plomrogue
=========
-plomlompom tries to build his own roguelike. Currently, it doesn't do much
-interesting, apart from managing keybindings and some ncurses windows in a
-bizarre fashion.
+plomlompom tries to build his own roguelike. It doesn't do much yet (although
+plomlompom has insanely ambitious long-term plans).
-You can move around a player and meet a number of different enemies. They move
-randomly and will only accidentally hit you. You have 5 hitpoints to lose before
-death; they have either 1, 3 or 9. Your score grows by killing enemies, to the
-amount of hitpoints each killed enemy started with. Dead enemies become dirt,
-skeletons or "magic meat"--such objects can be collected, and "magic meat" can
-be consumed to gain hitpoints.
+You can move around a player on an island and meet different enemies. You have 5
+hitpoints to lose before death; they start with different amounts of hitpoints,
+depending on their species. Your score grows by killing enemies, to the amount
+of hitpoints each killed enemy started with. Dead enemies become dirt, skeletons
+or "magic meat"--such objects can be collected, and "magic meat" can be consumed
+to gain hitpoints. Note that different kinds of movements/actions take different
+numbers of turns to finish.
-The map gets generated randomly, too.
+Enemies' AI is very dumb so far: Each turn, they try to move towards their
+path-wise nearest enemy. If no enemy is found in their surroundings, they just
+wait.
-There is only one save file (named "savefile"), and it gets overwritten each new
-turn. To start over with a new world, delete it.
+Note that diagonal movement is possible, but takes (40%) longer than orthogonal
+movement.
-Install/run
------------
+Once you start a new world, every move of yours is recorded in a file called
+"record". Once you re-start the game, all of your previous moves are replayed
+automatically up to the point wherere you left the game. To start over in a new
+world, simply delete this file.
-Dependencies: the ncurses library.
+System requirements / installation / running the game
+-----------------------------------------------------
-git clone https://github.com/plomlompom/plomrogue
-cd plomrogue
-make
-./roguelike
+The game is expected to run on Linux systems that contain the ncurses library.
+Do the following steps:
-Keybindings and window configuration
-------------------------------------
+$ git clone https://github.com/plomlompom/plomrogue
+$ cd plomrogue
+$ make
+$ ./roguelike
-In the default window configuration, the window appearing on the left sports a
-list of keybindings available globally and additionally via the window currently
+(It may also work on other Unix-like systems with ncurses, who knows.)
+
+Note that make generates two executables ./roguelike-server and
+./roguelike-client. ./roguelike is a pre-existing shell script that merely
+executes both of them, with the server as a background job. You can also
+ignore the script and start the two by hand.
+
+Client's keybindings and window management
+------------------------------------------
+
+In the client's default window configuration, the window appearing on the left
+sports a list of keybindings available globally, and additionally via the window
selected as active.
Hit "w" (per default keybindings) to switch the "active" window to a view that
-allows changing its geometry. One further hit on "w" switches the window to a
-view that allows changing its window-specific keybindings. The global
-keybindings may be changed in the "Global keys" window, those of the window
-geometry configuration in the "Window geometry keys" window" and those of the
+allows changing its geometry. One more hit on "w" switches the window to a view
+that allows changing its window-specific keybindings. The global keybindings can
+be changed in the "Global keys" window, those of the window geometry
+configuration in the "Window geometry keys" window, and those of the
window-specific keybindings configuration in the "Window keybinding keys"
window; by default, these three windows are not visible, but may be turned on by
-hitting the "F5", "F6" and "F7" keys.
-
-What actions are available globally or only in specific windows can be further
-manipulated by editing the files config/keybindings_global and
-config/windows/Win_* that map keycodes to commands to the respective keybinding
-repositories. While keybindings_global contains merely a list of keycode command
-mappings, the Win_* files start with the name of the windows to be configured,
-followed by a one-character line for internal use (mapping the window to one of
-several internally available window content drawing functions), followed by two
-lines describing the window's designated height and width, and only then an
-optional list of keybindings specific to that window.
+(per default keybindings) hitting the "F6", "F7" and "F8" keys.
+
+Keybindings and default window selection / visibilities / geometries are read
+from the textfile ./confclient/interface_conf by default, or by another one
+named by the -i command line option of the client. Some other default window
+configurations are stored below ./confclient/single_windows/: "map", "info",
+"inventory" and "log". Each of these opens up only a single window into the
+client, filling up the entire terminal. This may be useful for running multiple
+clients in parallel in multiple terminal windows that can be managed by one's
+own window manager choice, instead of relying on plomrogue-client's bizarre
+in-client window management.
Replay game recording
---------------------
Run "./roguelike -s" to watch a recording of the current game from the
-beginning. Hit the "next turn / wait" key to increment turns. Keys to
-manage windows, scroll on the map and quit the program are active; keys
-to perform player actions are inactive. Append a number to the -s option
-(like "-s100") to start the recording at the respective turn number.
+beginning. Hit any player action key to increment turns (they will not trigger
+the actions usually mapped to them, only repeat the actions done at that point
+in the game as defined in the "record" file). Keys to manage windows, scroll on
+the map and quit the program do their usual thing. Append a number to the -s
+option (like "-s100") to start the recording at the respective turn number.
+
+Hacking / server internals and configuration
+--------------------------------------------
+
+The movements/actions available to the player and the enemies are defined and
+can be changed in ./confserver/map_object_actions. Each entry consists of a
+first line of a numerical ID used internally to uniquely identify and manage the
+action, a second line of the number of turns the action takes, and a third line
+of a string that maps the action to the game logic to do when it is called.
+Finally, a delimiter line of "%%" ends the entry.
+
+The different map object types, i.e. species (including the player's human one)
+and item types, can be edited in ./confserver/defs. Here the first value is a
+numerical ID that represents the object type, the second one describes what type
+this object decomposes to when it gets destroyed/killed, the third value is the
+ASCII character used to represent the object visually on the map, the fourth
+value is the number of hitpoints the object starts with (items are dead and
+start with zero hitpoints, anything else moves), the fifth is the string that
+names the object in the game log. Finally, the same delimiter as for the map
+object action definitions file follows. Note that the only valid item use so
+far, consuming "magic meat" to gain hitpoints, is so far hard-coded (this should
+change in the future).
+
+All source files are thoroughly documented to explain more details of
+plomrogue's internals. The ./roguelike-server executable can be run with a -v
+option for helpful debugging info (mostly: what messages the client sends to the
+server). Server and client communicate via files in the ./server/ directory
+(generated when the server is first run). The ./server/in fifo receives commands
+for the server as null-terminated strings. The ./server/out file contains a
+serialized representation of the game world's data as it is to be available to
+the player / the player's client.
projects / plomrogue / blobdiff