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Tarn is a minimalistic Lua-scriptable roguelike engine written in C, using the Doryen Library as its I/O interface.
You’ll need Lua 5.1 and the Doryen Library 1.2.1 to build Tarn, as well as a halfway decent C compiler. You might have to mess with the makefile a bit to make it work, I’m sure not everyone keeps their pathnames the same as I do.
As it stands, Tarn is a very simple system. When you run it, it will first load the script that is defined in tarn.h as START_SCRIPT. By default, it is tarn.lua. You are then able to access the Tarn API through Lua. At the moment, the API is small and is comprised of the following Lua functions:
| tarn_init | Initializes the Tarn API |
| tarn_loadmodule | Loads a Tarn module from the modules/ directory |
| tarn_dofile | Executes a Lua script in the Tarn Lua state |
| tarn_print | Prints a string at a specified position. Can also handle control codes |
| tarn_getkey | Waits for a keypress and returns a table describing it |
| tarn_draw | Redraws the Tarn screen |
| tarn_clear | Clears the Tarn screen |
Tarn also has a few special built-in variables.
Tarn now comes with a few small and useful modules. They are in no way necessary, and they are only there for your convenience. They are located in the modules/ directory, and can be loaded with tarn_loadmodule. Documentation coming soon.
Making games with Tarn is supposed to be painless. Here is a guide to getting started.