About blubber
=============
blubber is a simple arcade game in which you control a blub, that needs
to blubber all the smaller blubs, in other to grow big enough to blubber
the rest of the blubs.

This is the client component of the blubber game. The server source code
is available at: <https://github.com/plaimi/blubber-server>.

The client is designed to be modular, so that you can play blubber using
any client, on any server.


Dependencies
============
The blubber server
base             >=4.7  && <4.8
bytestring       >=0.10 && <0.11
cereal           >=0.4  && <0.5
containers       >=0.5  && <0.6
gloss            >=1.9  && <2.0
network          >=2.6  && <2.7
unix             >=2.7  && <2.8


The game is built using GHC.

Cabal is optional, but it makes building and installing a lot easier.


Installing/setting up
=====================

NOTE: This repository is for developers. If you are a regular user, you
should refer to <https://secure.plaimi.net/games/blubber.html>.

Users should look for the game in their system's package manager. The
game may be installed with cabal though.

$ cabal install blubber-server

Build instructions for developers
---------------------------------
# Optionally set up a sandboxed environment (recommended):
$ cabal sandbox init

# Install the dependencies:
$ cabal install --only-dependencies

# Build the game (puts a binary in ./dist/build/blubber-server/):
$ cabal build

# Make the documentation (puts html in ./dist/doc/htm/):
$ cabal haddock --executables --hyperlink-source

# Run the game:
$ cabal run

To install the game (not necessary usually) use:
$ cabal install

This will add the binary "blubber" to your cabal binaries (or to the
sandbox).


Running
=======
To run the game, use the executable (assumed to be in $PATH).
$ blubber-server [IP] [PORT] [NAME]

Where IP and PORT is the IP and port number of the server you want to
play on, and NAME your preferred screen name. Nice GUI to come...


Controls
========

Hit space to enter the game. Hit 'c' to get a link of the source code
(printed to STDIN). The blub follows your mouse around the screen. Hit
esc to exit.


Low hanging fruit
=================

List of easy-to-fix things (easiest/quickest first):
  -Rearrange TLDs to make things more readable and nice.
  -Improve TDL documentation.
  -Handle window resizing properly wrt scaling.
  -Clean up drawing code to not duplicate things.
  -Translate the names of the blubs so that they are centred.
  -Set up optparse-applicative, and do argument parsing properly.
  -Do something more sensical with the source code returned from the
  server upon request.
  -Draw something that makes it obvious that the player is actually
  moving around. A black unchanging background is not very good at this.
  -Do some window management.
  -Implement a rudimentary menu system.
  -Implement a lobby system for connecting to servers.


Licensing and Legalese
=======================
blubber is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

blubber is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with blubber.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.


Contributing To the Project
===========================

There is a mailing list: <https://secure.plaimi.net/mailing.php>. On
there you can discuss the game, suggest features, report bugs, get help
(both as a user and as a developer), and so on.

If you want to contribute code, send a patch to the mailing list.