defect-process VS Elm

Totally possible. Here’s a link to a game recently released on Steam that is written in Haskell and whose source is open: https://github.com/incoherentsoftware/defect-process

I recently hacked together an asteroids clone in Haskell with SDL2 and not much else. It’s not super pretty but it works.

I’ve talked to folks who’ve been using the newer effects libraries taking advantage of the new delimited continuation primops in GHC 9.6 for their game dev. Even with very high level libraries their reporting acceptable performance.

With enough dedication I’m certain anyone could make whatever game they wanted in an FP language.

And the full code (w/o assets) is available too https://github.com/incoherentsoftware/defect-process

Or as mentioned recently... a game written in Haskell, published on steam: https://incoherentsoftware.com/defect-process/docs/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1136730/Defect_Process/

Steam | YouTube

Hi I added the full source code for Defect Process to coincide with the full game release on Steam. See the brief overview docs for a high level tour of the code design.

A haskell game on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1136730/Defect_Process/

Over the Christmas break I took some time to study the source code of Defect Process (https://github.com/incoherentsoftware/defect-process) to better understand industry-strength software architecture in Haskell and Game Engines. I have written a longer article about my analysis: https://www.lambdabytes.io/articles/defectprocess/

Thanks, good to hear that learning haskell has been rewarding so far! For code questions later on, feel free to open a github discussion if this reddit thread is inactive at that point.

Elm [1] is based on a similar idea. Build your app from pure functions that return HTML tags.

[1] https://elm-lang.org/

You also wouldn't really be creating your own new programing language. You would be creating something that can run JavaScript by following JavaScript standards and syntax. You might be able to add some non-standard features of your own on top of those standards, or include your own standard library of helpers or utilities, but you can't completely make a new or alternative language and then load it in the browser (or at least not by reimplementing ECMAScript standards... you actually can make your own language that runs within any Javascript enviroment, if you provide an interpreter or compiler that transforms it into valid JS. Some people have done something like this, eg Elm: https://elm-lang.org/).

You should at least have a look at https://elm-lang.org/ it is a pure functional language like Haskell (although with fewer fancy syntax/type classes) but it has some lovely libraries for visualisation and even with plain elm (+ elm-ui) doing string transformations can be easily done.

I get it. However, the whole point of using Unions to narrow your types, ensure only a set of possible scenarios can occur, and only access data of a particular union when it’s safe to do so. That’s some of what pattern matching can provide, and 100% of what using switch statements in TypeScript with their Discriminated Unions can provide. Yes, it’s not 100% exhaustive, but TypeScript is not soundly typed, and even Elm which is still has the same issue TypeScript does: You’re running in JavaScript where anything is possible. So it’s good enough to build with and much better than what you had.

The beauty of a language like Elm (and other lambda-calculus / functional programming inspired languages) is that there's very little transformation involved in going from an idea to code. And that seems to have a big impact on getting things done.

I think the most fun and approachable way for beginners to build games with functional programming is with Elm [1].

See a few (small, demo) games built by the community in [2] .

Notice Elm has abandoned the FRP approach in favor of Model-View-Update [3].

[1] https://elm-lang.org/