
Helm: A functionally reactive game engine in Haskell - lobo_tuerto
http://helm-engine.org/
======
fgaaldal
It would be nice to see some examples, otherwise this is "yet another game
engine that will be deprecated in 1 year". I consider this very important as
games are so different that it is hard to find common parts to put into a
library that are not trivial and could be reimplemented. In particular have at
least 3 slightly involved examples, otherwise it is unclear what one would
gain over simply using SDL/OpenGL.

This goes also the other way. If I hack for fun, I often think about how to
abstract stuff that is not specific to my current problem and put it into a
library (I think we all have been there). Fact is, I often rush, so my
abstraction only works for the current situation and so does not belong into a
library. Until I did not reimplement the stuff at least 3 times I try to avoid
making a library.

~~~
lobo_tuerto
I posted this because I was looking for info on how to go about writing a game
using Haskell, or FP for that matter.

I think this at least exposes how you can do it, and what kind of tools it
uses to accomplish it.

After I also stumbled upon this: [http://elm-
lang.org/guide/reactivity](http://elm-lang.org/guide/reactivity)

And then on this: [https://github.com/evancz/elm-architecture-
tutorial/](https://github.com/evancz/elm-architecture-tutorial/)

~~~
fgaaldal
Obviously it depends on the game. However if you do not plan to make a
straight-forward game or do not have to be fast, I highly recommend the
combination SDL2 + OpenGL. It just works.

    
    
      - you find tons of documentation
      - you will run anywhere (that is obviously not trivial)
    

In particular if you are going 2D you can skip OpenGL if speed is not a
problem (yet).

You then just write a small C-kernel which provides the main functionality and
explore Haskell's FFI.

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pauloday
Wow, that is a beautiful homepage. I particularly like the font and
colorscheme for the code example, well done.

------
efnx
Helm is a great effort but as far as I know the project has been mostly
abandoned :(

~~~
lobo_tuerto
Seems like the github repo is not that abandoned:

    
    
        kasbah authored 13 days ago

~~~
efnx
Maybe the original authors have passed it on. If they're still working on it
then it would be great to see an OpenGL backend.

