Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

A style question. I've got a world data object, which I pass into my functions. It looks like this: ```clojure (def world (atom {:flags #{:want-umbrella} :location :home :inventory #{...} :map {:home {...} :patio {...})) ``` My default describe-room method

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Excellent. Yeah, I was thinking I was probably going to too much trouble to get the "nil" value. And the (derive) solution is very nice. Thanks very much! On Monday, April 2, 2018 at 11:30:53 AM UTC-7, Mikhail Gusarov wrote: > > Hello Will. > > You can simplify it further: > > 1. Define a

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Hello Will. You can simplify it further: 1. Define a multimethod always dispatching by room id. 2. Create a :default implementation. It will be called for non- fancy rooms.3. Create an implementation for :fancy-room. It will be preferred over :default for it. If you ever have a group of

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Spent the weekend pondering all of this, and here's the way I think I want to do it. 1. The world-state is stored in an atom, and updated much as Gary Johnson suggests. 2. I define a multi-method, (describe-room [room world-state]), that is responsible for computing the current description of

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Thanks! On Friday, March 30, 2018 at 11:12:04 AM UTC-7, Karsten Schmidt wrote: > > Hi Will, > > have a look at this workshop repository, in which we developed a > simple text adventure framework: > https://github.com/learn-postspectacular/resonate-workshop-2014 > > Hth! K. > > On 30 March

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Gary, Thanks for the detailed answer. What you're describing is pretty much exactly what I'm trying to do, including the game loop you mention. The basic implementation is pretty simple: a player who can move from room to room, picking up objects, putting them down, and so forth, and the

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Thanks! I've glanced at Land of Lisp, actually, some while back. I might even have a copy. To be clear, it isn't LISP that's giving me problems. I've been dabbling with LISP on-and-off since the '80's, and I've read a couple of Paul Graham's books. I understand code-as-data, and lambdas,

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Thanks! On Thursday, March 29, 2018 at 6:10:56 PM UTC-7, James Reeves wrote: > > Often it's better to store the entire game state as one large, immutable > data structure. > > Atoms are usually preferred over refs in most cases. > > When you want polymorphism over a map, the most common solution

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Howdy! Yeah, I get this; and for most of the rooms it's plenty good enough. It's the ones that are complicated that concern me. Writing text adventures has been one of my standard ways of learning new languages, going back to the mid-80s to a simple text adventure I wrote—in LISP,

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Hi Will, have a look at this workshop repository, in which we developed a simple text adventure framework: https://github.com/learn-postspectacular/resonate-workshop-2014 Hth! K. On 30 March 2018 at 16:01, Gary Johnson wrote: > Hi Will, > > Welcome to the wide world of

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Hi Will, Welcome to the wide world of functional programming, where data flows, and functions transmute without destroying their inputs. As some others in this thread have already suggested, a general approach to viewing any problem space from a functional perspective is to imagine your

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

http://landoflisp.com/ is specifically about coding games in Lisp, in case you're into books. :) On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 6:45 PM, Will Duquette wrote: > I'm an experienced programmer, but a Clojure newbie; as a beginner > project, I'm looking into how one would

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Often it's better to store the entire game state as one large, immutable data structure. Atoms are usually preferred over refs in most cases. When you want polymorphism over a map, the most common solution is to use protocols and records. On 29 March 2018 at 23:45, Will Duquette

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

You often don't even need functions for this sort of thing. This is what is often called "data driven" programs. Simply define this as a hashmap with :description, :items, etc and then a single function that introspects this data and figures out how to describe the room. Also you might want to

Re: Writing a text adventure in Clojure

Aha! How about this, to cut the Gordian knot: 1. The fancy room's :description isn't necessarily a simple string. It can be a vector of specs, where each spec is a text snippet or a pair containing a predicate function and a text snippet. 2. The (describe) function takes two

Writing a text adventure in Clojure

I'm an experienced programmer, but a Clojure newbie; as a beginner project, I'm looking into how one would idiomatically write a text adventure of sorts in Clojure. I'm less interested in producing a playable game than I am in learning how to do such a thing in a proper functional style.