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Welcome to the Lisp Games Wiki!

This wiki is the Official Community Portal (TM) of the Lisp Games community, devoted to creating games and other interactive multimedia constructions with the programmable programming language, Lisp, in its various dialects: CommonLisp, Scheme, Clojure, Parenscript, Clojurescript, EmacsLisp, and others. These user-editable pages are for YOU: people sharing information, links, and discussions related to Lisp Games Development.

We've been updating the wiki to make it a more comprehensive resource for the Lispgames community. If you'd like to help out, please create an account and start adding ideas, questions, or links to your own or others' projects. Or join #lispgames on freenode to chat with someone. (See MediaWiki's formatting help page for hints on editing. If you would prefer to use Emacs to edit the site, see the EmacsWiki page on MediaWikiMode.)

Current News
davexunit is working on guile-2d, a library for making 2D games in GNU Guile Scheme.

dto is working on a "howto" to build any lisp program on GNU/Linux, OSX and Windows with 2x0ng as an example.

In a recent release of SBCL (version 1.1.9) the problems with Windows 7 64-bit crashes was solved. Supposedly the Vista version isn't perfectly fixed yet, as been reported by dto.

add have revived cupe's old project perfectstorm along with the other active members on lispgames. Link to the original blogpost: erleuchtet.org and to the current repo on github: lispgames/perfectstorm

In other news, dto have renamed blocky to *drumroll* xelf. Link here: xelf homepage and here: on github

New about these parts?
What is Lisp?

Why use Lisp for games?

Resources, by dialect
Lisp is a family of languages and each can have different libraries available. Check out what is particular to each dialect below.

CommonLisp, Scheme, Clojure, Clojurescript, EmacsLisp, Parenscript

Non Lisp Specific Resources
Many challenges in game development are relevant to all languages. The links below are not necessarily about Lisp but may be very useful.

Non Lisp Specific Resources

Free Art & Audio Assets
Though it's very unlikely you'd be able to find enough free assets to make your game from while keeping a consistent style, free art assets can be very handy as placeholders in your game to help give others (and yourself!) a glimpse of where the game is heading. It can be very hard to inspire people to the noble effort of a orphan cube, battling for justice and vengeance against the hoards of malevolent spheres!


 * Stock Art/Audio:
 * LostGarden
 * Open Game Art
 * SpriteLib GPL
 * OpenClipArt
 * FreeSound.org
 * game-icons.net

Open issues and projects

 * EditorSupportForLisp
 * Identifying UsefulApplications for Lisp game developers.
 * Building various GameCreationEnvironments.
 * CloMotion ideas and resources for motion control in Lisp gaming.
 * Collecting Education resources. ObstaclesToLispNewcomers GoodFreeDocumentationElsewhere
 * Identifying NeededDocumentation.
 * Planning the Next Lisp Game Dev Competition.
 * Removing the KittenOfDeath message and spurious terminal window from Win32/SBCL executables.
 * Using Blackthorn Starter Pack.
 * Automating build process and packaging of binaries/libs/assets for all available platforms. See also QuickLisp, DistributingGames. MakingBinariesWithWine
 * Engine and language-agnostic DAM (digital asset management) tools. See AssetManagement.
 * Working with others to add new platforms. PlatformSupport
 * Writing Lisp Game Development Articles.
 * Collecting Lessons learned, Questions and Answers.

Wiki Todo List
Here are some pages you could write or add to:


 * Page generally describing Lisp, hopefully written in a manner AccessibleToNewcomers.
 * Collect more dialect-specific resources: CommonLisp, Scheme, Clojure, EmacsLisp, GOAL, Parenscript, Clojurescript
 * A permanent LispGamesArchive that people could donate things to, sort of like the Interactive Fiction Archive.
 * ObstaclesToLispNewcomers, CoolThingsWeShouldKnowAbout

Lisp Games In The Wild
Some games written using lisp-family languages.


 * XONG
 * Xconq is a free strategy game that uses GDL (a declarative Lisp-like syntax) to define its war scenarios.
 * Abuse was a great action game that used Lisp for scripting its game logic.
 * Jak and Daxter (Naughty Dog) was apparently partly written in a custom Lisp dialect called GOAL. See also this C2 wiki page on LispInJakAndDaxter
 * Common Worm
 * Farmageddon
 * Starwar
 * See more in Category:Game

Community

 * IRC: chat.freenode.net #lispgames #lisp and #scheme
 * mailing list
 * lispgames on Twitter
 * dto's Blocky blog
 * WarWeasle's Qix/CLinch blog

(ᗧ*) Lisp Games Wiki