Hello RPG... Or writing an RPG game template using Scala, Playframework, Akka, Websockets, Crafty...

After playing with Typesafe Activator I've spotted interesting template: reactive-stocks. The template simulates live data feed of stock prices and allows to look up market sentiments (buy/hold) via RESTful search requests to Twitter and lexical analysis service. It demonstrates several interesting frameworks / techniques. It uses Play-framework / Akka asynchronous and features / Websockets data streaming and browser client backed with JQuery.

After some consideration I thought it would be quite interesting as a project to write a small multiplier RPG game that would also make use of all above cool things:

1) Websockets for realtime communication
2) Akka: Model World / Scenes / Users as Akka actors.
3) Playframework to run the show...
4) JQuery / JSon / HTML at client browser

I also needed of course to have a client side Game engine that would allow me to concentrate on actual game implementation and handle rest of the stuff as Sprites, Animations, Collisions, Sound... And after some research I've found Carfty.

5) So Crafty it was...

I would not be discussing the advantages of technologies but will try to explain how I've used every of those technologies. Obviously some of the components were used more and some less. But all were necessary to put this thing together.

Typesafe Activator - Get to know cool stuff quick...

I've recently gave a short intro to Typesafe Activator at Sydney JVM community meetup

Motivation for the talk was my personal experience with Activator and how helpful it was when I wanted to dive into trying Play framework, Akka and other related technologies...

The reason it was helpful to me was very simple - learning new things needs time and good intro / kick start that will get you going...So here it was a kick starter - Activator that promised quick introduction to technologies like Akka, Playframework for Scala and Java devs.

Using it as simple as getting to http://typesafe.com/activator downloading the application and executing it.

Infinite monkey theorem... Or could it be really done in a lifetime?...

Hi there... Had a chat with colleagues over coffee and somehow we got to discuss the Infinite monkey theorem.

So I've introduced the subject and explained in my own words that if ridiculous number of monkeys over ridiculous time were banging the typewriter in a quite random manner they would reproduce complete works of Shakespeare. In the context ridiculous numbers are large but finite.

We of course would not witness such a great historical moment but it is possible and possible just because of other "similar" events happened in the past. For example DNA/RNA molecules somehow been composed out of atoms into complex sequence that facilitates reproducible life. Number takes to describe the probability of life randomly creating itself is extremely large as well. Human DNA if converted to bits and bytes will occupy about 1.5 CDs - compact but efficient. This is definitely sufficient to store Shakespeare sonnets (some one already done it by the way). And two can be compared - sonnets of a great poet to a poetry of live... Both are hardly random things......?

But enough philosophy. Let's just talk about monkeys that I am certainly closer to (as every human DNA is in 99% matches DNA of a Chimpanzee... even yours dear reader)...