4 plomlompom tries to build his own roguelike. It doesn't do much yet (although
5 plomlompom has insanely ambitious long-term plans).
7 You can move around a player on an island and meet different enemies. You have 5
8 hitpoints to lose before death. Enemies start with different amounts of
9 hitpoints, depending on their species. Dead enemies become dirt, skeletons, or
10 food to consume (each turn reduces one's "satiation", and the lower it is, the
11 stronger the chance of suffering from hunger and thereby losing hitpoints). Note
12 that different kinds of movements/actions take different numbers of turns to
15 Enemies' AI is very dumb so far: Each turn, they look out for actors of
16 different species to flee from (if their type starts out with more hitpoints
17 than they have) or (if the opposite is the case) move towards for purposes of
18 attack. If they see no enemy, they search for and consume "magic meat".
20 Every move of yours re-writes a file "save" that describes the new state of the
21 world, if more than 15 seconds have passed since its last writing. Once you
22 re-start the game, the game state is recreated from the "save" file. To
23 start over in a new world, simply delete this file.
25 System requirements / installation / running the game
26 -----------------------------------------------------
28 The game is expected to run:
29 - on Unix systems with a vt100-like terminal environment (xterm will do)
30 - that contain the ncurses library
31 - and Python3 (version >= 3.2.3).
33 To build it, this is furthermore necessary:
34 - gcc (version >= 4.7.2); some llvm masked as gcc was tested successfully on OSX
35 - libc library headers (libc6-dev?)
36 - ncurses library headers (libncurses5-dev?)
38 To build and start, do the following steps:
43 If you got a version of djb's redo build system installed and in your $PATH,
44 you could also do a simple "redo" instead of "./redo". The ./redo script calls a
45 simple partial shell script implementation of redo stored below
46 ./build/redo_scripts/, written by Nils Dagsson Moskopp a.k.a. erlehmann.)
48 ./redo generates two executables ./roguelike-server and ./roguelike-client.
49 ./roguelike is a pre-existing shell script that merely executes both of them,
50 with the server as a background job. You can also ignore the script and start
53 Client's keybindings and window management
54 ------------------------------------------
56 Multiple windows may fill the screen. One of these will be selected as "active"
57 – identified by dollar signs enclosing its title. Active windows may come with
58 window-specific keybindings. Furthermore, global keybindings are available no
59 matter what window is selected.
61 Hit "W" (per default global keybindings) to switch the active window to a view
62 that allows changing its geometry. One more hit on "W" switches the window to a
63 view that sports (and allows changing its) window-specific keybindings. (One
64 further "W" will return the window to its default, "normal" view.) The global
65 keybindings are visible (and can be changed) in the "Set global keys" window,
66 those of the window geometry configuration in the "Set window geometry keys"
67 window, and those of the window-specific keybindings configuration in the "Set
68 window keybinding keys" window; by default, the latter two are not visible, but
69 may be turned on by (per default keybindings) hitting the keys "F6" and "F7".
71 Keybindings and default window selection / visibilities / geometries are read
72 from the textfile ./confclient/interface_conf by default, or by another one
73 named by the -i command line option of the client. Some other default window
74 configurations are stored below ./confclient/single_windows/: "map", "info",
75 "inventory" and "log". Each of these opens up only a single window into the
76 client, filling up the entire terminal. This may be useful for running multiple
77 clients in parallel in multiple terminal windows that can be managed by one's
78 own window manager choice, instead of relying on plomrogue-client's bizarre
79 in-client window management.
81 Save files and replay game recording
82 ------------------------------------
84 By default, the game state is saved in the file ./save, and read from there on
85 (server) restart. Another file name to use can be given with the -l option (i.e.
86 start the game with "./roguelike -l alternate_savefile"). To start over in a new
87 world, remove ./save, or use the -l option with the name of a file that does not
90 Once you start a new world, every game action of yours is appended to a file
91 called "record_" plus the save file name. Run "./roguelike -s" to watch the
92 current game's recording from the beginning. Hit any player action key to
93 increment turns (they will not trigger the actions usually mapped to them, only
94 repeat the actions done at that point in the game as defined in the record
95 file). Keys to manage windows, scroll on the map and quit the program do their
96 usual thing. Append a number to the -s option (like "-s100") to start the
97 recording playback at the respective turn number. (Don't forget to delete /
98 empty a game's record file when deleting its save file, or different game's
99 moves will get mixed up in one record file.)
101 Hacking / server internals and configuration
102 --------------------------------------------
104 The game world is set up and made subject to player commands by
105 ./roguelike-server. It's controlled by commands explained in the file
106 ./SERVER_COMMANDS. The server usually reads these from the files ./server/in
107 (written to by ./roguelike-client), ./confserver/world, ./record_save and
110 All source files are thoroughly documented to explain more details of the
111 PlomRogue engine's internals. The ./roguelike-server executable can be run with
112 a -v option for helpful debugging info (mostly: what messages the client sends
113 to the server). Server and client communicate via files in the ./server/
114 directory (generated when the server is first run). The ./server/in file is read
115 by the server for newline-delimited commands. The ./server/out file contains
116 server messages to be read by clients. The ./server/worldstate file contains a
117 serialized representation of the game world's data as it is to be visible to
118 the player / the player's client.
projects / plomrogue / blob