Druid

Druid is a connection-oriented board game created by Cameron Browne.

This is how a typical board might look:

      A     B     C     D     E
   +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
 5 |                             | 5
   |+-----+           +-----+    |
   /| h h |    +     /| v v |    +
 4 || h h |          || v v |    | 4
   |+-----+-----+    |+-----+    |
   /-----/| v v |    /-----/     +
 3 |     || v v |                | 3
   |     |+-----+     +-----+    |
   +     /-----/     /| v v |    +
 2 |             +-----+-----+-----+
   |      +-----/| h h   h h   h h |
   +     /| v v || h h   h h   h h |
 1 |     || v v |+-----+-----+-----+
   |     |+-----/-----/-----/-----/
   +-----/-----/-----/-----/-----/
      A     B     C     D     E

Rules and a bit of strategy can be found at http://www.cameronius.com/games/druid/

Instructions on getting Druid running:

• Get Rakudo Star or install Rakudo and Panda manually.
• Call 'panda install druid'.

Get Rakudo

You need Rakudo to run the Perl 6 code in Druid -- instructions here: http://rakudo.org/how-to-get-rakudo/.

Call 'perl6 druid'

Yup, you're ready to go.

% perl6 -Ilib bin/druid
% perl6 -Ilib bin/druid --size=10 --computer=1
% perl6 -Ilib bin/druid --help

For those who want to compile things

(After all, compilation does make startup a little faster.)

Install ufo with panda or get it from github. Then run

% ufo
% make

Installing via panda

Panda is a no-fuss installer of Perl 6 projects. You have it already if you have installed the Rakudo Star distribution, but otherwike you can install it like so:

1. Get panda from https://github.com/tadzik/panda
2. Run './bootstrap' and make sure to set your PATH as it instructs you to.
3. Run 'panda install druid'

...and you're ready to run. Just run "druid" in your shell.

Future plans

• Add an SVG renderer.

• Work on the machine play. (It's currently random, but I have some fairly nice ideas lying around in a local branch.)

• Put in a few optimizations to make Druid::Game::possible-moves O(1) instad of O($n**2) ($n being the size of the board), as it is presently. In another language, the difference might not actually be noticeable, but Rakudo Perl 6 is very "speed-sensitive" right now.

• Make the web app do POST requests instead of GET requests. This is more in line with the idea of making a move, a non-idempotent action.

• Make the web app handle different simultaneous games, played by distinct users. This will likely require a real databse instead of the short-term file solution used now.

License

This Druid implementation is released under Artistic 2.0. See LICENSE. Permission to release the game graciously given by the game author.