Re: Why Lisp supposedly "sucks for game development"

From: Rainer Joswig (joswig_at_lisp.de)
Date: 10/23/04 

Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 21:38:04 +0200

In article <60b8e216.0410231119.4e82d858@posting.google.com>,
 lispgamemail@yahoo.com (Jack Palevich) wrote:

> Neo-LISPer <neo_lisper@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<878y9xixnx.fsf@yahoo.com>...
> > lispgamemail@yahoo.com (Jack Palevich) writes:
> >
> > > http://www.spies.com/~palevich/CLRScheme/WhyLispStillSucksForGames.htm
> >
> > How does your theory explain Naughty Dog's success and their comments
> > like "Lisp was just the best solution for the job"?
>
> I believe Naughty Dog is a very talented game company, and would be
> able to produce excellent games in any language.

Think again. "Any language" does not make sense.

Atleast it shows that you *can* create a very competetive
graphics&animation engine in some kind of Lisp. The
reviews I have read about the graphics and animation in Jak II
were mostly very positive (from people not knowing that Jak II
is based on some 900klocs of Lisp code - plus some other stuff).
I don't think I have read once that their graphics is slow
or sluggish. Instead most comments were very positive about the
performance, the complexity of the graphics, etc.

> The head programmer of Naughty Dog likes Lisp, and he's probably the
> reason they've invested heavily in Lisp, and why you see glowing
> quotes.

Whether he likes Lisp or not, the technical execution of their games
seems to be quite good. Competetive with other C/C++ based games
I would say.

I have to admit that I'm not a game programmer - but I have enjoyed
Crash Bandicoot on the Playstation. :-)

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