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.
+You can move around a player on an island and meet different enemies. You have 5
+hitpoints to lose before death. Enemies start with different amounts of
+hitpoints, depending on their species. 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 get generated randomly, too.
+Enemies' AI is very dumb so far: Each turn, they try to move towards their
+shortest-path-wise nearest enemy visible to them. If they see no enemy, 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.
+Every move of yours re-writes a file "savefile" that describes the new state of
+the world. Once you re-start the game, the game state is recreated from the
+"savefile" file. To start over in a new world, simply delete this file.
-Install/run
------------
+System requirements / installation / running the game
+-----------------------------------------------------
-Dependencies: the ncurses library.
+The game is expected to run on Linux systems that contain the ncurses library.
+Do the following steps:
-git clone https://github.com/plomlompom/plomrogue
-cd plomrogue
-make
-./roguelike
+$ git clone https://github.com/plomlompom/plomrogue
+$ cd plomrogue
+$ make
+$ ./roguelike
-Keybindings and window configuration
-------------------------------------
+(It may also work on other Unix-like systems with ncurses, who knows.)
-In the default window configuration, the window appearing on the left sports a
-list of keybindings available globally and additionally via the window currently
+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
+Hit "W" (per default keybindings) to switch the "active" window to a view that
+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.
+Once you start a new world, every move of yours is recorded in a file called
+"record". It gets overwritten when a new game world is started after deletion
+of the "savefile" file. Run "./roguelike -s" to watch the current game's
+recording from the 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 ./confserver/world file defines the thing types, actions available to them,
+the map geometry and the thing type (species) of the player. Each definition
+consists of a single- or multi-line block wherein each line sets one attribute.
+
+Here's a typical action definition block:
+
+ACTION 1
+NAME move
+EFFORT 5
+
+A line of "ACTION" followed by a number starts an action definition block and
+sets the action's id (must be > 0) for internal use to 1. The number after
+"EFFORT" determines how many turns this action takes for the actor performing
+it. The string after "NAME" names the action. Furthermore, if it is one of
+"move", "pick_up", "drop" or "use", it matches internal functions described by
+these strings to this action. All other names (including "wait") currently are
+matched to a do-nothing wait function.
+
+Here's a typical thing type definition block:
+
+THINGTYPE 2
+NAME ZOMBIE
+SYMBOL z
+LIFEPOINTS 3
+CORPSE_ID 5
+CONSUMABLE 0
+START_NUMBER 9
+
+A line of "THINGTYPE" followed by a number starts it, and the number sets the
+thing type's internal id. The number after "CONSUMABLE" defines the thing as
+consumable (and to so many hitpoints gain). The character after "SYMBOL" is the
+one shown on the map to represent to thing type. "LIFEPOINTS" is the start
+hitpoints value for this thing type and defines it as animate if it is non-zero.
+The string after "NAME" sets the thing type's name. "CORPSE_ID" sets the id of
+the thing type that things of this type degrade to if their hitpoints drop to
+zero if they start out as inanimate (what is not implemented yet: or if they are
+inanimate, but are otherwise crushed). Note that the "CORPSE_ID" must match the
+id of a thing type defined in the file (before or after, it may even be the
+same). "START_NUMBER" sets the number of things that are to appear of the
+given type on the map on game start.
+
+The map is defined by a single-line block. Its number value sets the map
+square's edge length. It must be >= 1 and <= 256:
+
+MAP_LENGTH 64
+
+The player type / species is also defined by a single line block. Its number
+value sets the player's creature's thing type by its id:
+
+PLAYER_TYPE 0
+
+All these definition block members must be present within their respective
+blocks, but only "ACTION" and "THINGTYPE" must be positioned at their respective
+blocks' first line; the others may appear in whatever order and even multiple
+times. If a thing or action definition block is finished, however, it cannot
+be re-defined by starting a new block with the same thing type or action id.
+
+Tokens in this config file are separated by whitespace. Single quotes can be
+put around string values that are to include whitespace by themslves. Note that
+all numbers must be decimal representations of unsigned 8 bit integers, i.e.
+>= 0 and < 256 and sans preceding "+".
+
+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 file is read by the
+server for newline-delimited commands. The ./server/out file contains server
+messages to be read by clients. The ./server/worldstate file contains a
+serialized representation of the game world's data as it is to be visible to
+the player / the player's client.
projects / plomrogue / blobdiff