Land of Lisp

Describing the Scenery with an Association List

The world inside our adventure game is very simple, containing only three locations. Let’s first create a top-level variable, *nodes*, to contain descriptions of the locations that exist in our game:

(defparameter *nodes* '((living-room (you are in the living-room.
                            a wizard is snoring loudly on the couch.))
                        (garden (you are in a beautiful garden.
                            there is a well in front of you.))
                        (attic (you are in the attic.
                            there is a giant welding torch in the corner.))))

This variable contains a list and description of our three locations. In essence, the *nodes* variable basically gives us a way to find a piece of data associated with a lookup key. In this case, the key is the name of the place (living-room