Particle Game Maker Engine

The purpose of this engine is to enable the user to make their own particle games in the PongChamp scripting language (described below). For using the scripting API, see below. The engine can be compiled with make linux from this directory, and then stack build. Install stack with https://docs.haskellstack.org/en/stable/install_and_upgrade/. To see the c API in use, run make linux and for more information refer to the doxygen if you don't want to use PongChamp. The advantage of PongChamp is it is easily iterable and provides a nice abstraction for using some of the apis. The c++ APIs are also available.

Base API REF

• Update - Contains the available update function objects
• Collision - Contains the available collision function objects
• createParticleGroup: ParticleGroupBuilder -> ParticleGroup - creates a particle group from a configured builder
• buildParticleGroup: -> ParticleGroupBuilder - creates an unconfigured particle group builder
• buildLayout: -> LayoutBuilder - creates an unconfigured layout builder
• runWithLayout: LayoutBuilder -> - runs your particle game with the given layout, using the preconfigured particle groups
• neg: Int -> Int - negates a number. Negative numbers are not supported natively in PongChamp (i.e. can't be parsed).

Update API REF

This section describes all the available functions on the global Update object which let you describe how particle groups should update.

• Move - Move a particle by a certain X and Y offset
• RandomMove - Move a particle in a random direction within pre-defined ranges
• Create - Create any amount of a certain particle, at a certain location with some configurable randomness
• Lifetime - Delete this particle after a certain number of updates

Collision API REF

This section describes all the available functions on the global Collision object which let you describe how particle groups should collide.

• Delete - Delete either or both of the particles involved in the collision
• Create - Close either or both of the particles involved in the collision a certain number of times
• Move - Move either or both particles
• Convert - Change the particle types of either or both particles
• MoveRandom - Move the primary (from) particle in a random direction, limited by a range

The ParticleGroupBuilder API REF

This section describes the available functions available on a ParticleGroupBuilder

• withColor - assigns the color of the group to the given r (int), g (int), and b (int)
• withName - sets the name of the group to the given s (string)

The LayoutBuilder API REF

This section describes the available functions available on a LayoutBuilder

• withSize - assigns the window size to the given w (int), h (int) (width and height)
• withEditorOrientation - assigns the editor orientation to the given o (int) (0 for horizontal, 1 for vertical). Buttons are then placed horizontally or vertically
• withWindowRatio - determines how big the button layout should be, relative to the particle game window, given a x (int) the particle game window will take up x percent of the screen

PongChamp

Welcome to our PongChamp language! This was a project that was started as a weekend thing and we plan to keep expanding on it to integrate a simple but feature-full game engine. The goal of the language is to be coupled tightly to the engine so that it can make it as easy as possible to script with it.

Building

• make all will build the engine library for mac and windows, assuming you have the correct development libraries installed. A prebuilt version is already uploaded though.
• stack build is necessary for now to build your own executable for your target architecture

Build Nuances

• unfortunately currently it is required to have the sdl libs installed to your system, including sdl2_ttf, sdl2_mixer, sdl2, sdl2_image
• The engine will eventually move into an open-gl based engine, while the base design of the engine is decided on a temporary engine is in place to demo functionality of the language.
• Windows builds will require more effort to ensure proper c libs are installed
• In order to build the windows target mingw-w64 is needed

Running

The simplest way to do this is to run ./bin/PongChamp [file]. This ensures your library path is appropriately set. Since the engine-lib is not installed to your machines known library path, LD_LIBRARY_PATH needs to be set for stack to function correctly. If you want to run with stack, this may serve your purposes: LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/engine-lib/ stack run -- [file]. Note that for a Windows build to function properly the PATH variable needs to be set, rather than LD_LIBRARY_PATH. The python script also does this currently.

Current features

• Loops
• Datatypes: Number, String, Boolean
• Higher order functions
• Branching
• A set of unary and binary operators
• Variable assignment
• No module system

Integration with C++ engine

Haskell provides a FFI interface to interface with other languages. However, in order to interface with a C++ library, it is necessary to write a c wrapper around the engine and then interface with C. This engine is a great example of a cool integration with PongChamp!

Known Issues

• No garbage collection