Sunday 13 January 2008

Using IRB as an engine for programming puzzle game things

So I've been screwing around with Ruby a fair bit, but haven't really started writing proper programs in it yet. However I did have this one dumb idea that amused me, perhaps you will get a kick out of it. I mentioned in the last post that Ruby has a REPL called IRB. While experimenting with how it works I had this idea of making small puzzles that can be loaded into the IRB and then solved by executing code. Here is sample output for a toy example I made:

C:\Users\paul>irb -r puzzle1.rb
You have begun Puzzle 1.
You are in a small room, with a single closed door.
You can see a silver_key and copper_key, both on the floor.
The goal of the puzzle is to get the door open so you can leave the room.
To inspect individual objects simply type their name.
To interact with objects, use 'noun.verb' syntax. For example, try 'door.open'.

Puzzle1 >door
The door is closed.
Avaliable actions:
close
inspect
lock
open
unlock

Puzzle1 >door.open
The door is locked.

Puzzle1 >door.unlock
Action 'unlock' expects a single argument.

Puzzle1 >door.unlock silver_key
You try to put the key in the lock but it does not fit.

Puzzle1 >door.unlock copper_key
You unlocked the door.

Puzzle1 >door.open
The door is now open.
You exit the room via the doorway. Wheee, you completed the puzzle!

C:\Users\paul>
The source for this is quite ugly at the moment. I'm looking forward to digging into some of Ruby's meta-programming features that will help me clean it up. Now if player knows just a tiny bit of Ruby they can 'cheat' and finish this without using the silver_key or copper_key. I'm hoping to take this idea one step further and make puzzles that cannot be completed without this sort of 'cheating'. I'm not interested in developing typical text adventure style puzzles - I was never that much of a fan of the genre. But logic puzzles that require programming skills? That is another thing entirely. Surely lots of other people have had this same idea but I did a few searches and didn't find anything. A shame really because I imagine they could be quite fun. I will have a go at making one and we will see what happens.

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