Game Oriented Assembly Lisp

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Game Oriented Assembly Lisp (or GOAL) is a computer game programming language developed by Andy Gavin at Naughty Dog. It was written using Allegro Common Lisp, and the first game to use it was Jak and Daxter.

An example of how GOAL code looks like can be found at [link].

Another posting on Usenet seems to indicate that GOAL allowed to create PS2 assembly code in the LISP programs [link]. The entire process as used in Jak and Daxter allowed to compile code and have it sent and tested by a running game — almost as 'Edit and Continue' that debuggers offers, except that the process would not be interrupted by the debugger.

After Naughty Dog was acquired by Sony, they no longer use GOAL for significant parts of their code. This might be because Sony wants code reuse in their organization, and as C/C++ is the common denominator, the GOAL code is no longer used.

External links

http://www.franz.com/success/customer_apps/animation_graphics/naughtydog.lhtml — Franz Inc. success story
http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060118.html — Page about LISP developments by Paul Graham and Naughty Dog
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/gdcarchive/2003/White_Stephen.ppt — (Powerpoint) Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, development overview, lessons learned, very interesting
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/gdcarchive/2003/Denman_Stu.ppt — (Powerpoint) Highly detalied continuous worlds, about the streaming world loader

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