I've been playing with MonadPrompt for
about ten days now, trying to get it to do something useful for me.
Specifically, I'm trying to implement
"guess a number" since that's the hello world of haskell state
programs, or so it seems to me. I want to have this with scripting / replay
/ undo and the other goodies claimed possible
It's been slow going due to still getting
to grips with GADTs and other more advanced features of the typing system.
If Ryan (or anyone) would care to share
any working code for a simple game that uses MonadPrompt, ideally with
scripting / replay / undo that would be extremely helpful.
Otherwise I'll be back with more specific
questions about my attempts to use this stuff soon enough :)
(At present, that;'s just trying to
get some of the more interesting code you posted as "untested"
to compile.)
For what it's worth, my game currently
saves high some (but not all) state-y information in a serialized form
to track high scores. If I can get this working with MonadPrompt, my next
quest will be to use MACID to do the serialization instead, and then *all*
state will be saved if I understand correctly.
t.
"Ryan Ingram"
<ryani.spam@gmail.com> Sent by: haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org
11/18/2007 07:22 PM
To
haskell <haskell-cafe@haskell.org>
cc
Subject
[Haskell-cafe] An interesting monad:
"Prompt"
(This message is a literate haskell
file. Code for the "Prompt" monad is
preceded by ">"; code for my examples is preceded by "]"
and isn't complete,
but intended for illustration.)
I've been trying to implement a few rules-driven board/card games in Haskell
and I always run into the ugly problem of "how do I get user input"?
The usual technique is to embed the game in the IO Monad:
] type Game = IO
] -- or
] type Game = StateT GameState IO
The problem with this approach is that now arbitrary IO computations are
expressible as part of a game action, which makes it much harder to implement
things like replay, undo, and especially testing!
The goal was to be able to write code like this:
] takeTurn :: Player -> Game ()
] takeTurn player = do
] piece <- action (ChoosePiece player)
] attack <- action (ChooseAttack player piece)
] bonusTurn <- executeAttack piece attack
] when bonusTurn $ takeTurn player
but be able to script the code for testing, allow undo, automatically
be able to save replays, etc.
While thinking about this problem earlier this week, I came up with the
following solution:
> {-# OPTIONS_GHC -fglasgow-exts -fallow-undecidable-instances #-}
> -- undecidable instances is only needed for the MonadTrans instance
below
>
> module Prompt where
> import Control.Monad.Trans
> import Control.Monad.Identity
> class Monad m => MonadPrompt p m | m -> p where
> prompt :: p a -> m a
"prompt" is an action that takes a prompt type and gives you
a result.
A simple example:
] prompt [1,3,5] :: MonadPrompt [] m => m Int
This prompt would ask for someone to pick a value from the list and return
it.
This would be somewhat useful on its own; you could implement a "choose"
function that picked randomly from a list of options and gave
non-deterministic (or even exhaustive) testing, but on its own this wouldn't
be much better than the list monad.
What really made this click for me was that the prompt type could be built
on a GADT:
] newtype GamePrompt a = GP (GameState, GameChoice a)
] data GameChoice a where
] -- pick a piece to act with
] ChoosePiece :: Player -> GameChoice GamePiece
] -- pick how they should attack
] ChooseAttack :: Player -> GamePiece -> GameChoice
AttackType
] -- etc.
Now you can use this type information as part of a "handler"
function:
] gameIO :: GamePrompt a -> IO a
] gameIO (GP (state, ChoosePiece player)) = getPiece state player
] gameIO (GP (state, ChooseAttack player piece)) = attackMenu player piece
] -- ...
The neat thing here is that the GADT specializes the type of "IO a"
on the
right hand side. So, "getPiece state player" has the type
"IO GamePiece", not
the general "IO a". So the GADT is serving as a witness
of the type of
response wanted by the game.
Another neat things is that, you don't need to embed this in the IO monad
at
all; you could instead run a pure computation to do AI, or even use it
for
unit testing!
> -- unit testing example
> data ScriptElem p where SE :: p a -> a -> ScriptElem p
> type Script p = [ScriptElem p]
>
> infix 1 -->
> (-->) = SE
> data Prompt (p :: * -> *) :: (* -> *) where
> PromptDone :: result -> Prompt p result
> -- a is the type needed to continue the computation
> Prompt :: p a -> (a -> Prompt p result) ->
Prompt p result
This doesn't require GADT's; it's just using existential types, but I like
the aesthetics better this way.
Intuitively, a (Prompt p result) either gives you an immediate result
(PromptDone), or gives you a prompt which you need to reply to in order
to
continue the computation.
This type is a MonadPrompt:
> instance Functor (Prompt p) where
> fmap f (PromptDone r) = PromptDone (f r)
> fmap f (Prompt p cont) = Prompt p (fmap f . cont)
>
> instance Monad (Prompt p) where
> return = PromptDone
> PromptDone r >>= f = f r
> Prompt p cont >>= f = Prompt p ((>>= f) .
cont)
>
> instance MonadPrompt p (Prompt p) where
> prompt p = Prompt p return
>
> -- Just for fun, make it work with StateT as well
> -- (needs -fallow-undecidable-instances)
> instance (Monad (t m), MonadTrans t, MonadPrompt p m) => MonadPrompt
p (t m) where
> prompt = lift . prompt
The last bit to tie it together is an observation function which allows
you to
run the game:
> runPromptM :: Monad m => (forall a. p a -> m a) -> Prompt
p r -> m r
> runPromptM _ (PromptDone r) = return r
> runPromptM f (Prompt pa c) = f pa >>= runPromptM f . c
>
> runPrompt :: (forall a. p a -> a) -> Prompt p r -> r
> runPrompt f p = runIdentity $ runPromptM (Identity . f) p
>
> runScript :: (forall a. ScriptElem p -> p a -> Maybe a)
> -> Script p ->
Prompt p r -> Maybe r
> runScript _ [] (PromptDone r) = Just r
> runScript s (x:xs) (Prompt pa c) = case s x pa of
> Nothing -> Nothing
> Just a -> runScript s xs (c a)
> runScript _ _ _
= Nothing
> -- script & computation out of sync
My original goal is now achievable:
] type Game = StateT GameState (Prompt GamePrompt)
]
] action :: GameChoice a -> Game a
] action p = do
] state <- get
] prompt $ GP (state, p)
] runGameScript :: Script GameChoice -> GameState -> Game a ->
Maybe (GameState, a)
] runGameScript script initialState game
] = runScript scriptFn script' (runStateT game initialState)
] where
] script' = map sEmbed script
] scriptFn s (GP (s,p)) = gameScript (sExtract s)
p
] sEmbed (SE p a) = SE (GP (undefined, p))
a
] sExtract (SE (GP (_,p)) a) = SE p a
Any comments are welcome! Thanks for reading this far.
-- ryan _______________________________________________
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