[Haskell-cafe] Input Handling, Callbacks, State Machines

[Daniel Trstenjak]

Hi all,

I'm currently struggling in the search for a nice abstraction for the
input handling of a game (it's a simple platformer with rectangular platforms).

One good example is the level editor of the game. When pressing the left
mouse button the creation of a new platform is started. As long as the
mouse button is hold the platform can be resized by moving the mouse.
When releasing the mouse button the platform is created with the current shape.

The GUI library I'm using is GLFW. There're several callbacks for key,
mouse button and mouse move events.

Firstly I would like to be able to describe application states, like
the creation of a platform or the definition of the movement of a
platform. The state might add something to the current level rendering
and it changes temporary the callbacks. 

So in the case of a platform creation, the mouse move callback would just
resize the platform, the mouse button callback awaits the button release
and the key callback might only allow the quitting of the current creation.

Above the application states it would be nice to be able to describe the
transition from one state to another.

Perhaps FRP might be a solution for this. But I'm still shying away of
it, because a game might have some hairy state changes and I still don't
see, how FRP makes life in this regard that much easier.


Any Ideas?


Greetings,
Daniel