Support robots in cells in world description DSL #1396
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A larger project, more suitable for experienced contributors.
G-Robots
An issue having to do with robots.
G-World
An issue having to do with world design, world generation, etc.
L-World DSL
World description language
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The fix or feature would substantially improve user experience.
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Aug 17, 2023
DSL for programming worlds, towards #1320 and #29 (and, indirectly, toward #50, since the world DSL should make a nice target for world saves) . Eventually this should be able to recreate all the world description/building features we have, though there is still a long way to go. But currently we can at least recreate the "classic" procedurally-generated world. I think this is a solid foundation we can merge as a first step, and then work on adding more features in subsequent PRs. Below are some notes that should help in reviewing. Note that the large number of files changed is due in large part to the elimination of the `default` field in scenario descriptions; see the "changed files" section below for an overview of the important/interesting changes. Issues split off from this one: #1394 #1395 #1396 #1397 Major changes ============ - New `data/worlds` subdirectory - All `.world` files are parsed at load time and saved in a `WorldMap` which gets threaded through, similar to `EntityMap` (perhaps we should think about passing around a single record instead) - Standard "classic" world - Used to be `testWorld2`, defined in Haskell code; now it is defined via the DSL in `worlds/classic.world`. This should make it much easier to experiment with variations. - We can now automatically extract entities mentioned in a world DSL term with `extractEntities`. There used to be an explicit list in `testWorld2Entities`, used to check pedagogy, generate documentation, etc., but it turns out it had (predictably) gotten out of date! This can't happen anymore. - It is now referenced in several tutorials (backstory, farming, world101, speedruns, etc.) - The `default` field of world descriptions is no more: one can use `dsl` to just specify a constant - Note in `Swarm.Game.State`, `dslWF` and `arrayWF` are combined using the `Monoid` instance to create `wf`. - `Erasable` - It used to be the case that if some kind of default terrain + entity was specified (e.g. stone + water), any `map` would completely override the default. However, we want to move towards combining everything with a `Monoid` instance. But by default this means the default entity would show through anywhere the `map` did not specify an entity. So we need a way to explicitly "erase" an entity from a lower layer. - If `e` is a `Semigroup`, then `Maybe e` is a `Monoid` where `Nothing` acts as an identity element. Likewise, `Erasable e` is a `Monoid` but adds two new elements: `ENothing` to be an identity, and `EErase` to be an *annihilator*. i.e. combining with `EErase` is like multiplying by zero. - We can now specify `erase` as an entity to override entity underneath. - There are several Haskell files with only changes related to `Erasable`, relating to e.g. the world editor, `PCells`, etc.; I'm not 100% sure I've always done the right thing here. DSL overview =========== - Integer, float, and Boolean literals. Note that `3` is *always* an `int`, and `3.0` is a `float`. It makes things much easier to not have to deal with `3` possibly being either `int` or `float`, though it does make things slightly more annoying for programmers. - Standard boolean, arithmetic, and comparison operators - `if ... then ... else ...` - `<>` operator for combining via `Semigroup` instance - Cell literals are enclosed in curly braces. Unlike the previous awkward world description syntax with one, two, or three-element lists denoting terrain, terrain + entity, or terrain + entity + robot, there can now be any number of elements in any order. - `{foo}` will be resolved as either terrain, an entity, or a robot, whichever is successful. So if the names are unambiguous one can just write `{tree}` or `{stone}`. - It is possible to explicitly indicate the type of cell value with syntax like `{entity: tree}` or `{terrain: stone}`. - Multiple items separated by commas is syntax sugar for combining with `<>`. e.g. `{tree, entity: boulder, stone} = {tree} <> {entity: boulder} <> {stone}`. - Ability to refer to the `seed` - Refer to the current `x` or `y` coordinates or the `hash` of the current coordinates - `let`-expressions for multiple variables: `let x1 = e1, x2 = e2, ... in ...` - `overlay [e1, e2, ...]` layers `e1` on the bottom, `e2` on top of that, etc., using the `Semigroup` instance for world functions - `"foo"` imports the DSL term in `worlds/foo.world` - `perlin` function to generate perlin noise - `mask` function to mask with a condition Changed files =========== - `Swarm.Util`: moved the `acquire` function here and gave it a more descriptive name. - `Swarm.Doc.Gen`: can now extract mentioned entities directly. - `Swarm.Game.Failure`: added new failure modes - `Swarm.Game.Scenario.Topography.WorldDescription`: get rid of `defaultTerrain` field, add `worldProg` for DSL. - `Swarm.Game.State`: see comment. - `Swarm.Game.World`: a bit of reorganization. Added a bunch of modules under this. - `Swarm.Game.World.Coords`: moved some code here from `Swarm.Game.World`. - `Swarm.Game.World.Gen`: moved some things here from `Swarm.Game.WorldGen` (also deleted a bunch of irrelevant code), and also added the `extractEntities` function to get all entities mentioned by a DSL term. - `Swarm.Game.World.Syntax`: raw, untyped syntax for world DSL terms. - `Swarm.Game.World.Parse`: parser for world DSL terms. Fairly standard. - `Swarm.Game.World.Typecheck`: takes raw, untyped terms produced by the parser and both typechecks and elaborates them into a simpler core language. An interesting feature is that the core language is *type-indexed*, so that the Haskell type system is actually ensuring that our typechecker is correct; every typechecked world DSL term value has a type which is indexed by a Haskell type corresponding to the type of the underlying DSL term. For example, `{entity: tree}` would have a type like `TTerm [] (World CellVall)` etc. Once terms make it through the typechecker, there cannot possibly be any bugs in the rest of the pipeline which would result in a crash, because the Haskell type system. (There could of course be *semantic* bugs.) Understanding exactly how the typechecker works is not too important. Of interest may be the `resolveCell` function, which determines how we decide what `Cell` is represented by a cell expression in curly braces. - `Swarm.Game.World.Abstract`: compile elaborated, typechecked world DSL terms down into an extremely simple core language with only constants and function application. This gives us very fast evaluation of world DSL terms. Understanding this module is not really necessary but there is a link to a blog post for those who are interested in how it works. - `Swarm.Game.World.Compile`: a further processing/compilation step after `Swarm.Game.World.Abstract`. Currently we don't actually use this, since it doesn't seem like it makes a big efficiency difference. - `Swarm.Game.World.Interpret`: interpreter for abstracted world DSL terms. - `Swarm.Game.World.Eval`: just puts together the pieces of the pipeline to evaluate a typechecked world DSL term. - `Swarm.Game.World.Load`: just loading world DSL terms from disk.
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I've been working on this in
Some thoughts on how to do this:
As a separate feature, we may in the future want to allow certain robots to dynamically despawn as well as spawn. e.g. imagine that you encounter a town and there are robots representing "NPCs" who wander around and do stuff, let you interact with them, etc. Once we leave the town there is no reason to keep simulating those robots. But I think I will leave this to a future PR. @kostmo , @xsebek , would love to hear your thoughts + ideas on this! |
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I think we should really invest in our debugging capabilities first. I would really like to visualise the tiles on world map, get a minimap of tiles, get a popup list of tiles and export tiles from Web API. There is more that we could show about robots, such as the waiting and evaluation queue. That said, I would love to have robots spawn and despawn. It could make the world more interesting and force players to venture far from the initial base. |
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Re: robot cascade - what if we just froze system robots that attempt to leave loaded tile boundary? If player robots comes near the boundary, the tile will get loaded and system robots will get woken up. If we apply the limits of normal meet/etc. range, then the player will not be able to observe the frozen robots. |
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It should be possible to define robots in the
robotssection of a scenario description, and then refer to them from within a world DSL term.The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: