SoylentNews

cafebabe [soylentnews.org] writes:

A friend and programmer suggested an intriguing idea for magic in computer games. This was not proposed by my Lisp enthusiast friend but a mutual friend who previously showed no inclination in this area.

The proposal is a strong-typed [wikipedia.org] magic incantation system where parameters may be null [wikipedia.org], constants, variables or further incantations. So far, I have only described arbitrary S-expressions [wikipedia.org] for Lisp [wikipedia.org] evaluation [wikipedia.org]. However, a constant may be the name or number of a beast (or inanimate object or UUID of an object on a block-chain [soylentnews.org] or the wizard equivalant of IN_ADDRANY). Furthermore, the rendering of an S-expression may be similar to the Rosecrucian [wikipedia.org] logo or magical circles [duckduckgo.com]. Arguably, such geometric forms are merely the traditional rendering of an S-expression. Presumably, verbal incantations would be similar to Latin. Indeed, the strict grammatical rules of Latin work well with strong-typing and eval.

Initially, this magic would be restricted to one game. However, with augmented reality, this type of magic would leak into the real world and affect non-players. With foreseeable advances, it would be trite to say that technology would become indistinguishable from magic [wikipedia.org]. That's trippy.

Learn Latin! Learn Lisp! Grow a Unix beard! Most importantly, do not trifle in the affairs of scripting wizards [soylentnews.org]! Otherwise you may be de-referenced!

Original Submission