[Haskell-cafe] ANN: FunGEn-1.0 - easy-to-install cross-platform game engine

[Simon Michael]

I'm pleased to announce the release of FunGEn 1.0 !

What is it ?

FunGEn (Functional Game Engine) is the oldest game engine in Haskell.
It was created by Andre Furtado in 2002, has never been used since,
and yet it is arguably still the easiest and most practical way to
make a video game using Haskell. It is BSD-licensed, installs easily
on unix, mac and windows, does not use FRP, and comes with two
playable example games.

What does it do ?

Here's Andre's original feature list:

- Initialization, updating, removing, rendering and grouping
  routines for game objects;

- Definition of a game background (or map), including texture-based
  maps and tile maps;

- Reading and intepretation of the player's keyboard input;

- Collision detection;

- Time-based functions and pre-defined game actions;

- Loading and displaying of 24-bit bitmap files;

- Some debugging and game performance evaluation facilities;

- Sound support (actually for windows platforms only... :-[ )

What's new in 1.0 ?

- supports GHC 7.10

- supports stack

- the repo (and project) has moved to the haskell-game organization on Github

How to install

$ cabal update
$ cabal install FunGEn
# ensure ~/.cabal/bin or windows equiv. is in your PATH

or 

$ git clone https://github.com/haskell-game/fungen
$ cd fungen
$ stack install

How to run the examples

$ fungen-hello
$ fungen-pong
$ fungen-worms

More info

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/FunGEn
https://github.com/haskell-game/fungen
http://joyful.com/fungen - old home page

Why ?

I think FunGEn still has some value, for building games and also as an
example of how to structure games in haskell. I don't have time to do
much with it, so I've moved it to the haskell-game organization, where
all org members now have push access.  I'd like it to be as open as
possible to contributors, and am seeking a new or co- maintainer.

Best,
-Simon (sm on #haskell-game)