e014a0c54e
Adaptations from the software-rendering playbook, at MRPCI's level of the stack: - pic.rs: fBm noise fill, jittered Voronoi fill (with mortar edges) and scatter — seeded, deterministic, Bayer-dithered through palette ramps - particles.rs: rain/snow/embers layer on its own RNG stream; RoomDoc gains `weather`; visuals can never perturb gameplay replays - font.rs: built-in 5x7 font stamped in index space; headless frames are now annotated (room chip, score, dialogue windows, transcript strip) so MCP render_frame shows what a player actually reads (--raw to skip) - render.rs: compose split into index-space compositing + palette blit; effective_palette() exports the cycle-LUT-applied strip - GUI: frame ships to the GPU as indices + a 256x1 palette texture; a fragment shader does the lookup plus CRT curvature/scanlines/vignette and room-change fades - Neon Precinct: fBm night sky + stars, Voronoi sidewalk & wet cobbles, fBm asphalt, rain in Neon Row and Rain Alley Verified: replay determinism (byte-identical events x2), 25/25 win path, GUI boots with the shader. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
124 lines
6.8 KiB
Markdown
124 lines
6.8 KiB
Markdown
# MRPCI — Monster Robot Party Creative Interpreter
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The **SCI generation** of the Monster Robot Party engine family. Where
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[MRPGI](../mrpgi) reimagines Sierra's 1980s AGI (16 colors, text parser,
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one merged priority buffer), MRPCI reimagines the tech behind *King's Quest V*
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and *Space Quest IV* — and then fixes everything Sierra never could:
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| Sierra SCI (1990) | MRPCI (now) |
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| 256-color VGA, hand-cut palettes | 256-color palettes **quantized live from any PNG** (median cut), EGA/gray/ember ranges kept stable for sprites & cycles |
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| Palette cycling (waterfalls, neon) | Same trick, `cycles` are room data + script-toggleable |
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| Priority + control screens | **Four** screens: visual / priority / control / hotspot — hit-testing any pixel is one array read |
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| Polygon avoidance that wedged egos into corners | Real **A\*** with LOS-verified edges + string-pulling; actors walk the exact verified line, so a legal path can never clip |
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| Scale tables (SCI1.1) | Per-room perspective: actors shrink toward the horizon, walk speed scales to match |
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| CPU-speed timers → Error 52, instant Sequel Police | Fixed **30Hz deterministic cycles**; `after()` timers count ticks; the only RNG is seeded xorshift — replays are byte-identical |
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| `Error 47: Not an object` → crash to DOS | Missing resources = placeholders + an `error` event. A compile-error script = a log line, not a hang |
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| Die 3 hours after the dead-end | **Checkpoint at every room entry; death rewinds to it.** Save-anywhere slots on top |
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| OOP bytecode scripts, priest-tier tooling | **rhai** room scripts: `on_enter`, `on_verb(v,n)`, `on_trigger`, `after(ticks,"fn")` — hot-swappable over the bus |
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| Icon bar (SCI1) *or* parser (SCI0) | **Both.** Clicks and typed commands converge on one verb pipeline |
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The architecture is inherited from MRPGI and kept sacred: **`mrpci-core` is
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headless** (zero windowing deps — a compile error is the guardrail). The
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whole sim is a `GameState` behind a typed Command/Event bus, and every
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control surface — GUI, JSONL stdio, HTTP, MCP — is a thin adapter.
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## Run it
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```sh
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cargo run -p mrpci-core --bin mrpci-headless -- --sample # write the demo game
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cargo run -p mrpci # play Neon Precinct
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```
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**Neon Precinct**: you are Officer Morp-9. Rain, neon that actually cycles,
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a vend-bot with a tip, a keycard behind crates (watch the A\* go around),
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a lethal fusebox (watch death *not* ruin your evening), and a case to close.
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25 points.
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Controls: left-click applies the verb, right-click cycles verbs, F1–F4 pick
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one, `I` inventory, **Enter types a command** (the parser is always alive),
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F5/F7 save/restore, F9 new game, M mute, N scanlines.
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## Drive it headless (the point)
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```sh
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cargo build -p mrpci-core
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target/debug/mrpci-headless --game games/neon-precinct # JSONL stdio
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target/debug/mrpci-headless --game games/neon-precinct --serve 8093 # HTTP
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target/debug/mrpci-headless --game games/neon-precinct --mcp # MCP for Claude
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target/debug/mrpci-headless --game games/neon-precinct --script play.jsonl # golden replay
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target/debug/mrpci-headless --game games/neon-precinct --room 2 --ticks 45 --render-room out.png
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target/debug/mrpci-headless --game games/neon-precinct --screens shots/ # all four screens
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```
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Register with Claude:
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```sh
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claude mcp add mrpci -- $PWD/target/debug/mrpci-headless --mcp --game $PWD/games/neon-precinct
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```
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Claude can then *play* the game (verbs, walks, dialogue), *see* it
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(`mrpci_render_frame`, plus the invisible priority/control/hotspot screens),
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and *author* it (upsert rooms and rhai scripts live, validated before commit).
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See [docs/CONTROL.md](docs/CONTROL.md) for the full bus reference.
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## A game is a folder
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```
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games/mygame/
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game.json # manifest: name, start_room, intro, verbs, flags, max_score
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rooms/room0.json # RoomDoc: ops (paint), background, palette, cycles, scale,
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# spawn, exits, hotspots, props, npcs, music, script
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pics/street.png # optional backgrounds (+ street-pri.png / street-ctl.png masks)
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sprites/*.png # quantized per-room; filename = sprite name
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scripts/*.rhai # main.rhai + room scripts
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sfx/ music/ # optional audio overrides (else the built-in chip synth plays)
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saves/ # save-anywhere slots (gitignored)
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```
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Rooms paint with `PicOp`s — rects, polygons, floods, **dithered gradients**,
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plus procedural fills: **fBm noise** (clouds, asphalt, grime), **Voronoi
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cells** (cobbles, slabs) and **scatter** (stars, glints) — all seeded, all
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deterministic — through an `Ink` that writes any subset of the four screens
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at once. Or drop a PNG in `pics/` and let the quantizer fold it into the
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palette. Rooms can also set `weather` (rain / snow / embers): a particle
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layer on its own RNG stream, so visuals never perturb gameplay replays.
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## Source map
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| Crate / file | Role |
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| `mrpci-core/screens.rs` | the four aligned screens + depth bands |
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| `mrpci-core/palette.rs` | 256-color palettes, cycling LUTs |
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| `mrpci-core/pic.rs` | vector paint ops, Bayer-dithered gradients |
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| `mrpci-core/assets.rs` | median-cut quantizer, masks, sprite pipeline |
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| `mrpci-core/view.rs` | loops/cels, ASCII sprites, mirroring |
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| `mrpci-core/actor.rs` | ego + NPCs: scaling, line-exact path following |
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| `mrpci-core/path.rs` | A\*, LOS smoothing, `walk_line` |
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| `mrpci-core/room.rs` | RoomDoc / World / game folders / validation |
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| `mrpci-core/script.rs` | rhai host: hooks, Fx airlock, tick timers |
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| `mrpci-core/state.rs` | **the bus**: GameState, Command/Event, checkpoints |
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| `mrpci-core/render.rs` | headless compositing → RGBA/PNG |
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| `mrpci-core/audio.rs` | multi-voice chip synth (square/pulse/tri/noise) |
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| `mrpci-core/bin/mrpci-headless/` | stdio / HTTP / MCP / replay / sample |
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| `mrpci/` | the macroquad GUI (icon bar, dialogue windows, sound) |
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Headless frames are **annotated**: `--render-room`, HTTP `/frame.png` and
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MCP `mrpci_render_frame` stamp the room name, score, open dialogue window
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and transcript strip into the frame with the built-in 5x7 font — an LLM
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sees exactly what a player reads (add `--raw` / `/frame-raw.png` to skip).
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The GUI renders via a **GPU palette shader**: the frame ships to the card
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as indices + a 256x1 palette strip, and the fragment shader does the lookup
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plus the whole CRT (curvature, scanlines, vignette, room fades).
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## Roadmap
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- [x] v0.1 — the engine above + Neon Precinct
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- [x] v0.2 — procedural fills (fBm/Voronoi/scatter), weather particles,
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in-core font + annotated frames, GPU palette/CRT shader
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- [ ] Priority-mask art workflow polish (paint depth in any image editor)
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- [ ] In-engine room editor (MRPGI's, upgraded to four screens)
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- [ ] AI parser lane (LLM maps free text onto already-legal commands, like MRPGI)
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- [ ] Portraits/talkers in dialogue windows
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- [ ] wasm build (`mrpci-core` is already windowless — the web is an adapter away)
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