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Trying NicCLIM game map editor (with ecl mcclim emacs eev)

While my next steps with NicCLIM common lisp interface manager map editor are very exciting, I donā€™t want this-first-release to be vacant. Or, I would like to know if it is. So Iā€™m committed to giving it the old college try here and now, while I should be preparing more for my interview of https://as.tufts.edu/physics/people/faculty/ken-olum tomorrow (0UTC Wednesday / 8pm Tuesday Boston time on https://anonradio.net/ live/ https://communitymedia.video/c/screwtape_channel/videos archive) instead.

Edit: (Worth listening to the archive about modern sbcl getting 60+ hours on the Tufts supercomputer https://communitymedia.video/w/9kysH4ZwVuP4J4erZozqFT .)

Iā€™m going to start NicCLIM in a background thread (remember, McCLIM application-frame commands are threadsafe), and drive it using eepitch from this markdown file.

If something doesnā€™t work for you in this example, please howl at me on the mastodon or on https://lispy-gopher-show.itch.io/ .

EDIT: Note, on a sufficiently slow computer, sometimes McCLIM signals that it waited-too-long for a response. Just choose 0 (do nothing) and it will continue normally.

EDIT2: Since this demo includes setup, scroll halfway down to get to screenshots/pictures/commands of the action.

Setup

First, download nicclim.lisp from https://lispy-gopher-show.itch.io/nicclim (Name your price ā‡Ø ā€œjust take me to the fileā€) to ~/Downloads/nicclim.lisp.

I wrote a broad spectrum minimal common lisp / emacs / eev guide here.

eev / slime (superior lisp interaction mode for emacs)

ā€¢ (setq inferior-lisp-program "ecl")
ā€¢ (slime)
ā€¢ (setq eepitch-buffer-name "*slime-repl ECL*")

(for me, at least). Remember that with eev we press F8 to send a line to eepitch-buffer-name in emacs. If you arenā€™t in emacs+eev you would come up with something different.

Incidentally, it is called inferior-lisp-program because the common lisp image is being controlled by (is inferior to) the emacs lisp major mode. Hence the joke-y names.

Common lisp interface manager

If you used https://www.quicklisp.org/beta/ to install McCLIM implementation of the Common Lisp Interface Manager spec,

(ql:quickload :mcclim)

or otherwise (asdf:load-system :mcclim).

My NicCLIM map editor

We use it from inside of CLIM-USER. -USER packages are designed to absorb user code. We are users of CLIM in this case: We are developers of our game maps. I am confident Jack Daniel would appreciate your contributions to developing McCLIM as well.

EDIT: Note that we end up using it (in-package :nicclim) in a moment instead to avoid some namespace stuff.

(in-package :clim-user)

(make-pathname :directory '(:relative "~/Downloads"))

(make-pathname :name "nicclim" :type "lisp")

(merge-pathnames ** *)

Phew! I love and prefer lispā€™s portably abstracted classic pathname stuff, but itā€™s hard to remember! I checked the end of my article over here as an example. Back to it.

(compile-file * :load t)

(I use * ** *** to refer to recent results).

I use embeddable common lispā€™s compile-file -and-then-load extension. Conceivably,

(unless t
  (compile-file *)
  (load *)
  ) ; instead.

Well, finally we got setup.

The Game (map editor)

Iā€™ve been putting maps in ~/GAME/.

(ensure-directories-exist #p"~/GAME/")
(uiop:chdir #p"~/GAME/")
(uiop:chdir #p"~/GAME/")

(with-open-file ; don't replace an existing file (error).
  (*standard-output* "CURRENT"
		     :direction :output
		     :if-does-not-exist :create
		     :if-exists :error))

(ensure-directories-exist #p"MAP/")
(ensure-directories-exist #p"PIC/")

Iā€™m going to be honest, I donā€™t know why I have to issue that posix uiop:chdir twice.

The idea is maps would go in #p"~/GAME/MAP/" and later pictures would go in #p"~/GAME/PIC/" with the idea that we can just use the symbol map/room for a room map and so forth.

Start the edā€™ in a background thread

mcclim has already dragged in in bordeaux-threads.

(asdf:load-system :bordeaux-threads)

(in-package :nicclim)
(bt:make-thread
 (lambda ()
   (enclose-map "CURRENT")))

Keyboard Shortcuts (screenshot)

Iā€™m not alleging that I should win an award for layout design, but I squeezed a bunch of useful shortcuts into this layout (see the layouts menu).

create rect some kind of starting map

While we would use a mixture of hotkeys and clim completions in practice, since Iā€™m writing this markdown document, Iā€™m going to adopt the approach of explicitly typing (well, autocompleting) full clim command forms by hand, then running execute-frame-commandexecute-frame-command) (which is the low level interaction).

'(com-create-rect map/grass-5x5 5 5 (GRASS))
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)

EDIT: Earlier, we went (in-package :nicclim) to wholly circumscribe needing to type these so the below is deprecated.

well, thatā€™s kind of annoying. Because I donā€™t export the command names since theyā€™re always used internally to the map editor, I have to pass them as internal symbols of the package, i.e. nic::com-create-rect for com-create-rect (and nic:com-create-rect would be an exported symbol). I guess Nicholas Martyanoff prefers people namespace like this in general.

Change map to the new rect

'(com-change-map map/grass-5x5)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)

I added the special variable *nic* to nicclim expose the-current enclose-map application-frame.

Make a similar desert

'(com-create-rect map/desert-5x5 5 5 (sand))
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(com-change-map map/desert-5x5)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)

horizontal-cat grass and desert

'(com-horizontal-cat map/grass-5x5 map/desert-5x5 map/gd-5x5 0 nil)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(com-change-map map/gd-5x5)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)

Add a tree and a skull fine details

Note this would be done with keyboard accelerators (hotkeys).

'(jump 4 2)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(set-cur1 tree)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(push-cur1)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(com-j)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(push-cur1)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(vec-mov 2 1)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(push-cur1)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)

Out of interest, the hotkey version of this was

  1. C-M-i 4 2
  2. C-M-u tree
  3. C-M-o
  4. M-S-j
  5. C-M-o
  6. C-S-i 2 1
  7. C-M-o

Some apologies for my unmnemonic choices! If you have the hotkey screenshot in clear view somewhere, it is possible to operate very fast using these keyboard accelerators.

Write, copy a rect to a new file

Save cool bits of larger tiles.

'(com-writef map/dg)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(com-extract-rect map/dg map/treesand 4 7 2 4)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(com-cat map/treesand)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)

On the right side of the screen:

*NIC*> '(com-cat map/treesand)
(COM-CAT MAP/TREESAND)
*NIC*> (execute-frame-command *nic* *)
T
(GRASS NICCLIM::TREE)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)
(GRASS NICCLIM::TREE)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)

Copy that extracted tile back into our larger map

'(com-clobber-rect map/dg map/treesand map/dg2 3 0 2 2)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)
'(com-change-map map/dg2)
(execute-frame-command *nic* *)

Whoops, it turns out x, y, width, height in com-clobber-rect is right-exclusive whereas com-extract-rect x, xlim, y, ylim is right-inclusive (I think?). However, we accidentally showed that the maps can be right-jagged, and critically that the slightly peculiar com-clobber-rect can be used to delete and insert rectangles from and into a larger map, potentially resizing it. So I am leaving this slightly odd outcome in.

Conclusions

Firstly, there were lots of great insights ranging into small essays to my Mastodon toot asking about gamedevsā€™ map-editor experiences which you should review at your leisure.

Viz this article, I think we saw NicCLIM can quickly perform large, medium, and VI-cursor scope changes while flicking between many ā€˜mapā€™ ascii files. Oh, for reference, MAP/TREESAND looks like this internally:

(GRASS NICCLIM::TREE)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)
(GRASS NICCLIM::TREE)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)

which is just normal lisp symbols/lists, annoying explicit namespace aside. The idea is that transparency-using pictures will optionally on top of each other stacked from left-to-right in a future version.

The fact that this markdown document is executable source code reinforces the macro programming addition planned in the next major version.

I would really like it if you managed to give it a try, as Larian is for his https://www.chroniclesofember.com/ (Larianā€™s interview).

Talk on the Mastodon toot as always please.

(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS NICCLIM::TREE)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	
(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS NICCLIM::TREE)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	
(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS NICCLIM::TREE)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	
(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS NICCLIM::TREE)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	
(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(GRASS)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND NICCLIM::TREE)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)	(NICCLIM::SAND)
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