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I was greatly disappointed with this book because none of the 'Game' examples had a graphical interface to them. They are all text based. Reading further in th

by Vekz 9y ago

I was greatly disappointed with this book because none of the 'Game' examples had a graphical interface to them. They are all text based. Reading further in this thread people are suggesting Realm of Racket as an alternative and it looks like that book has much more visual game examples: https://realmofracket.com/games.html https://realmofracket.com/games.html

flavio81 9y ago
>I was greatly disappointed (...) They are all text based. That's not really a bad thing... If you want graphical games in Lisp, take a look at the series called "Pushing pixels with Lisp": https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/6d5nht/pushing_pixels_with_lisp_episode_1_perlin_noise/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/6d5nht/pushing_pixels...
- Vekz 9y ago
  I've been following this series and its great! I'm not saying it was a "bad thing" I'm saying it didn't meet my personal expectations for a "lets build games" book
stevelosh 9y ago
> I was greatly disappointed with this book because none of the 'Game' examples had a graphical interface to them. They are all text based. Chapter 19 is titled "Creating a Graphical, Web-Based Version of Dice of Doom".
- Vekz 9y ago
  Unfortunately, this web-based version is just printing text to the browser instead of a repl in the other examples.
  - stevelosh 9y ago
    By "text" do you mean "SVG code that is rendered into images the user can click on"? Because that's what it's doing: https://i.imgur.com/iqdZ8l4.png https://i.imgur.com/iqdZ8l4.png and I think calling that a "text based" game is wrong.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Using a local web browser as your user interface is a valid method for making user interfaces; in fact, it's a very cool and cheap one - all it takes is to embed a HTTP server in your application and have it output HTML/CSS/JS (+ SVG for extra pretty graphics).
    - throwaway7645 9y ago
      This is the standard way to do user interfaces in Picolisp. If you've never toyed with Picolisp, check it out. It is a very opinionated lisp. https://picolisp.com/wiki/?home https://picolisp.com/wiki/?home
TeMPOraL 9y ago
TBH, as someone who learned programming through making games (with graphics!), it disappointed me too. That said, I found it to be only a small issue (and arguably a justified decision) in otherwise great book. A lot of the game code is really separate from the issues of display. In later chapters, the book uses the web browser to provide for a graphical display. And also, come on, the type-in implementation of Robots game made half-a-page long through abusing loop and format is just plain awesome xD.
throwaway7645 9y ago
Honestly that's one of the things I loved about it. Text games will work with any language without any libraries (for the most part). If I have to use Unity or Unreal, I feel like I'm really just learning how to use a framework and not useful long term programming skills. I think grand theft wumpus uses lisp to write out dot files for graphviz to consume. They skirt around using a library for that which is what I do even in languages with graphviz support.

by Vekz 9y ago

flavio81 9y ago

>I was greatly disappointed (...) They are all text based. That's not really a bad thing... If you want graphical games in Lisp, take a look at the series called "Pushing pixels with Lisp": https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/6d5nht/pushing_pixels_with_lisp_episode_1_perlin_noise/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/6d5nht/pushing_pixels...

Vekz 9y ago
I've been following this series and its great! I'm not saying it was a "bad thing" I'm saying it didn't meet my personal expectations for a "lets build games" book

stevelosh 9y ago

> I was greatly disappointed with this book because none of the 'Game' examples had a graphical interface to them. They are all text based. Chapter 19 is titled "Creating a Graphical, Web-Based Version of Dice of Doom".

Vekz 9y ago
Unfortunately, this web-based version is just printing text to the browser instead of a repl in the other examples.
- stevelosh 9y ago
  By "text" do you mean "SVG code that is rendered into images the user can click on"? Because that's what it's doing: https://i.imgur.com/iqdZ8l4.png https://i.imgur.com/iqdZ8l4.png and I think calling that a "text based" game is wrong.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Using a local web browser as your user interface is a valid method for making user interfaces; in fact, it's a very cool and cheap one - all it takes is to embed a HTTP server in your application and have it output HTML/CSS/JS (+ SVG for extra pretty graphics).
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    This is the standard way to do user interfaces in Picolisp. If you've never toyed with Picolisp, check it out. It is a very opinionated lisp. https://picolisp.com/wiki/?home https://picolisp.com/wiki/?home

TeMPOraL 9y ago

TBH, as someone who learned programming through making games (with graphics!), it disappointed me too. That said, I found it to be only a small issue (and arguably a justified decision) in otherwise great book. A lot of the game code is really separate from the issues of display. In later chapters, the book uses the web browser to provide for a graphical display. And also, come on, the type-in implementation of Robots game made half-a-page long through abusing loop and format is just plain awesome xD.

throwaway7645 9y ago

Honestly that's one of the things I loved about it. Text games will work with any language without any libraries (for the most part). If I have to use Unity or Unreal, I feel like I'm really just learning how to use a framework and not useful long term programming skills. I think grand theft wumpus uses lisp to write out dot files for graphviz to consume. They skirt around using a library for that which is what I do even in languages with graphviz support.