X-Git-Url: https://plomlompom.com/repos/test.html?a=blobdiff_plain;f=README;h=d50abd9910e4b35250277ebb641ba957855c1a65;hb=adf5091e53c03efcda65dfb08dbc9d0bc588111e;hp=17ed02115bbb960acc68a7ee11ebbb372eec54c1;hpb=cf63031d8dd87d78ad104984ee729cd74521ae14;p=plomrogue
diff --git a/README b/README
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@@ -2,98 +2,99 @@ plomrogue
=========
plomlompom tries to build his own roguelike. It doesn't do much yet (although
-there are insanely ambitious long-term plans).
+plomlompom has 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.
+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.
-Enemies' AI is very dumb so far: Each turn, they try to move in the (beeline)
-direction of the nearest enemy, so they often bump into, and get stuck behind,
-obstacles. You can use that for your advantage.
+Enemies' AI is very dumb so far: Each turn, they try to move towards their
+shortest-path-wise nearest enemy (any animate being of a different species)
+visible to them. If they see no enemy, they search for and consume "magic meat".
-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
-automatially until you end up where you left the game. To start over in a new
-world, delete this file.
+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:
+(It may also work on other Unix-like systems with ncurses, who knows.) Do the
+following steps:
$ git clone https://github.com/plomlompom/plomrogue
$ cd plomrogue
-$ make
+$ ./redo
$ ./roguelike
-(It might also work on other Unix-like systems with ncurses, who knows.)
+(If you got a 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.
+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 "F6", "F7" and "F8" keys.
+(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.
+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 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 line consists of, first,
-a numerical ID used internally to manage the action, secondly the number of
-turns the action takes, and thirdly a string representing the action internally.
-
-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. 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.