For a little while now I’ve wanted to make a game to teach AI programming and robotics. Between school and my summer internship I was able to start it, and here I’ll outline some of my progress.
The Project Idea
What I want to build is a game in which robots are assembled by snapping
together components. The robots are then programmed. The programs
must define a run function, which is run every tick of the game.
The code can control the robot through a variable, perhaps called R, which
contains a list detailing the structure of the robot. Each component of the
robot would act as a function. A motor, for instance, would be a function
that takes 0 or 1 arguments. If 0 arguments are provided, the motor would report
its current speed, if 1 argument is provided, it sets its speed to the value
of that argument.
The Language
The language I’ve built is a LISP.
It has a few primitive types - Numbers, Strings, Booleans,
Lists, and Functions.
Numbers are all floating point, and
are written normally (i.e. 3.0, 6, -9.2, etc).
Strings are written in between quotes (i.e. "hello world").
Booleans are written as either #t for true or #f for false.
Lists are written in between '(), so a list might look like '(1 2 3).
Functions are defined using the fun function, which is described below.
It currently has a few built-in functions:
(g x y...)- binds the name x to y in the global namespace, with alternating pairs of identifiers and their values(do X...)- evaluates every argument, and then returns the last evaluation(if X Y Z)- evaluates X, if it is false then evaluates and returns Z, otherwise it evaluates and returns Y(fun X Y)- returns a function where X is its argument list and Y is the defined function(= X Y)- evaluates X and Y and returns#tif they are equal,#fotherwise(+ X...)- evaluates each argument and returns their sum(- X Y...)- evaluates each argument and returns the result of subtracting them from the first argument(car X)- returns the first element of list X(cdr X)- returns the list X with the first element removed(cons X Y)- appends X to the end of list Y(def X Y)- evaluates the list X, which is a list of alternating identifiers and values, and binds each identifier to the value that follows, and then evaluates and returns expression Y with those bindings
You can try out the language below: