com/Shirakumo/trial

Re: Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#3

Post by spsesk117 » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 2:16 PM UTC

Thanks to the author for the fascinating and detailed write up. It feels like a lot of the time this level of detail around the specifics of 'blessed' (not homebrew) console porting are only revealed years after the end of the consoles lifetime.

As an aside, reading about this kind of deeply interesting work always makes me envious when I think about the rote software I spend all day writing :)

Re: Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#4

Post by cschep » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

spsesk117 wrote: post #3

Thanks to the author for the fascinating and detailed write up. It feels like a lot of the time this level of detail around the specifics of 'blessed' (not homebrew) console porting are only revealed years after the end of the consoles lifetime. As an aside, reading about this kind of deeply interesting work always makes me envious when I think about the rote software I spend all day writing :)

well said!

as I was just sitting down to another day of ruby on rails (that I am grateful for!) I was thinking.. I wonder what hobby/open source projects could use some of my attention later..

.. what projects my attention could use later .. :D

Re: Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#5

Post by whizzter » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

spsesk117 wrote: post #3

Thanks to the author for the fascinating and detailed write up. It feels like a lot of the time this level of detail around the specifics of 'blessed' (not homebrew) console porting are only revealed years after the end of the consoles lifetime. As an aside, reading about this kind of deeply interesting work always makes me envious when I think about the rote software I spend all day writing :)

At least back when I was working these "blessed" tools were usually a tad hacked together, modern homebrew toolchains for many older platforms are better except for debugging support (since the devkits for the machines usually had better hooks available but also avoiding the entire GDB focus).

Having been in both worlds, i'm not entirely sure there's that much to be envious of.

Re: Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#6

Post by fouric » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 2:44 PM UTC

This is super neat - SBCL is an awesome language implementation, and I've always wanted to do CL development for a "real" game console.

I'm also surprised (in a good way) that Shinmera is working on this - I've seen him a few times before on #lispgames and in the Lisp Discord, and I didn't know that he was into this kind of low-level development. I've looked at the guts of SBCL briefly and was frightened away, so kudos to him.

I wonder if SBCL (+ threading/SDL2) works on the Raspberry Pi now...

Re: Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#7

Post by f1shy » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 2:56 PM UTC

fouric wrote: post #6

This is super neat - SBCL is an awesome language implementation, and I've always wanted to do CL development for a "real" game console. I'm also surprised (in a good way) that Shinmera is working on this - I've seen him a few times before on #lispgames and in the Lisp Discord, and I didn't know that he was into this kind of low-level development. I've looked at the guts of SBCL briefly and was frightened away, so kud…

- Is it not her?

Re: Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#8

Post by ducktective » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 3:06 PM UTC

I wish the likes of Nintendo and Sony themselves finance such efforts. I mean it's one another way to create games (IP) for your console, what possibly could be the downside of starting something similar to Github Accelerator for your platform?

Re: Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#9

Post by Retr0id » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 3:07 PM UTC

> The answer to that is that while I would desperately like to share it all publicly, the NDA prevents us from doing so.

I'm curious what the rationale here was for using the official SDK, rather than the unencumbered "homebrew" ones[0].

As a complete guess, maybe Nintendo doesn't let you officially publish games built using 3rd party SDKs?

[0] https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Setting_up_Development_Environme...

Re: Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

#10

Post by noobermin » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 3:10 PM UTC

This is what I come to HN for. Kudos to OP and their colleague. I know it's impossible but what a blessing it would be if Nintendo could be a little more open about their system.