[resatori]

I find it very natural to work with because clojure is based on the JVM so the project uses libgdx under the hood (deploys to all platforms, huge library) and I can use lisp for everything else to do basically anything.

Combined with clojures way of handling immutable datastructures so well & the excellent protocol system (https://www.freshcodeit.com/blog/clojure-protocols-and-the-e...) I could separate the whole game easily into separate components.

[kleiba]

Sorry, but I feel like your comment does not actually address my concern of whether having to deal with immutable data structures in a functional way would lend itself especially well to video games.

Of course, the Clojure approach is great for a lot of use cases, but video games traditionally do a lot of mutable changes to components. That doesn't mean, of course, that it cannot be done any other way, but it would certainly be a different approach.

[kelseyfrog]

It's important to keep in mind that Clojure uses persistent data structures. It's easy for folks with a background in other languages to assume that immutable data structures require a deep copy to modify when in fact they don't.

In my experience, it slightly favors wide rather than deep game state because wide game state implies fewer nodes that need to be re-created when creating a new state. Since the author is using ECS, it's probably wide enough already.

A bit more in the weeds and if one was using a deep game state, careful structuring of assoc-in and update-in calls might be warranted. Ideally each node would only be copied once to arrive at the next game state. Sometimes it can be more efficient to build a list of changes and then property sequence the application of the changes to the state.

At the end of the day, people don't have to use a single atom like the author either. A game state can consist of multiple mutable data structures. It's not like the Clojure-police are going to arrest anyone for it.

[kleiba]

Oh, and allow me to add: I'm not criticizing, I'm just putting a possible concern out there for discussion. That's why my original post was worded as a question.

[resatori]

I don't understand your concern. Would you mind phrasing it differently?