README

Druid is a connection-oriented board game created by Cameron Browne.

This is how a typical board might look:

      A     B     C     D     E
   +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
 5 |                             | 5
   |+-----+           +-----+    |
   /| h h |    +     /| v v |    +
 4 || h h |          || v v |    | 4
   |+-----+-----+    |+-----+    |
   /-----/| v v |    /-----/     +
 3 |     || v v |                | 3
   |     |+-----+     +-----+    |
   +     /-----/     /| v v |    +
 2 |             +-----+-----+-----+
   |      +-----/| h h   h h   h h |
   +     /| v v || h h   h h   h h |
 1 |     || v v |+-----+-----+-----+
   |     |+-----/-----/-----/-----/
   +-----/-----/-----/-----/-----/
      A     B     C     D     E

Rules and a bit of strategy can be found at http://www.cameronius.com/games/druid/

Instructions on getting Druid running:

  • Get Rakudo Star or install Rakudo and Panda manually.

  • Call 'panda install druid'.

Get Rakudo

You need Rakudo to run the Perl 6 code in Druid -- instructions here: http://rakudo.org/how-to-get-rakudo/.

Call 'perl6 druid'

Yup, you're ready to go.

% perl6 -Ilib bin/druid
% perl6 -Ilib bin/druid --size=10 --computer=1
% perl6 -Ilib bin/druid --help

For those who want to compile things

(After all, compilation does make startup a little faster.)

Install ufo with panda or get it from github. Then run

% ufo
% make

Installing via panda

Panda is a no-fuss installer of Perl 6 projects. You have it already if you have installed the Rakudo Star distribution, but otherwike you can install it like so:

  1. Get panda from https://github.com/tadzik/panda

  2. Run './bootstrap' and make sure to set your PATH as it instructs you to.

  3. Run 'panda install druid'

...and you're ready to run. Just run "druid" in your shell.

Future plans

  • Add an SVG renderer.

  • Work on the machine play. (It's currently random, but I have some fairly nice ideas lying around in a local branch.)

  • Put in a few optimizations to make Druid::Game::possible-moves O(1) instad of O(n being the size of the board), as it is presently. In another language, the difference might not actually be noticeable, but Rakudo Perl 6 is very "speed-sensitive" right now.

  • Make the web app do POST requests instead of GET requests. This is more in line with the idea of making a move, a non-idempotent action.

  • Make the web app handle different simultaneous games, played by distinct users. This will likely require a real databse instead of the short-term file solution used now.

License

This Druid implementation is released under Artistic 2.0. See LICENSE. Permission to release the game graciously given by the game author.

The Camelia image is copyright 2009 by Larry Wall. "Raku" is trademark of the Yet Another Society. All rights reserved.