Holy Land

Low-fantasy biblical sim/roguelike. CP437 rendering, gamepad-first, cross-platform from desktop to retro handhelds.

See holyland-PLAN.md for the full design plan and holyland-ROADMAP.md for the session-by-session forward plan.

Status

Session 1/H1 + Session 3 done. A @ walks around a CP437 grid (Guybrush 16x16 tileset); # blocks; . is floor; Start / Esc quits; Select saves; player position auto-loads on next launch. Saves are CBOR with schema versioning and atomic write — portable + sync-friendly per plan. Miyoo cross-compile (S1/H2) and Android build (S2) deferred.

Build (desktop)

SDL2 is bundled and statically linked via the sdl2 crate's bundled + static-link features, so no system SDL2 install is required. First build is slow (compiles SDL2 from source); subsequent builds are fast.

cargo run --release

Requires: Rust toolchain, a C compiler (cc/gcc), cmake, make.

Controls

Tier 1 (floor — every device, including SNES-class handhelds):

Action	Keyboard	Gamepad
Move	Arrow keys / WASD / HJKL	Dpad
A / B / X / Y	Z / X / C / V	Face buttons
L / R	Q / E	Shoulder buttons
Save	Backspace / Right Shift	Select
Quit	Enter / Esc	Start

Tier 2 (analog sticks → action wheels) is reserved for Session 3+; see plan.

Project layout

holyland/
├── Cargo.toml                bundled+static SDL2 + gilrs + image + hecs + serde + ciborium + uuid
├── .cargo/config.toml        cross-compile target stubs
├── assets/cp437_16x16.png    Guybrush CP437 tileset (embedded via include_bytes!)
└── src/
    ├── main.rs               SDL init + event loop + save/load wiring
    ├── render.rs             draw_glyph + load_atlas (the only drawing API)
    ├── input.rs              Action enum + gilrs/keyboard + repeat-on-hold
    ├── world.rs              hecs ECS + Tile/Position/Renderable/Player components
    ├── save.rs               SaveHeader + MetaSave + RunSave + atomic write + migration chain
    └── platform/             OS-specific code lives here, nowhere else
        ├── mod.rs
        ├── desktop.rs        XDG paths, fallback to exe-adjacent saves
        ├── linux_handheld.rs reserved for Miyoo/MinUI specifics
        └── android.rs        stub for Retroid (Session 2)

Saves

CBOR via ciborium, written atomically (.tmp + fsync + rename). Two files per save_dir:

• meta.cbor — xp, demon-currency, deity affinity, unlocks, settings (the always-sync tier).
• run.cbor — current run state (player position; will grow as the wilderness loop lands).

Every save starts with a SaveHeader { schema_version, build_version, save_counter, device_id, timestamp }. Loads dispatch by schema_version; future bumps add migration functions to save.rs. Forward-compat by #[serde(default)] on every non-header field — older binaries skip unknown fields, newer binaries default-fill missing ones.

save_dir resolves per-platform via src/platform/:

• Linux desktop / handheld: $XDG_DATA_HOME/holyland → $HOME/.local/share/holyland → exe-adjacent saves/.
• Android (Session 2): /data/local/holyland placeholder — will switch to SDL's internal storage path.

Run cargo test --release to exercise the round-trip + future-schema-rejection tests in save.rs.

Cross-compile (Session 1 / Half 2 — Miyoo Mini Plus)

Not yet attempted; planned next. Target triple armv7-unknown-linux-musleabihf. Will require a musl ARM cross toolchain and a statically-buildable SDL2. See plan for budget and bail-out criteria.

Cross-compile (Session 2 — Retroid Pocket 5)

Target triple aarch64-linux-android. Will use cargo-ndk + cargo-apk. Application code unchanged; src/platform/android.rs becomes live.

What's deliberately not here yet

Audio, NPCs, harvesting, combat, blessings, demons, oasis/wilderness loops, action wheels (Tier 2 input), tile-mode sprites. All deferred per plan.