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Langjam Gamejam: Build a programming language then make a game with it
- amarant 11mo agoHoly cow the diversity of skill sets required to do this is insane. I'll be very impressed at any Devs who takes this on solo.
- cardanome 11mo agoI think you can make it as challenging or not challenging as you want. Just implement a simple Forth or Lisp in Lua and make a cute little game with Love2d or even just a simple text game. Maybe I expect too much from people but like at least being able to write a simple tree-walking interpreter is basic computer science education and who hasn't tried to make a game at least once? The problem is more that some people just like sharpening the saw and some people like cutting down trees. Both are valid. Some people get really into programming languages and tooling but never ship any product or vice versa. But people need to be skilled enough to do both.
- amarant 11mo agoI think I might be the one to expect too much on second thought. Making a language and a game is one thing, making a good language and a good game is something else entirely. Very few people can do either of those on their own, let alone both.
- sunrunner 11mo agoThe crossover of language design/implementation and game development made me assume this was either a Jonathon Blow (Jai, Braid, The Witness) or Bob Nystrom project (Game Programming Patterns, Crafting Interpreters, 'Is There More to Game Architecture than ECS?' [1]). Either way, given the time constraints and requirements I'm expecting a lot of text adventures and rogue-likes. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxI3Eu5DPwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxI3Eu5DPwE
- adamhartenz 11mo agoA programming language could be as simple as a domain-specific-language done in a JSON format. It could just abstract away a bunch of thing, and most of the logic would just be in your "game engine".
- pennomi 11mo agoEasy, create a DSL that represents dialogue in a visual novel style game. Add some branching, looping, and variables, maybe some labels for jumping to and you’re good. Tada! You’ve basically reinvented Ren’Py.
- Razengan 11mo agoI've been wondering about this for some time, that how there really isn't a language that's made from the ground up just for coding gameplay logic. Like we have SQL for databases, Julia etc for maths etc, but gamedevs still have to plod along in general-purpose languages with archaic conventions established 50 years ago by people who had nothing to do with games. I'd love something with the syntax of GDScript and the features of Swift, with special constructs just for gameplay logic, which is often a hybrid between inheritance and composition, static and dynamic, declarative and imperative. I've been toying with what would be the ideal syntax (for me), but I don't have the brains to actually make a language :')
- reactordev 11mo agoSQL is deterministic. Julia is deterministic. Gameplay is not deterministic. Constraints are arbitrary and there are no rules.
- formula1 11mo agoI think magic the gathering set a pretty good standard.
- reactordev 11mo agoFor Magic the gathering, sure. Not for Eve-Online. Not for Counter-Strike. Not for World of Warcraft. Not for Minecraft. Games are too diverse to limit yourself to a DDL.
- macintux 11mo agoWell, if you’re interested in text-based games, there have been custom languages for a long time. https://www.linusakesson.net/dialog/craverly/craverly_side_by_side.html https://www.linusakesson.net/dialog/craverly/craverly_side_b... Also LPC for muds, although that definitely wasn’t built from the ground up.
- Balooga 11mo agoThere is OpenGOAL[1]. A re-implementation of the language that Naughty Dog used to created Jak and Daxter. [1] https://opengoal.dev/ https://opengoal.dev/
- macintux 11mo agoSeems ideal for those grumbling about Advent of Code’s shortened schedule this year.
- riffraff 11mo agothe time frame matches too, 14 to 20 gives you one day of rest after the last AoC, and then three more days to buy presents before Christmas that you forgot to co :)
- kderbyma 11mo agoI have been doing something minor - not full language - but I am working on a couple DSLs for my game engine. The games themselves are interpreted by my engine console - then transpiled to webgl and JavaScript. The DSL is for cutscenes and scripting dialogues and movements and transitions. The idea was to have a screenplay like language that would run in my game engine so I can write the scenes like a script instead of like code. — Then I am using a LUA like subset for the core game logic. I don’t think I would want to have the entire thing written in a custom language though, as that seems unnecessary
- toisanji 11mo agoOk would like to learn more about what you have been building, can we talk? I have thought of similar ideas.
- munificent 11mo agoOh my God, someone has discovered my kryptonite.
- BSTRhino 11mo agoYour book is awesome!
- azhenley 11mo agoI’m going to blog about whatever I end up building. I hope some of you will join me :)
- BSTRhino 11mo agolol, I spent 3 years coding a game programming language...
- WhyOhWhyQ 11mo agoAny recommendations on books / resources to read in order to participate as a beginner (language creator that is..., not beginner with programming games)?
- BSTRhino 11mo agoCrafting Interpreters!
- shoo 11mo agoJack Crenshaw's 1988-1995 series Let's Build a Compiler [1] Graydon Hoare's 2002 talk `"One Day Compilers" or how I learned to stop worrying and love static metaprogramming` [2] (implements a compiler for a DSL that's a subset of makefile syntax in < 400 lines of code using ocaml toolchain) edit: on second thoughts, aiming to ship a game in a novel _compiled_ language in a 7 day language+game jam is probably a lot more optimistic than aiming for an interpreted language. [1] https://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/ https://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/ [2] https://www.venge.net/graydon/talks/ https://www.venge.net/graydon/talks/
- WhyOhWhyQ 11mo agoI'm halfway through Crenshaw!
- ifidishshbsba 11mo agoRacket for sure, it goes straight to the heart of everything. You want simple macro compilers so you can see how simple it all is, not being confused by complex interpreters which totally obscure what is being done here.
- munificent 11mo agoHeh, I guess you could read my two books, "Crafting Interpreters", and "Game Programming Patterns". :)
- WhyOhWhyQ 11mo agoWell this is certainly cool! Your first book has been on my reading list. I'm cracking it open tomorrow!
- shoo 11mo agoWhat is a minimal-ish programming language that could be used to express some interesting class of games? It's easy to think of pathologically trivially useless "languages" that could "make a game". E.g. the single instruction language where the instruction P is defined to mean "execute a game of pong". Or a zero instruction language where the empty program is defined to mean "execute a game of pong". Also easy to think of existing minimal programming languages that could technically be used to implement games. E.g. brainfuck is a beautifully minimal language with only 8 instructions, supporting character IO - so you could make a text based adventure game with it, but this would be unpleasant and there isn't anything about brainfuck that makes it suited to game dev. Another idea could be to have a non Turing complete language where you declare data for entities etc to be executed by some game engine/runtime. E.g. it might be possible to define a language for declaring data & entities to express a few different but similar games (e.g. spanning pong --- breakout, or one specialised for simple card games, or so on).
- ifidishshbsba 11mo agoLet D be the language used to express the gameplay, C be an implementation of a compiler for D in a language L. You want to minimise the length of D + C across all languages L. This gives you a unique language D (a DSL) for each game which is the most semantically dense and expresses the essence of the problem domain the best. The language or languages D is discovered (not designed) and is the essence of the problem, will never change and is true in all universes. Any general purpose programming language solving the same problem (a solution using L) will have a structure of D with a bunch of boilerplate and design patterns (design pattern = boilerplate = hints at a special form in D). Using a hierarchy of these minimal languages D with one compiling into another for each little problem is the only way to get ‘clean code’ free of boilerplate. Software engineering is minimising D + C for all L
- binary132 11mo agoI’m hearing FORTH, but surely that’s not what you meant to say. :)
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- copx 11mo agoThis is not as hard as it sounds as long as Forth and Lisp variants qualify. You can write a basic Forth or Lisp interpreter in a day.
- jaggederest 11mo agoIt's even easier if you implement your Forth or Lisp interpreter in Forth or Lisp (both map to each other surprisingly well). Metacircular evaluator and be there.
- FjordWarden 11mo agoChallenge accepted, but no way I can finish this in 7 days even with a head start of a few months.
- adamhartenz 11mo agoSo you are not accepting the challenge then. Sounds like you are over thinking or over scoping the problem.
- mcpeepants 11mo agoor just keenly aware of their own strengths, weaknesses, and time budget for this? the leap to “over scoping” is wild.
- adamhartenz 11mo agoI was just meaning, that if you think you can't do it in the timeframe, then you are making it too big for yourself. The rules are so loose that you could literally make a programming language that has a single command `run_my_awesome_game()` and fully impliment the logic etc in your language and library of choice. Obviously a trivial/useless example, but take it up a few notches and you could have something interesting. A DSL inside JSON can be very powerful.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- suioir 11mo agoWhat if you've already been working on a language for a while and want to use it instead of making a new one just for this?
- ModernMech 11mo agoI would say the spirit of a jam is to start from scratch, but using parts and techniques you're used to is fine. e.g. repurpose your number parser but not the entire grammar and runtime. A lot of being successful at a jam is doing the right prep work so you're not making decisions and figuring things out at jam time.
- pixelmelt 11mo agoIf only it wasn't finals week
- kode-targz 11mo agoright?
- empressplay 11mo agoUse Logo! Straight-forward parser. Turtles make game elements easy. Write it in Go for simple multi-threaded agents.