LambdaHack [](http://travis-ci.org/kosmikus/LambdaHack)[](https://drone.io/github.com/kosmikus/LambdaHack/latest)
==========
This is an alpha release of LambdaHack, a [Haskell] [1] game engine
library for [roguelike] [2] games of arbitrary theme, size and complexity,
packaged together with a small example dungeon crawler. When completed,
the engine will let you specify content to be procedurally generated,
define the AI behaviour on top of the generic content-independent rules
and compile a ready-to-play game binary, using either the supplied
or a custom-made main loop. Several frontends are available
(GTK is the default) and many other generic engine components
are easily overridden, but the fundamental source of flexibility lies
in the strict and type-safe separation of code and content and of clients
(human and AI-controlled) and server. Long-term goals for LambdaHack include
support for multiplayer tactical squad combat, in-game content creation,
auto-balancing and persistent content modification based on player behaviour.
The engine comes with a sample code for a little dungeon crawler,
called LambdaHack and described in `PLAYING.md`. The engine and the example
game are bundled together in a single [Hackage] [3] package.
You are welcome to create your own games by modifying the sample game
and the engine code, but please consider eventually splitting your changes
into a separate Hackage package that depends on the upstream library,
to help us exchange ideas and share improvements to the common code.
Games known to use the LambdaHack library:
* [Allure of the Stars] [6], a near-future Sci-Fi game in early development
Compilation and installation
----------------------------
The library is best compiled and installed via Cabal (already a part
of your OS distribution, or available within [The Haskell Platform] [7]),
which also takes care of all the dependencies. The latest official
version of the library can be downloaded automatically by Cabal
from [Hackage] [3] as follows
cabal install LambdaHack
For a newer snapshot, download source from a development branch
at [github] [5] and run Cabal from the main directory
cabal install
For the example game, the best frontend (wrt keyboard support and colours)
is the default gtk. To compile with one of the terminal frontends,
use Cabal flags, e.g,
cabal install -fvty
Compatibility notes
-------------------
The current code was tested with GHC 7.6 and 7.8, but should also work with
other GHC versions (see file `.travis.yml.7.4.2` for GHC 7.4 commands).
If you are using the terminal frontends, numerical keypad may not work
correctly depending on versions of the libraries, terminfo and terminal
emulators. The curses frontend is not fully supported due to the limitations
of the curses library. With the vty frontend run in an xterm,
CTRL-keypad keys for running seem to work OK, but on rxvt they do not.
Vi keys (ykuhlbjn) should work everywhere regardless. GTK works fine, too.
Testing and debugging
---------------------
The `Makefile` contains many sample test commands. All that use the screensaver
game modes (AI vs. AI) and the simplest stdout frontend are gathered
in `make test`. Of these, travis runs one of the sets prefixed
`test-travis` on each push to the repo. Commands with prefix
`frontend` run AI vs. AI games with the standard, user-friendly frontend.
Commands with prefix `peek` set up a game mode where the player peeks
into AI moves each time an AI actor dies or autosave kicks in.
Run `LambdaHack --help` to see a brief description of all debug options.
Of these, `--sniffIn` and `--sniffOut` are very useful (though verbose
and initially cryptic), for monitoring the traffic between clients
and the server. Some options in the config file may turn out useful too,
though they mostly overlap with commandline options (and will be totally
merged at some point).
You can use HPC with the game as follows
cabal clean
cabal install --enable-library-coverage
make test
hpc report --hpcdir=dist/hpc/mix/LambdaHack-0.2.10.6/ LambdaHack
hpc markup --hpcdir=dist/hpc/mix/LambdaHack-0.2.10.6/ LambdaHack
The debug option `--stopAfter` is required for any screensaver mode
game invocations that gather HPC info, because HPC needs a clean exit
(to save data files) and screensaver modes can't be cleanly stopped
in any other way.
Further information
-------------------
For more information, visit the [wiki] [4]
and see `GameDefinition/PLAYING.md`, `CREDITS` and `LICENSE`.
Have fun!
[1]: http://www.haskell.org/
[2]: http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Berlin_Interpretation
[3]: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/LambdaHack
[4]: https://github.com/kosmikus/LambdaHack/wiki
[5]: http://github.com/kosmikus/LambdaHack
[6]: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/Allure
[7]: http://www.haskell.org/platform