My current development IDE

I've recently reconfigured an old Dell laptop for development work and thought that I'd post my current setup. I love reading about how other people configure their systems and I'm always open to suggestions.

I already have a Windows 10 PC, that I only really use to test Windows versions of software that I've compiled, so my new dev laptop has Linux installed. I've been using Linux as my primary OS for 19 years and I'm comfortable working in it, I occasionally have to dip into the Windows world, due to work, but usually find myself frustrated with its limitations.
Currently Xubuntu is my favourite distro, although in the past I've used SUSE, Slackware, Vector, Slitaz, CrunchBang (my favourite for a long time) and Bodhi.
Xubuntu isn't as lightweight as some of the Linux flavours that I've used in the past, but it works straight out of the box with most hardware.

Vim

I've recently decided to use the Vim editor for all of my coding. Again, it's something that I've been familiar with for years, but not in any advanced way. My fingers don't dance over the keyboard like some Vim masters that I've worked with, but my muscle memory can usually get me to copy, paste, indent etc without having to Google how to do it.

I don't have anything against IDE's, I love the Lazarus IDE, for example, and IntelliJ IDEA is fantastic for Java. But I also occasionally have to write a Python script, or something in Laravel, and I don't like having to use a different IDE for each language. So I decided on using one text editor for everything so that I can just get familiar with one environment. I quite like Geany, but eventually went with Vim. It can be configured to do almost anything and I'd like to dedicate some time to using it exclusively so that I can become one of those Vim masters...

I'm currently using the following plugins in Vim

NerdTree
For navigating through a projects directory structure

NerdCommenter
To easily comment out blocks of code, the brute force way of finding a problem

ALE
This is a code linter and formatter. Although I haven't found any linters for Free Pascal, I've set it up to call ptop the source code formatter whenever I save a file. A quick :w will nicely arrange my code, although I don't like the way that it capitalised the first letter of each keyword (the code formatter in Lazarus is much better). Everything is formatted consistently though so I don't have to waste time prettying up my code.

lightline
A status bar that matches my colourscheme

Monokai theme
I use this on most text editors / IDE's that I have.

ctags
Not really a plugin, I generate tags for each project that I'm working on so that I can jump to a function when I'm browsing the code. Vim also uses the tags file for autocomplete.

I've also installed FP IDE, that's the old fashioned text based, Free Pascal IDE that's designed to look similar to Turbo Pascal.
I may end up not using this very often, but installed it mainly as a browser for the installed Free Pascal help files and language documentation. It also helps to organise my build profiles for debugging / release versions.
The fact that it has a built in ASCII table lookup tool also makes it perfect for roguelike development.

 

So I currently have a development machine that allows me to write, edit, compile and test my code without ever having to open a graphical desktop. It allows me to focus more on the code without any distractions.

If anyone has any suggestions, particularly for command line tools that help with development / code management, I'd love to hear them.

Roguelikes, a very strange hobby

Disclaimer. This post assumes some familiarity with the idea of roguelike games, if not with the games themselves. This isn't a 'history of roguelikes' post, for that see here

Recently I was working on a graphical roguelike that I occasionally dust off and tinker with, Axes, Armour & Ale. It uses graphics in a very loose sense of the word, just small static tiles with no animation. I was trying to add stairs to the caves and dungeons to allow the player to go deeper and deeper into the dungeon and realised that I needed to do a lot of refactoring.

The original game just took place in a single dungeon, a la Rogue / Nethack etc, but then I decided that I wanted an overworld map as well, like ADOM.

I started pulling out bits of the code and sticking it in other places and found that I was writing lots of simple test programs in pure ASCII to try out features before committing to drawing graphical assets. In the end, I decided to do something that I had in mind when I first started Axes, write a back-to-basics, 80x25 terminal-based roguelike. With the option of later creating a GUI version from the same codebase.

With the constraints of writing a game that worked in both the Windows and Linux terminal, I found that I gained a lot more enthusiasm for the project. This was more like the games that got me into roguelikes in the first place. When I first fired up Nethack in 2002 and discovered what it was like to play a game that didn't give a damn whether you lived or died. Then I moved onto ADOM and found a game with a more cohesive story that took itself a little more seriously.

I don't play games as often as I used to now that I have kids, but a turn-based roguelike is easy to pick up and put down between episodes of Paw Patrol and visits to the local playground.

Once I was confronted with the text version of my unfinished game, it struck me that writing roguelikes is a damn strange hobby. Eschewing graphics, sound or really any advances made in game theory over the last few decades, to craft a form of entertainment that owes more to table-top role playing games and Choose Your Own Adventure books than a regular computer game. I regularly read peoples posts on r/roguelikedev  and see the vastly different approaches that people have to this genre. My approach is closer to the classic roguelikes already mentioned above.

After 2 previous attempts at writing a roguelike by following a tutorial (one in Java, and one using the Godot game engine) I'm winging it this time, with no tutorials to refer to. I've set myself some limitations, after writing one game using OOP and one using ECS, this one will be purely functional programming. I also want a native binary that doesn't require any external libraries in order to run.

I've decided to write it in the awesome Free Pascal, whilst totally ignoring its object-oriented features. Now that I write code for fun rather than for a living, I don't have to force every type of program into an OOP structure.

At the moment I've only gotten as far as organising the user interface and the units that I'll use to write to the terminal, so it's slow going and there isn't much to show yet. But I already have a scrolling map that scrolls a lot smoother than the graphical version does.