plomrogue
=========
-plomlompom tries to build his own roguelike. It doesn't do much yet (although
-plomlompom has insanely ambitious long-term plans).
+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.
-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.
+System requirements / installation / running the game
+-----------------------------------------------------
-Enemies' AI is very dumb so far: Each turn, they try to move towards their
-shortest-path-wise nearest enemy. If no enemy is found in their surroundings,
-they just wait.
+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).
-Diagonal movement is possible, but takes (40%) longer than orthogonal movement.
+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?)
-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.
+To build and start it with the default game, just run:
-System requirements / installation / running the game
------------------------------------------------------
+$ ./roguelike
-The game is expected to run on Linux systems that contain the ncurses library.
-Do the following steps:
+./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.
-$ git clone https://github.com/plomlompom/plomrogue
-$ cd plomrogue
-$ make
-$ ./roguelike
+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.
-(It may also work on other Unix-like systems with ncurses, who knows.)
-
-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 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
-(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 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.
+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 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, the sixth defines if the object is consumable
-(it is if it is non-zero) and how many hitpoints are gained if it is. Finally,
-the same delimiter as for the map object action definitions file follows.
-
-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.
+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