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.
-
-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.
-
-The map get generated randomly, too.
-
-There is only one save file (named "savefile"), and it gets overwritten each new
-turn. To start over with a new world, delete it.
-
-Install/run
------------
-
-Dependencies: the ncurses library.
-
-git clone https://github.com/plomlompom/plomrogue
-cd plomrogue
-make
-./roguelike
-
-Keybindings and window configuration
-------------------------------------
-
-In the default window configuration, the window appearing on the left sports a
-list of keybindings available globally and additionally via the window currently
-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
-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.
-
-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.
+plomlompom tries to build his own roguelike engine. There is one game for it so
+far, which is loaded by default: "Please the Island God". See ./README_PtIG for
+details on it.
+
+System requirements / installation / running the game
+-----------------------------------------------------
+
+The engine is expected to run:
+- on Unix systems with a vt100-like terminal environment (xterm will do)
+- that contain the ncurses library
+- and Python3 (version >= 3.2.3).
+
+To build it, this is furthermore necessary:
+- gcc (version >= 4.7.2); some llvm masked as gcc was tested successfully on OSX
+- libc library headers (libc6-dev?)
+
+To build and start it with the default game, just run:
+
+$ ./roguelike
+
+./roguelike is a shell script that executes a union of ./roguelike-server and
+./roguelike-client, with the server as a background job. You may ignore the
+script and start either or both of the two by hand if you please.
+
+Save files, replay game recording, starting over
+------------------------------------------------
+
+Every move of yours re-writes a file "save" that describes the new state of the
+world, if more than 15 seconds have passed since its last writing. Once you
+re-start plomrogue, the game state is recreated from the "save" file. To start
+over in a new world, simply delete this file and re-start the engine.
+
+The save file is called ./save be default, but another file name to use can be
+given with the -l option (i.e. start the game with "./roguelike -l
+alternate_savefile"). The -l option can also be used to start over in a new
+world whose state will be read and saved with the alternate file path, without
+overwriting other games saved in other save files.
+
+Once you start a new world, every game action of yours is appended to a file
+called "record_" plus the save file name. 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). Other keys do their usual thing.
+
+Append a number to the -s option (like "-s100") to start the recording playback
+at the respective turn number. (Don't forget to delete / empty a game's record
+file when deleting its save file, or different game's moves will get mixed up in
+one record file.)
+
+Hacking / server internals and configuration
+--------------------------------------------
+
+The game world is set up and made subject to player commands by
+./roguelike-server. It's controlled by commands explained in the file
+./SERVER_COMMANDS. The server usually reads these from the files ./server_run/in
+(written to by ./roguelike-client), ./confserver/world, ./record_save and
+./save.
+
+The ./roguelike-server executable can be run with a -v option for possibly
+helpful debugging info (mostly: what messages the client sends to the server).
+
+Server and client communicate via files in the ./server_run/ directory
+(generated when the server is first run). The ./server_run/in file is read by
+the server for newline-delimited commands. The ./server_run/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