Cook's Assistant

A small text adventure based on a quest from RuneScape, and more importantly, an experiment in functional game programming.

I plan to add more quests and some RPG elements just to see how will I have to refactor it. Maybe I will succumb to the Component-Entity-System model (very tempting given what Brute shows), but first let's try to do it on my own :)

RuneScape® is a registered trademark of Jagex Limited in the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries.

Compile

• lein cljsbuild once prod for index.html (should work)
• lein cljsbuild once dev for index2.html (if advanced compilation breaks something)

Run

Either play here or run your compiled version: index.html (prod) or index2.html (dev).

How it works

State

There is state in an atom, but every function that does something with it

• has its data passed explicitly as an argument
• doesn't modify the atom but instead returns the changed data

So we have referentially transparent and pure functions and not a hidden global state!

Inside it looks a little bit like this:

{:player {:location :castle
          :inventory #{}}
 :locations ...
 :state {:hopper-has-wheat-inside false
         :flour-in-bin            false
         :cook-has-given-quest    false
         :cook-has-ingredients    false}
 :items {:farm      #{:egg}
         :cow-field #{:bucket}
         :field     #{:wheat}
         :windmill  #{:pot}}}

So far it's minimum structure to make the whole thing work, I feel with more quests, NPCs etc. it will have to be refactored into something more robust, I'll have to find a way to isolate each quest into its own namespace, etc.

Commands

The commands are parsed by regexes. There, I said it. Basically it crunches the row in this order:

1. command (action)
2. object (if the command needs it)
3. subject (if the command needs it)

TODO

• right now if we want to output something that depends on the current, modified state, we have to save it somehow (let) and then inside the body do (output new-state (blablabla new-state)) ... some helper fn or macro to the rescue?
• refactor locations out of state?
• bag (multiset) or at least map ({Item Count}) for the inventory?
• minimap? squares? D3.js graph?
• inventory visible in GUI at all times, not as a command?
• Component Entity System framework (Brute)?
• another quest (let's try how code structured in this way handles complexity)
• RPG elements (XP, levels, skills, ... who knows?)

Namespaces

• cook.core - init
• cook.gui - HTML/DOM related stuff
• cook.gui.history - abstraction over how does history box really look and what do we want from it (textarea, div, ...)
• cook.gui.input - the same, over the input
• cook.data - description of game world, synonyms for commands, items, ...
• cook.data.msgs - various strings (intro, "you cannot do that", etc.)
• cook.data.quest - dialogue and strings for the (only) quest
• cook.state - state atom, initial state map
• cook.state.utils - querying and altering state (current location, inventory, ...)
• cook.describe - fns for describing the various aspects of the world to the player
• cook.commands - fns and multimethods defining the commands
• cook.commands.utils - mainly helpers for parsing input string to a command