X-Git-Url: https://plomlompom.com/repos/foo.html?a=blobdiff_plain;ds=inline;f=README;h=71ae842fe1508bfcd74fd9ac93f007677142dca2;hb=3b6de6a3440290478dff65f5849241d57ae431fb;hp=722ce9d613d249a81bbae4afcd8fc7a77f886885;hpb=e430e9baabcde0c5ee373928ffb363bb452f6bb7;p=plomrogue
diff --git a/README b/README
index 722ce9d..71ae842 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -2,58 +2,71 @@ plomrogue
=========
plomlompom tries to build his own roguelike. It doesn't do much yet (although
-there are insanely ambitious long-term plans).
-
-You can move around a player on an island and meet a number of 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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
+plomlompom has insanely ambitious long-term plans).
+
+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
+food to consume (each turn reduces one's "satiation", and the lower it is, the
+stronger the chance of suffering from hunger and thereby losing hitpoints). Note
+that different kinds of movements/actions take different numbers of turns to
+finish.
+
+Enemies' AI is very dumb so far: Each turn, they look out for actors of
+different species to flee from (if their type starts out with more hitpoints
+than they have) or (if the opposite is the case) move towards for purposes of
+attack. If they see no enemy, they search for and consume "magic meat".
+
+Every move of yours re-writes a file "savefile" that describes the new state of
+dthe world, if more than 15 seconds have passed since its last writing. 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.
System requirements / installation / running the game
-----------------------------------------------------
-The game is expected to run on Linux systems that contain the ncurses library.
-Perform the following steps:
+The game 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).
-$ git clone https://github.com/plomlompom/plomrogue
-$ cd plomrogue
-$ make
+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?)
+- ncurses library headers (libncurses5-dev?)
+
+To build and start, do the following steps:
+
+$ ./redo
$ ./roguelike
-(It might also work on other Unix-like systems with ncurses, who knows.)
+(If you got a version of djb's redo build system installed and in your $PATH,
+you could also do a simple "redo" instead of "./redo". The ./redo script calls a
+simple partial shell script implementation of redo stored below
+./build/redo_scripts/, written by Nils Dagsson Moskopp a.k.a. erlehmann.)
-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 may also
-ignore the script and start the two by hand.
+./redo 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
-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
-(per default keybindings) hitting the "F6", "F7" and "F8" keys.
+Multiple windows may fill the screen. One of these will be selected as "active"
+â identified by dollar signs enclosing its title. Active windows may come with
+window-specific keybindings. Furthermore, global keybindings are available no
+matter what window is selected.
+
+Hit "W" (per default global 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 sports (and allows changing its) window-specific keybindings. (One
+further "W" will return the window to its default, "normal" view.) The global
+keybindings are visible (and can be changed) in the "Set global keys" window,
+those of the window geometry configuration in the "Set window geometry keys"
+window, and those of the window-specific keybindings configuration in the "Set
+window keybinding keys" window; by default, the latter two are not visible, but
+may be turned on by (per default keybindings) hitting the keys "F6" and "F7".
Keybindings and default window selection / visibilities / geometries are read
from the textfile ./confclient/interface_conf by default, or by another one
@@ -61,48 +74,37 @@ 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 may be managed by one's
+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 performed 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.
+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 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 perform 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
-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).
+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/in
+(written to by ./roguelike-client), ./confserver/world, ./record and ./savefile.
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
+(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.