Hello all! I'm wondering if anyone has ever heard of an MMORPG
developed in Common Lisp. I've tried to research this on Google, but I
didn't get far. Strangely, a Google search for '"common lisp" mmorpg'
yields something I myself said on GameDev.Net as the third result. So
it seems the Common Lisp MMORPG world is quite small indeed. Never fear
- I intend to remedy matters in this respect! But we shall see about
that.
In the meantime I want to see if anyone has heard of a Common Lisp
MMORPG. Perhaps there exists one that is not very public, but that
someone developed for their own enjoyment? It would be really cool to
discuss ways in which Lisp's specialities can be adapted towards online
RPGs.
(And, yes, I know the acronym MMORPG is more than likely to elicit a
groan from seasoned game developers. I have, however, made two small
ones before, and in Visual Basic no less. So I'm not embarking on the
quest without knowing the difficulties. :) And, plus, everything is so
much easier in Lisp. Something I once did in C++ as two entire files is
compressed into a global variable holding a lambda ... I always thought
that saying was somewhat rhetorical, but it turns out to be quite
literal indeed.)
Also, if anyone has any interesting ideas themselves on Lisp and
MMORPGs, feel free. For one thing, I always felt that existing MMORPGs
are so *static*, even throwing a little bit of Lisp into the mix might
make for a revolutionary new game.
Tron3k
Common Lisp is very good for developing web applications, and you can
do some really cool things with web-based MMORPGs. Have you seen
Kingdom of Loathing <http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/>? It's the most
original MMORPG I know of, and it's written in PHP. Lisp could be a lot
nicer, using TBNL or UnCommonWeb (I'd go with TBNL on this one, but not
by a wide margin since UCW is amazingly cool).
Even if the web route doesn't appeal to you, you should still check out
KoL. It's such a funny game, and remarkably full-featured too.
-Peter
Peter Scott wrote:
> Common Lisp is very good for developing web applications, and you can
> do some really cool things with web-based MMORPGs. Have you seen
> Kingdom of Loathing <http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/>? It's the most
> original MMORPG I know of, and it's written in PHP. Lisp could be a lot
> nicer, using TBNL or UnCommonWeb (I'd go with TBNL on this one, but not
> by a wide margin since UCW is amazingly cool).
>
> Even if the web route doesn't appeal to you, you should still check out
> KoL. It's such a funny game, and remarkably full-featured too.
>
> -Peter
Ha, my friends are totally addicted to that game! I agree that web
MMORPGs are a good way to go if you're using Lisp. I, however, (and I
should have mentioned this) am going whole hog and making a fully
graphical game using OpenGL and Corman Lisp. You guys will be seeing
screenshots of this eventually, I hope. So far I've written about 600
lines of initialization, texture loading, miscellaneous utility
functions, and it's going quite well so far.
What OpenGL bindings do you use? (Curious)
:)
Kelsin
Tron3k wrote:
> Peter Scott wrote:
>
>>Common Lisp is very good for developing web applications, and you can
>>do some really cool things with web-based MMORPGs. Have you seen
>>Kingdom of Loathing <http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/>? It's the most
>>original MMORPG I know of, and it's written in PHP. Lisp could be a lot
>>nicer, using TBNL or UnCommonWeb (I'd go with TBNL on this one, but not
>>by a wide margin since UCW is amazingly cool).
>>
>>Even if the web route doesn't appeal to you, you should still check out
>>KoL. It's such a funny game, and remarkably full-featured too.
>>
>>-Peter
>
>
> Ha, my friends are totally addicted to that game! I agree that web
> MMORPGs are a good way to go if you're using Lisp. I, however, (and I
> should have mentioned this) am going whole hog and making a fully
> graphical game using OpenGL and Corman Lisp. You guys will be seeing
> screenshots of this eventually, I hope. So far I've written about 600
> lines of initialization, texture loading, miscellaneous utility
> functions, and it's going quite well so far.
>
Kelsin wrote:
> What OpenGL bindings do you use? (Curious)
>
> :)
> Kelsin
>
Hi! Corman Lisp has a built-in C header file parser, so all I had to do
was copy some stuff I needed from gl.h and call LoadLibrary at the
beginning of my program ... very easy!
Also, if you're using Corman Lisp, by executing:
(require "OPENGL")
you can get some OpenGL functions, but not all of them. They will be in
the package WIN.
Tron3k wrote:
> ...
> Also, if anyone has any interesting ideas themselves on Lisp and
> MMORPGs, feel free. For one thing, I always felt that existing MMORPGs
> are so *static*, even throwing a little bit of Lisp into the mix might
> make for a revolutionary new game.
>
> Tron3k
>
While not exactly a MMORPG, Second Life isn't static at all. If someone
wrote a game like Second Life that used a lisp language for scripting,
I'd probably lose my job. And by that, I mean my family and friends
too. And by this, I mean I will pay you money to play this game. Money!
Andy
"Tron3k" <······@gmail.com> writes:
> In the meantime I want to see if anyone has heard of a Common Lisp
> MMORPG.
Not Common Lisp, but http://cliki.tunes.org/Scheme has a few MUD
codebases in Scheme.
Regards,
Patrick
------------------------------------------------------------------------
S P Engineering, Inc. | The experts in large scale distributed OO
| systems design and implementation.
···@spe.com | (C++, Java, Common Lisp, Jini, CORBA, UML)
Patrick May wrote:
> "Tron3k" <······@gmail.com> writes:
> > In the meantime I want to see if anyone has heard of a Common Lisp
> > MMORPG.
>
> Not Common Lisp, but http://cliki.tunes.org/Scheme has a few MUD
> codebases in Scheme.
>
> Regards,
>
> Patrick
Thanks for the link, that should be helpful. In fact, now that you
pointed me towards MUDs I was able to find a MUD in Common Lisp here:
http://common-lisp.net/project/lmud/
I guess I'll try to study the code and adapt it to my particular
problem. You know, personally I haven't seen a graphical game in Lisp
before. I wonder if there are some on common-lisp.net.
Tron3k
You can follow my work at:
http://www.ptarmigangames.com/malcontent
I have already built low level communications and am currently working
on some basic graphics stuff in opengl for the client side.
Common Lisp is an excellent language for MMORPG development.
Brad Might wrote:
> You can follow my work at:
>
> http://www.ptarmigangames.com/malcontent
>
> I have already built low level communications and am currently working
> on some basic graphics stuff in opengl for the client side.
>
> Common Lisp is an excellent language for MMORPG development.
That is awesome! We should collaborate and share ideas. I have a blog
too at
http://tron3k.blogspot.com
but I've been too lazy to post anything on it for a while. I keep
getting sucked into Lisp coding. ;)
So how is Lispworks? I'm using Corman, mostly because it's cheap to buy
($250). Lispworks ($1100) is a bit out of my price range. But then
again if Corman turns out to be too slow, I'll have to look for another
option anyway.