[Haskell-cafe] Simple game: a monad for each player

[Yves Parès]

Hello Cafe,

I have a question about program design.
Let's say I have a simple sequential game (a TicTacToe for instance, but
with more than 2 players).
I have a Player datatype which is like:

data Player m = Player {
    plName :: String,  -- unique for each player
    plTurn :: GameGrid -> m Move  -- called whenever the player must play
}

As you may guess, the 'm' type variable is intended to be a Monad.
The goal is that every player has his own monad. For instance :
- a human player needs to interact with the program, so its monad would be
IO, or an instance of MonadIO.
- a network player, which transparently sends the game state and receives
moves through network, must also have access to IO to play.
- an AI doesn't need to interact with the outside of the program, so its
monad can be the one we want (e.g. Identity).

First, do you think it is a good way to design the program?
I want the game to be totally independent of the players who are currently
playing. They can be humans, AIs, AIs and network players and humans, and so
on.

But when running the game, the program cannot "switch" from a player's monad
to another.
If we want every player to run in his own monad, I think we have to stack
every players' monad, and lift their actions each time they have to play.
This is not a problem, the sole condition now is that every player has type:
(Monad m, MonadTrans m) => Player m.

But I think it's a little bit of overkill, and it may be a little bit
complicated to implement such a thing.
What I try to avoid is having every player running in IO monad.

Do you have any suggestion?

-----
Yves Parès

Live long and prosper
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