matt-dray/actionsquirrel

:chipmunk::chestnut: R package: a squirrel game in your R console, made with {R6}

LARPing as a data scientist in the public sector.

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The latest realised showerthoughts on my blog are:

• The Aesthetics Wiki: an R Addendum
• Stop Jenny committing arson
• Assign abstracts to sifters
• Shtty R help from shtty AI
• Ellipses, eclipses and bulletses

The thought technologies presented here have erupted from my own brain.

actionsquirrel's Issues

Add enemy

Like #2, except you want to avoid it. Could move randomly or toward the player.

Handle input errors

Detect terminal or RStudio

In the game, the console is cleared with cat("\014") between frames. This only clears the screen in RStudio, though. In the terminal it would need to be system("clear").

Via Henrik:

To detect whether R is running via RStudio or not, one can check Sys.getenv("RSTUDIO") which is set to 1 when running in RStudio.

We can detect this on startup, set a field value and then have if statements to choose between cat("\014") and system("clear") whenever the console needs to clear.

Alignment/linebreaks in Terminal

not sure re alignment, but place \n at end of strings for breaks?

Force termination

If dead or winter, prevent further player actions. Finalizer?

Add 'pause' menu

Could provide a reminder of how to play.

Include incentive object

For example a nut 🌰 that spawns randomly and stays in situ until the player reaches that space. Could be used for a scoring system. Could have a running tally like the moves tally that's printed with the output.

Don't exceed the boundaries

For example, prevent moving left from the leftmost 'column'.

Keypress input

Consider {keypress} for recording user input from arrow keys/WASD.

Death by insufficient nut quota

Two end states: winter and death by owl. Third state: death in winter if too few nuts collected.

Add audio

?!

Improve owl AI

Yeah, it's pretty stupid. Move towards player? Second antagonist? Maybe a fox moves in the current owl pattern, while the owl swoops like a rook or bishop.

Hex sticker, obv

Nut?

Create system to terminate game

Limit the total number of steps. Concept of seasons? Could change the overworld emoji to mimic 'seasons'?