Ronald Guida wrote:
Hi,
I'm interested in learning how to program games. Since I have to start
somewhere, I decided to write a simple Hangman game. I'm wondering if
anyone can look at my code and give me some feedback.
Nicely written. The design reads very much like a straight translation
from the imperative style, which is why so much of it is in the IO
monad. There is nothing wrong with this for a simple game like Hangman,
but for larger games it doesn't scale. So here are a few pointers to
ways of rewriting it to keep the IO to the top level and the actual work
in a functional style:
1: Your GameState type can itself be made into a monad. Take a look at
the "All About Monads" tutorial, especially the State monad. Think
about the invariants in GameState; can you produce a new monad that
guarantees these invariants through a limited set of actions. How do
these actions correspond to user perceptions?
2: You can layer monads by using monad transformers. Extend the
solution to part 1 by using StateT IO instead of just State.
3: Your current design uses a random number generator in the IO monad.
Someone already suggested moving that into the GameState. But you can
also generate an infinite list of random numbers. Can you make your
game a function of a list of random numbers?
4: User input can also be considered as a list. Haskell has "lazy
input", meaning that you can treat user input as a list that actually
only gets read as it is required. Can you make your game a function of
the list of user inputs? How does this interact with the need to
present output to the user? What about the random numbers?
Good luck,
Paul.
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