wick vs Lua — the same game, twice

Kora Night ships in both languages, as two deliberately separate projects that evolve together: games/showcase (Lua) · games/showcase_wick (wick). Highlights from the diff:

The hi-score bug, before and after

-- Lua: shipped with a frame-1 crash. A 0-byte save file makes
-- load_save return "" (truthy!), the fallback never fires, and
-- tonumber("") = nil poisons everything downstream.
local best = tonumber(lt.load_save("koranight_best") or "0")

// wick: this is the ONLY version that compiles — both nil cases
// are handled or it's a type error.
let best = num(lt.load_save("koranight_wick_best") ?? "") ?? 0

Records

-- Lua: a list of tables
local LAMPS = {
  { x = 3.4, z = 3.4, lit = true },
  ...
}
for i, l in ipairs(LAMPS) do ... l.lit ... end

// wick: flat records (admitted when KORA kitchen paid the cost)
record Lamp { x: num, z: num, lit: bool }
let lamps: list<Lamp> = []
push(lamps, Lamp { x: 3.4, z: 3.4, lit: true })
for i in 0..len(lamps) { ... lamps[i].lit ... }

Lantern Night still uses parallel lists for four lamps — that's fine. KORA kitchen props use list<Prop>. Prefer records when a third field appears.

Honest score: Lua reads better here today. This is the top of wick's v0.2 wishlist.

Multiple returns

local i, dist2 = nearest_unlit()

let i = nearest_unlit()      // returns the index, or -1
let d = dist2_to(i)          // second query, explicit

What you stop writing entirely

• Defensive if x ~= nil chains around every save/parse — the compiler tracks it.
• math. prefixes (sin, floor, rand are built-ins) and string.format for integers (str() prints them clean).
• Argument-order paranoia on engine calls — arity and types are checked with the call name and argument number in the message.

What stays the same

The engine API is call-for-call identical (lt.draw(...) is the same line in both), the frame contract is the same, hot-reload and the error screen behave the same, and the games render the same frames.