Wick Language — Syntax Support for VS Code

Syntax highlighting, bracket matching, comments, and snippets for Wick, the small statically-typed scripting language of the Lantern retro 3D game engine. Open any .wick file and it just reads.

What it highlights

The grammar is built from the real compiler source (wick/wick_front.cpp, wick/wick_vm.cpp, src/wick_host.cpp), not from a guess:

• Keywords — let fn if elif else while for in break continue return and or not record
• Constants — true false nil
• Types — num bool str list map void
• Builtins — len str num push pop floor ceil env abs min max clamp lerp sqrt sin cos atan rand srand check bit_and bit_or bit_xor bit_not bit_shl bit_shr u8 u16 hex bin
• Host calls — lt.* (all 68 functions: lt.draw, lt.rect, lt.camera, lt.print, …) plus the lt.W / lt.H screen constants
• Numbers — decimal, floats, 0x hex and 0b binary literals
• Strings with escapes, and // line comments

str and num are highlighted as functions when called (str(total)) and as types when used in annotations (let xs: list<num>).

Snippets

fn, for, if, while, record, letlist — type the prefix and expand a skeleton.

Known gaps

• pi is registered as a constant in the VM but the compiler does not resolve it from Wick source, so the grammar deliberately does not highlight it. Write the literal 3.14159.
• No language server yet: no diagnostics, no completions from your own functions, no go-to-definition. Highlighting, brackets, and snippets only — the part that makes the code readable everywhere.

Links

• Lantern engine: https://github.com/alikatgh/lantern
• Wick tutorials (Japanese): https://qiita.com/albertn — search "Wick"
• Wick is the language of the interactive Wick course and of the games in games/ of the Lantern repo (wicklab, bitlab, showcase_wick).

License

zlib License — see LICENSE. Copyright (c) 2026 the lantern engine authors.