A component based game engine written in Common Lisp for modern OpenGL (4.3+).

NOTE: This engine is still in construction, however, it is almost ready for game making. The developers (psilord and mfiano) hang out in #bufferswap on freenode, and sometimes #lispgames on freenode. Stop by if you want to help or see how to run what we currently have, or just to say hello.

Writing a game is a difficult thing. So we've created a system and work flow that helps you describe the elements needed to write 2d or 3d games. We designed several domain specific languages that make it easier to describe, manipulate, and use assets commonly found in game making. Such assets are, but not limited to, textures, materials, shader programs, and scene trees of actors that are available for instantiation. Virality Engine also knows how to accept input from keyboards and most joysticks and gamepads.

The component system is a hybrid model between an ECS and an object model. The components are defined similar to CLOS defclass, and regular generic methods can be used with them. Components are added to Actors which represent game concepts like players, scenery, effects, etc. We define a component protocol invoked by Virality Engine to move your components to the next state and render them each frame.

NOTE: You may have better luck with the develop branch for the time being! The master branch is a bit crusty.

This system is not yet available to be installed automatically with Quicklisp.

NOTE: cl-opengl has a feature in it to work around an INTEL GPU bug that causes a severe performance problem in most cases where people aren't using the buggy intel driver. While you aren't required to perform the actions in this note if you do the performance of V will be much better. V disables this feature in V's asd file. However, if there are cl-opengl fasls which have been pre-cached, they need to be recompiled. So, first recursively remove ~/.cache/common-lisp/* or wherever you store your fasls. Then ensure that V is FIRST in any :depends-on line for your V projects. Then, load a V project as the first thing you do with in a REPL with the removed fasls and cl-opengl will be required by V's asd which will turn off the feature. If you try and load something other than V that requires cl-opengl, then the feature won't be turned off and the performance problem will still happen. cl-opengl will probably be fixed to change this behavior in a future commit, but until then this is a fix for a performance problem.

To manually install such that Quicklisp will be able to find ViralityEngine, clone this repository into your local-projects directory.

For now, being on the develop branch will provide a better experience and newer features. However, it often uses changes to certain dependencies that are often newer than what Quicklisp provides.

If you've run ViralityEngine before, and haven't in a while, then

cd ~quicklisp/local-projects

and as long as you aren't using these specifically for yourself:

rm -rf origin doubly-linked-list golden-utils umbra shadow origin

This next shell script is recommended to help with the depdenencies of ViralityEngine.

Put this bash script into ~/quicklisp/local-projects, (or wherever your quicklisp local-projects directory is) you might call it 'update-virality-depdendencies.sh' or something similar. When updating Virality from github it is recommended to also run this script to get current changes Virality may need.

#! /bin/bash


echo "Updating origin..."
if [ ! -d ./origin ]; then
	git clone https://github.com/mfiano/origin.git
fi
(cd origin && git pull)

echo "Updating shadow..."
if [ ! -d ./shadow ]; then
	git clone https://github.com/mfiano/shadow.git
fi
(cd shadow && git pull)

echo "Updating umbra..."
if [ ! -d ./umbra ]; then
	git clone https://github.com/mfiano/umbra.git
fi
(cd umbra && git pull)

echo "Updating golden-utils..."
if [ ! -d ./golden-utils ]; then
	git clone https://github.com/mfiano/golden-utils.git
fi
(cd golden-utils && git pull)

echo "Updating algae..."
if [ ! -d ./algae ]; then
	git clone https://github.com/mfiano/algae.git
fi
(cd algae && git pull)

Then chmod 700 the script and run it while in the ~quicklisp/local-projects directory.

Every now and then, when pulling ViralityEngine, ensure to re-run that shell script to get any matching code changes. It is expected that those dependencies will work generally only with ViralityEngine on the 'develop' branch.

To start an example that is already present in Virality Engine, issue the following in your REPL:

(ql:quickload :virality-examples)

(in-package :virality-examples)

;; To show the GLTF damaged helmet (mouse will drag and move it around.)
(virality:start
       :project :virality-examples
       :scene '(("damaged-helmet-turn-table" examples)))

;; To run the Protect the Planets game (requires a gamepad to play)
;; Directions:
;; Press Start to play.
;; Use d-pad to move around 8-way.
;; Hold right shoulder to pivot while moving.
;; Hold left shoulder for half-speed.
;; Hold A (or whatever mapped to A) button to fire.
;; Esc on keyboard quits.
(virality:start
       :project :virality-examples
       :scene '(("protect-the-planets" ptp)))

;; To run some interesting art that mfiano
;; ported from shader-toy and hand modified.
;;
;; NOTE: Use mouse (drag LMB) to look around!
(virality:start
       :project :virality-examples
       :scene '(("art6" examples)))

;; To run a menu selector for all examples including those above:
;; And ensure to pay attention to the keyboard interface to move in and
;; out of the examples.
(virality:start
       :project :virality-examples
       :scene '(("example-selector" examples)))

;; ESC exits

There are many more examples.

Copyright © 2017-2020

• Michael Fiano [email protected]

• Peter Keller [email protected]

Licensed under the MIT License.

A copy of the license is available here.