• Introduction
• Tutorial #1

Introduction

• Tutorial #1: Anthony Fairchild's CLISP HOWTO

Tutorial #1

Anthony's original post

This is a how-to for building a distributable game(standalone executable) using CLISP and lispbuilder-SDL on Windows.

• Make sure everything works. Try to run an example. See the game run. If the game does not run properly, troubleshoot, otherwise continue.

[1]> (asdf:operate 'asdf:load-op :lispbuilder-sdl-examples)
... lots of loading text ...
0 errors, 0 warnings
NIL
[2]> (sdl-examples:mandelbrot)
NIL

• Create a directory to put all of the distributable files in. For example:

[3]> (ext:make-dir  "C:\\appz\\")
T
[4]> (ext:make-dir  "C:\\appz\\mandelbrot\\")
T

• Create a main entry point for your game. We will simply used the Squashed game as an example. Create the SQUASHED-MAIN function:

[5]> (defun mandelbrot-main ()
       "Mandelbrot: main entry function"

        (cffi:define-foreign-library sdl
          (t (:default "SDL")))

        (cffi:use-foreign-library sdl)

        (sdl:with-init ()
          (sdl-examples:mandelbrot))
          (ext:quit))
MANDELBROT-MAIN

• Next, create the standalone executable. One important thing to note here is you must call SAVEINITMEM from the CLISP prompt and not SLIME. If you do it from SLIME you will get a socket error in your executable.

[6]> (ext:saveinitmem "c:\\appz\\mandelbrot\\mandelbrot.exe"
                 :init-function #'mandelbrot-main
                 :NORC t
                 :script t
                 :executable t
                 :quiet t)
2881776 ;
720444

• Copy other support files to the distribution directory:

[7]> (ext:copy-file "C:\\clisp-2.41\\full\\*.dll" "C:\\appz\\mandelbrot\\")

((#P"C:\\<CLISP installation directory>\\full\\libiconv-2.dll"
  #P"C:\\appz\\mandelbrot\\libiconv-2.dll" 1410765)
 (#P"C:\\<CLISP installation directory>\\full\\libintl-8.dll" 
  #P"C:\\appz\\mandelbrot\\libintl-8.dll" 1888606)
 (#P"C:\\<CLISP installation directory>\\full\\readline5.dll" 
  #P"C:\\appz\\mandelbrot\\readline5.dll" 229888))

[8]> (ext:copy-file "C:\\windows\\system32\\SDL.dll" "C:\\appz\\mandelbrot\\")

((#P"C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\SDL.dll" #P"C:\\appz\\mandelbrot\\SDL.dll" 258048))

• Try running C:\appz\mandelbrot\mandelbrot.exe. If it runs then you can now distribute the files located in C:\appz\mandelbrot\. Note that the CLISP console is present when running the game. To hide the console screen take a look here.

• Now go make some games!