Gaiman: Storytelling Text Based Game Engine and Programming Language
Main part of Gaiman is a minimalist, Ruby inspired, programming language. The main purpose of it is to help creating Text Adventure Games. But it can also be used to create any interactive CLI applications (Web Based Terminal applications). It supports browser based CLI applications and in the future also native command line.
First, you need to install NodeJS. After you're done, you should open terminal and use npm command (that is included with Node).
npm install -g gaiman@beta
First, create input.gs
file with your Gaiman program (you can use one of the examples), and then run:
gaiman -o directory input.gs
This will compile your source file and generate directory/index.html
and directory/index.js
files.
You can open the generated HTML file in the browser and run the game.
When output files are generated you can use this command to run live Web server. This is required to run the example. It's like running a website on the internet.
cd directory
npx live-server
This should open index.html
inside your browser. When your app is ready you can publish it with:
This is Hello world Gaiman DSL example:
echo get "https://gaiman.js.org/gaiman.txt"
echo* "Hi, What is your name?", 50 # Typing animation with 50ms delay
let name = ask "name? "
echo "Hello $name, nice to meet you."
More advanced example:
if cookie.visited then
if cookie.user then
let user = cookie.user
echo "Hello $user, welcome back"
else
ask_details("Welcome back stranger")
end
else
cookie.visited = true
ask_details("Welcome stranger")
end
def ask_details(msg)
echo msg
echo "Do you want me to contact you with updates?"
let confirm = ask "yes/no: ", lambda(answer)
return answer =~ /^(y|yes|n|no)$/i
end
if confirm =~ /y|yes/i then
echo "what is your name?"
let name = ask "name: ", lambda(name)
let valid = name != ""
if not valid then
echo "You need to type something"
end
return valid
end
cookie.user = name
let email = ask "email: ", lambda(email)
let valid = email =~ /^.+@.+\..+$/
if not valid then
echo "wrong email"
end
return valid
end
cookie.email = email
let response = post "/register", { "name" => name, "email" => email }
if response then
echo "Welcome $user. You're successfully registered"
end
else
echo "Ok, as you wish. Bye"
end
end
More examples in examples directory
See Reference Manual for details about the features
See Gaiman language Playground
See Wiki TODO & Roadmap.
Name came from Neil Gaiman, Author of novels, comic books, graphic novels and films. Great storyteller.
You can read about the origin of the language in the beginning of the article:
Logo use:
- Font Calling Heart by Lettersiro Studio
- Clipart Book with bookmarks by Kevin David Pointon
Released under GNU GPL v3 or later
Copyright (c) 2021-2024 Jakub T. Jankiewicz