[ANN] First release of elm_playground (A game engine for beginners)

Learning
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It is my pleasure to announce the first release of elm_playground, an OCaml package that allows you to easily create pictures, animations, and even video games in a portable way using an API that really simplifies how to view the computer and its devices (the screen, keyboard, and mouse). The library offers a native backend to run the games from a terminal and a web backend to run the games in your browser.

This is a port of the excellent Elm playground package
GitHub - evancz/elm-playground: Create pictures, animations, and games with Elm! to OCaml.

You can install it via OPAM via opam install elm_playground.

Here are a few examples of code using the library.

First a “picture” app:

(* from https://elm-lang.org/examples/picture *)
open Playground

let app =
  picture [
    rectangle brown 40. 200.
      |> move_down 80.;
    circle green 100.
      |> move_up 100.;
  ]

let main = Playground_platform.run_app app

example-picture
example-picture1244Ă—1318 26.5 KB

Then an “animation” app:

(* from https://elm-lang.org/examples/animation *)
open Playground

let view time = [
    octagon darkGray 36.
      |> move_left 100.
      |> rotate (spin 3. time);
    octagon darkGray 36.
      |> move_right 100.
      |> rotate (spin 3. time);
    rectangle red 300. 80.
      |> move_up (wave 50. 54. 2. time)
      |> rotate (zigzag (-. 2.) 2. 8. time);
  ]

let app =
  animation view

let main = Playground_platform.run_app app

example-animation
example-animation1244Ă—1318 24.3 KB

And finally a “game” app:

(* from https://elm-lang.org/examples/mouse *)
open Playground

let view _computer (x, y) = [ 
  square blue 40.
   |> move x y
 ]

let update computer (x, y) =
  (x +. to_x computer.keyboard, y +. to_y computer.keyboard)

let app = 
  game view update (0., 0.)

let main = Playground_platform.run_app app

example-keyboard
example-keyboard1244Ă—1318 22.2 KB

Note that you can write more complex games. For example here is a screenshot of a toy tetris app:

game-tetris
game-tetris582Ă—686 12.6 KB

For more information, follow the README at GitHub - aryx/ocaml-elm-playground: Port of the Elm playground package to OCaml to make pictures, animations, and even video games easily.

And merry christmas!

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