Romy is a runtime for portable, archivable and deterministic video games.
Romy games will run on any platform where the runtime can be built. It will do its best to map available input and output to the needs of the game. Games are compiled as Web Assembly (Wasm) binaries and communication is done via a set of simple exported functions; covering input, graphics and sound. Because games are Wasm files, a bunch of languages and tools can be used to make them. This project provides a Rust crate to assist with game creation.
Romy games are single files that have no access to any disk or network. Because of this they can't use any external information, can't have microtransactions and can't be updated. They will run the same years from now as they do today.
Romy games will always have the same outcome if given the same inputs. Games declare a fixed time between simulation steps and the runtime sticks to this as closely as possible. There are mechanisms to keep memory untouched between steps and all input is tied to a discrete step. Wasm was chosen as the instruction set as it is designed to run identically across platforms. Because of this determinism it will be possible in the future to support replays, network play, save states, rewinding and other cool and unique features.
You'll need to install a few prerequisites:
- Rust + Cargo: https://www.rust-lang.org
- CMake: https://cmake.org (there's a good chance you have this already if you are not on Windows)
Once you have those, build and install with
cargo install romy
Alternatively you can clone this repository and use other cargo commands to customize the build.
Builds can be grabbed from the releases page for this repo, a hosted web build is always usable at play.romy.xyz too, drag a game into the window to play it.
Any set of tools that can produce a wasm binary can be used to make games, here's some example steps for making one using the rust crate supplied by this project:
1. Make sure you have rust installed, grab it from https://www.rust-lang.org.
2. Install the Rust wasm32-unknown-unknown target, if you installed rust with rustup this can be done with:
rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
3. Create a new project for your game, via cargo:
cargo new romy_demo
4. Open romy_demo/Cargo.toml and add the Romy framework as a dependency at the bottom:
[dependencies]
romy = "0.1.1"5. Open romy_demo/src/main.rs, and replace all the existing code with the following; comments are embedded to walk you through what each bit of code is doing.
// Bring in Romy:
use romy::*;
// Initialize Romy; we set up a title for our game, a step rate, the number of players and the type
// of input device to use. InputDeviceType::Nes is modeled after a simple 10 button Nintendo
// controller, the runtime will try its best to map any physical inputs to this. The romy_main
// macro creates the necessary Wasm exports and the main() function if building natively.
const STEPS_PER_SECOND: i32 = 60;
romy_main!(
// Info about our game:
Info::new(
"Simple Romy Demo",
STEPS_PER_SECOND,
1,
InputDeviceType::Nes
),
// Make the struct that implements the Game trait that will be controlled by Romy
Demo::create()
);
// Game state that we would like to maintain between steps, we are creating a game where you can
// move a cool little square around a sea of darkness. We'll store the position of our hero in the
// x and y fields and the bounds she can move inside in the width and height fields. The sound
// buffer will hold the sound we have generated for Romy to retrieve and play, We'll generate
// sounds based on where our hero is.
pub struct Demo {
width: i32,
height: i32,
x: i32,
y: i32,
sound: Sound,
}
impl Demo {
pub fn create() -> Self {
// Create a sound buffer to hold the sound for our game, we want set the sample rate for
// that here and also ask for the buffer to be sized to hold one step worth of samples.
// Romy asks for samples once every step.
let sound = Sound::with_buffer_sized_to_step(44100, STEPS_PER_SECOND);
// Our initial state:
Self {
width: 128,
height: 128,
x: 5,
y: 5,
sound,
}
}
}
impl Game for Demo {
// This is called at the rate specified during initialization, 60 times a second in our case.
// We are free to modify memory/state here:
fn step(&mut self, arguments: &StepArguments) {
// Get the Nes style controller for the first player:
let controller = arguments.input().player(0).and_then(|player| player.nes());
// If we have a controller, move our hero based on what buttons are pressed, make sure they
// stay inside the bounds of the game world:
if let Some(controller) = controller {
let speed = 1;
if controller.up() && self.y > 0 {
self.y -= speed;
}
if controller.down() && self.y < self.height - speed {
self.y += speed;
}
if controller.left() && self.x > 0 {
self.x -= speed;
}
if controller.right() && self.x < self.width - speed {
self.x += speed;
}
}
// Fill up our sound buffer for this step, we are creating a sine wave here with
// a higher frequency/pitch the further to the right the hero is.
let samples = self.sound.samples_mut();
let sample_count = samples.len();
for (index, sample) in samples.iter_mut().enumerate() {
let cycle_per_step = (index as f32 / sample_count as f32) * std::f32::consts::PI * 2.0;
let scaled_by_position = cycle_per_step * (self.x as f32 * 0.25).round();
*sample = f32::sin(scaled_by_position);
}
}
// This is called every time Romy would like to display a new image, the rate this is called is
// not tied to the step rate. It's up to Romy to decide how often it'd like new images, usually
// this would be at the refresh rate of the display it's showing them on. Memory/state can't
// be modified here, but arguments.step_offset is a value with a range of 0.0 - 1.0 indicating
// how far through to the next step we are, and as such can be used to create smooth animations.
// We are free to return an image of any size, Romy will sort it out. The current display
// resolution is passed in as arguments.width and arguments.height if you would like to use
// those. State can't be changed in here.
fn draw(&self, _arguments: &DrawArguments) -> Image {
// Create a new image:
let mut display = Image::new(self.width, self.height, Color::new(0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 1.0));
// Display our hero:
display.set_pixel(self.x, self.y, Color::new(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0));
display
}
// This is called when Romy wants some sound to play, it will be called at most once per step,
// we are expected to supply enough audio for the duration of a step, state can't be changed
// in here.
fn render_audio(&self, _arguments: &RenderAudioArguments) -> Sound {
self.sound.clone()
}
}6. Build the game with cargo, from the romy_demo directory run:
cargo build --target wasm32-unknown-unknown --release
This will put a .wasm file at romy_demo/target/wasm32-unknown-unknown/release/romy_demo.wasm
7. Open it up with Romy via
romy romy_demo/target/wasm32-unknown-unknown/release/romy_demo.wasm
And you should now be playing your game, use the arrow keys, WASD keys or a controller to move the square around. Alternately you can drag the game file into play.romy.xyz or run the game natively with
cargo run
Which is also quite handy for debugging.
- Documentation for the Rust crate can be found at https://docs.rs/romy.
- Documentation about the Wasm API can be read at docs/wasm.md if you want to make your own runtime or build a game without using the Rust crate.
Romy is distributed under the terms of the MIT license (LICENSE).