What is this?

This is a Python package designed for creating linguistic games such as "wordle" or "word jumbler" using user-supplied data. The output is an HTML file that contains the entire game logic, which can be easily hosted on any server (e.g. GitHub Pages).

Our mission is to provide a tool that empowers linguistic activists to leverage their knowledge and resources in supporting minority languages. By offering a user-friendly less-code package, we aim to enable more people to easily create engaging linguistic games and foster language retention and revitalization efforts.

Installation

Via pip install

Our package is available at the Python Package Index

pip install word_games

Download repo

You can also directly download this repository and use it in your project Run:

git clone https://github.com/LingConLab/word_games/tree/main

And then:

cd word_games
pip install -r requirements.txt

Inside ./word_games there will be games.py file from where all the games can be accessed and ./templates folder where html templates stored. They could be edited (if you want to change appearance of your resulted web page for example) but remember not to change id's of html elements without changing them in python code accordingly.

Usage

Input files

As soon as our primary aim is to provide language activists with simple solution for creating web games, feel free to use your own language data. For now only two types of data are supported: dictionaries and alphabets.

Dictionary

Dictionary file should has .csv extention and look like so:

should
call
world
over
school
still
try
in
as
last

These words will be used then in your game. Note: it's better to use utf-8 as encoding for your data

Alphabet

Alphabet file is currently used in Wordle game to define keyboard layout. It should also be .csv and look like this:

qwertyuiop,
asdfghjkl,
zxcvbnm

where each row corresponds to the in-game keyboard row:

Templates

In our project we extensively use jinja2 templates and brython module to marry users data with game logic. Templates are stored in ./templates folder and normally there are no need to do anything related to them as a user. Even though you can alter game's and web page's code for your own purposes.

Using from python file

Our package utilizes less-code ideology so there are minimal programming knowledge required to use it.

Firstly, create your dictionary and alphabet (if you are going to create wordle) .csv files. You may want your directory structure to look like this:

your_project/
├── dictionary.csv
├── alphabet.csv
├── main.py
└── word_games/
	├── games.py
	├── templates/

Second step is to put in your main.py file some code to actually create your game For example, let's create Wordle. It requires a dictionary and a keyboard files, size of hidden words and, therefore, of all words that can be entered, number of tries player will have in game, direction of writing system of the game's language and finally some alerts texts. So your main.py file will look like this:

from word_games.games import wordle

wordle(dictionary="dictionary.csv", size=5, tries=6,
	   alphabet="alphabet.csv", direction="left_to_right",
       nothing_to_delete_error="Seems, you have nothing to delete",
       no_word_in_dictionary_error="There is no word to delete",
       word_is_too_short_error="Hidden word is longer",
       word_is_too_long_error="Hidden word is shorter",
       victory_outcome="You have successfully guessed. Reload the page to try again",
       lose_outcome="You failed to guess the hidden word. Reload the page to try again")

As you run this main.py file this function will create a html file wordle.html so your directory will look like this:

your_project/
├── dictionary.csv
├── alphabet.csv
├── main.py
├── wordle.html
└── word_games/
	├── games.py
	├── templates/

This html is good to go and can be run at any server (don't forget to upload your dictionary and alphabet with this html! It won't work without it!)

Debugging and running locally

If you want to debug or just check what have you created you can run it locally. There are several ways to do so:

The easiest way if you are using VS Code will be to:
1. Install Live Server extension
2. Go to your project directory
3. Open the .html file you've got as a result
4. Hit the "Go Live" button in the bottom-right corner
5. Now you have a local server with your game running (http://127.0.0.1:5500/ here by default)
A little bit more effort way to run it without extensions
1. Install flask using pip install flask
2. Create app.py file that should look similar to this:

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(name)

html = open('wordle.html', 'r', encoding="utf-8").read()

@app.route("/")
def hello_world():
    return html

app.run(debug = True)

Make sure you are putting correct path to your .html file in th open() statement. Now you can run app.py and this will also create a local server with your game running (http://127.0.0.1:5500/ here by default).

Via GitHub Pages
1. Upload your .html file to your GitHub repository
2. Rename it to index.html
3. Create a deployment in your repo settings

Currently available games and examples

Wordle

примеры и гифки

LingConLab/word_games