Engine Concepts

Ludiek is a game engine based on the most abstract of game mechanics. Therefor the most abstract name is given to these Engine Concepts, the most basic building blocks of any game.

• Condition, whether something is true.
• Request, something the user wants to do.
• Input/output, things that can be gained or lost.

If that sounds incredibly vague to you, you’d be absolutely right! The point of these concepts is that they can be applied and combined in many situations, making every type of game possible to be made.

Let’s understand these concepts better by creating our own Condition and provide it to the engine.

Has Currency

Assume that our game has a piece of content called Achievement, it has a condition field which determines if it can be awarded.

interface Achievement {
  id: string;
  name: string;
  description: string;
  condition: Condition;
}

We can create a type of Condition in Ludiek with the following code:

import { BaseCondition } from '@123ishatest/ludiek';

// First we define the 'shape' of this condition (i.e. what attributes can it have)
interface HasCurrencyCondition extends BaseCondition {
  type: '/condition/has-currency';
  id: string;
  amount: number;
}

// Conditions can depend on plugins, but also other conditions
type Dependencies = {
  plugins: [CurrencyPlugin];
};

// The evaluator that is provided to the engine
export class HasCurrencyEvaluator extends LudiekEvaluator<HasCurrencyCondition, Dependencies> {
  readonly type = '/condition/has-currency';

  // The actual evaluation
  evaluate(condition: HasCurrencyCondition): boolean {
    return this.engine.plugins.currency.hasCurrency(condition);
  }
}

With our first condition, we can spice up our engine quite a bit!

const engine = new LudiekEngine({
  plugins: [new CurrencyPlugin()],
  evaluators: [new HasCurrencyEvaluator()],
});

Ludiek provides full type-safety over all engine concepts:
```ts
engine.evaluate({
  type: '/condition/has-currency',
  id: '/currency/money',
  amount: 100,
});

The consequences of our actions

This might seem like a lot of boilerplate in order to compare a single number. But think about the consequences of providing this condition to the engine. Any piece of content that takes a condition, can now use our HasCurrencyCondition!

If our game has an inventory/equipment system, we could make a fancy monocle item that can only be equipped if the player has enough diamonds!

Ludiek comes with many plugins, each extending the engine in their own way!

Features

Ludiek plugin and engine are purely functional, written in the most generic way possible. The real fun begins with the features!