Several months ago I had the notion that I should expand my horizons and learn a bit of Javascript. I have quite a few years of experience with Java so the basic language constructs did not seem alien. There were a few key differences here and there but nothing so wild as to make it inaccessible.

After a few building a few toy examples I decided it was time to try something larger. Rather than doing something reasonable like building an application I might encounter in my day to day work I chose to go back to why I started programming in the first place. I decided to take a go at making a game.

Now I have a long and distinguished history of starting side game projects and never completing them. Something always comes up in life or I get away from it too long and jump down some other rabbit hole. In this latest effort I must admit that I haven’t been the most consistent. However I have managed to keep dabbling on again and off again for several months.

Shortly after I started toying with a project I became enamored with the idea of functional programming. Now it is entirely possible to do functional programming in Javascript. There is even an excellent book on the matter. However since Clojure is what caught my eye I jumped straight into ClojureScript.

Now I don’t have much of a game to show at this moment. The basics of a 2d platformed are there. It isn’t exciting or novel in any way but I have made progress. I decided to follow a Component Entity System and I’ve been enjoying it. I know there are several Component Entity Systems out there. Even a few of them are in Clojure. In my defense I could not find a Clojure based solution when I first started. Granted there are some out now that are certainly more complete than what I have written. Even if my solution will not be used (or even seen) by anyone else I am getting value out of building it for myself. My end goal wasn’t so much to make the game as much as it was to gain some experience in building a functional project. Quite the departure from where I originally started.

I have broken down my work into the game itself Sivinolk, my Component Entity System Vyrlynd and a crude input library Clinp. I intend to reflect a bit on my tilts at the windmills on these efforts in the future. For now it seems worth noting that they exist.