Cl-bodge: a cross-platform Common Lisp game and application framework

Post by reikonomusha » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

bananaoomarang wrote: post #8

vladharbuz wrote: post #6

I think Lisp is wonderful, and I would love to develop games using Lisp. However, I was under the impression that, by all accounts, developing games in Lisp is completely unrealistic due to the garbage collector. I'm not familiar with Common Lisp, but in Racket, “GC pauses [...] typically run from 50ms to 100ms” [0]. On a 16ms maximum frame budget, that doesn't really work. Am I missing something? [0]: https://docs.r…

Naughty Dog historically disagreed with this [0], plenty of games these days are developed in languages with GC but it is a performance trade off. For maximum performance any Lisp is probably not the way to go but I don't think it's unfeasable. I want to say in general e.g. SBCL (a popular common lisp implementation) will perform a lot better than Racket. Racket is a great language but performance is not it's strong…

Post by phoe-krk » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

vladharbuz wrote: post #6

I think Lisp is wonderful, and I would love to develop games using Lisp. However, I was under the impression that, by all accounts, developing games in Lisp is completely unrealistic due to the garbage collector. I'm not familiar with Common Lisp, but in Racket, “GC pauses [...] typically run from 50ms to 100ms” [0]. On a 16ms maximum frame budget, that doesn't really work. Am I missing something? [0]: https://docs.r…

Post by crispyalmond » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

reikonomusha wrote: post #2

There’s a small, somewhat quiet, but very welcoming and very vibrant community of Common Lisp games developers. #lispgames on Libera is where many of them hang out. There are a few people who are trying their darndest to build and support libraries for graphics and other game-necessary things. It’s a tall order, since computers and operating systems have become so wildly complex and incompatible. (It’s no wonder peop…

Post by soegaard » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

soegaard wrote: post #9

vladharbuz wrote: post #6

I think Lisp is wonderful, and I would love to develop games using Lisp. However, I was under the impression that, by all accounts, developing games in Lisp is completely unrealistic due to the garbage collector. I'm not familiar with Common Lisp, but in Racket, “GC pauses [...] typically run from 50ms to 100ms” [0]. On a 16ms maximum frame budget, that doesn't really work. Am I missing something? [0]: https://docs.r…

The `portaudio` is a few years old, so I have a hunch that the comment refers to the old backend "Racket BC". The new backend "Racket CS" has a new garbage collection mode "incremental", which I understand is better for this usage scenario. I don't have any numbers though.

Post by rgrmrts » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

blacktriangle wrote: post #5

rgrmrts wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a somewhat related aside, the book Land of Lisp [1] is an interesting introduction to both Common Lisp and game programming. If anyone, like me, was interested in learning Common Lisp through a casual and fun mode, I highly recommend the book. [1] http://landoflisp.com/

I generally recommend people avoid Land of Lisp as an introduction to CL book. It's simultainisouly too easy and too hard for most people approaching the language in that it goes way too briefly over core concepts then all of a sudden shifts gears into much more involved programming. That being said, it's probably the best second book on CL ever. It showcases a variety of lisp techniques on some very real and fun exa…