Breakout - Improved and with netwire

Hi, welcome to the 6th article of this blog.

In this blog post, the breakout example from the last Post has been improved, giving it more features:

• The Paddle and Blocks have rounded edges. The ball bounces of them depending on the surface normal where it hits.
• The blocks are fading out when destroyed.
• The paddle can shot to destroy blocks. When the game starts one shot is available, shots can be gained by destroying green blocks.
• The game is aware when the player lost or won and displays this information when the game ends.

But that is not all! Instead of using the simple Coroutines we are now using a full blown FRP library called netwire. But more about that later, here is the preview. As alwyas you have to click the canvas to get input focus. If you are not viewing this blog article on blogspot and the application does not work, try the original aricle page.

I had a lot of help over the haskell beginners mailing list. I will try to add links to the specific topics whenever I am writing something I had help with.

As a final note before I start: Being a haskell beginner, I might not do everything here the best way. I encourage you to comment if you think something could be done better! Of course, I also encourage you to comment if you have any questions.

About Netwire

Netwire is a arrowized functional reactive programming (AFRP) library for haskell and the version 4 of the library has recently been released on hackage. Since it uses Arrows, some of the things we did with Coroutines can be done the same way with netwires, but it has tons of other features. Here is a short introduction to netwire, but I will try to explain all the features when I use them.

Also I will explain some of netwires usage here, this is by no means a complete tutorial to netwire. One obvious reason for this is, that I myself do not (yet?) understand all the features and Ideas of netwire (remember, I am still a haskell beginner doing this for my own education). Maybe some of this will be useful for someone wanting to start with netwire.

To install netwire, just type

haste-inst install netwire

This will most likely fail on lifted-base and time. There is a (potentially dangerous) workaround here, that should work for now.

New Javascript functions

To Draw a rounded rectangle a new function "fillRoundedRect" is defined in JavaScript.hs. Also a new type for Colors has been added:

data Color = Color {red :: Double, green :: Double, blue :: Double, alpha :: Double}

"jsFillColor" now takes this as argument instead of a string.

Collision detection

See here for the complete code. We want to represent our objects as Circles (the ball, bullets) and rounded rectangles (the paddle, blocks), so we define data structures for this:

-- Information about collision
type Vector = (Double, Double) -- thanks to vector-space we can do ^+^ and similar

data Collision   = Collision { normal :: Vector } deriving (Show)

type Radius = Double
data Circle = Circle { circlePos :: Vector, circleRadius :: Radius}
data Rectangle   = Rectangle Vector Vector
data RoundedRect = RoundedRect { rectMin :: Vector, rectMax :: Vector, rectRadius :: Radius}

The Collision information now contains the normal of the collision. This is needed to correctly bounce the ball.

For convenience in the usage of the collision functions, we will define type classes for the objects having the shape of a circle or a rounded rectangle:

class CircleShaped a where
  circle      :: a -> Maybe Circle
class RoundedRectShaped a where
  roundedRect :: a -> Maybe RoundedRect

instance CircleShaped Circle where
  circle c = Just c

instance RoundedRectShaped RoundedRect where
  roundedRect r = Just r

This allows us to apply the collision functions directly to our game objects (when they are instances of the corresponding class) without always explicitly extracting the shape. In other words, instead of writing:

circleRectCollision (ballCircle ball) (blockRect block)

we can write

circleRectCollision ball block

The type classes return maybe types, because some objects might become "shapeless" and should not collide (for example a block that is fading out).

Ok, the first thing we need is a collision between circles

import Control.Monad

circleCollision :: (CircleShaped a, CircleShaped b) => a -> b -> Maybe Collision
circleCollision a b = do
  (Circle p1 r1) <- circle a
  (Circle p2 r2) <- circle b
  let centerDiff = p2 ^-^ p1
  guard (centerDiff <.> centerDiff <= (r1 + r2) * (r1 + r2))
  return $ Collision $ normalized centerDiff

It returns a "Maybe Collision" because a collision might not take place. Notice the "do" notation. We are in the "Maybe" monad, which causes the function to automatically return Nothing if one of out circle shapes return Nothing (if you do not understand, see here). So we are getting the vector between the center positions and testing its square against the square of the sums of the radian of the circles. The guard function (from Control.Monad) causes the monad to return with "Nothing" if the circles are not close enough. Then we return the normalized vector as the normal. Notice that the normal always points from the first circle to the second.

As a helper function, we test if a point is inside a rectangle:

pointInRectangle    :: Vector -> Rectangle -> Bool
pointInRectangle (px,py) (Rectangle (minX,minY) (maxX,maxY))
  | px > maxX = False
  | px < minX = False
  | py > maxY = False
  | py < minY = False
  | otherwise = True

That should be clear.

So how do we test a circle against a rounded rectangle? A rounded rectangle is rectangle where the corners have been replaced by quarter circles. We have do test against these circles or the "inner" rectangle depending on where the colliding circle is, see this picture:

Areas of rounded rectangle

When the center of the colliding circle is in one of the red areas, collision testing is done with the corresponding corner circles. Otherwise collision is done against the "unrounded" rectangle (which is the same as rounded rectangle when we not in one of the red areas). The normal is then determined by the normal of the closest rectangle side. Here is the code:

circleRoundedRectCollision :: (CircleShaped a, RoundedRectShaped b) => a -> b -> Maybe Collision
circleRoundedRectCollision c r = do
  circle <- circle c
  rect   <- roundedRect r
  circleRoundedRectCollision' circle rect
  where
    circleRoundedRectCollision' circle@(Circle (cx,cy) cr) (RoundedRect (minX,minY) (maxX,maxY) rr)
      --test the corners
      | cx <= innerMinX && cy <= innerMinY = circleCollision (Circle (innerMinX, innerMinY) rr) circle
      | cx >= innerMaxX && cy <= innerMinY = circleCollision (Circle (innerMaxX, innerMinY) rr) circle
      | cx >= innerMaxX && cy >= innerMaxY = circleCollision (Circle (innerMaxX, innerMaxY) rr) circle
      | cx <= innerMinX && cy <= innerMinY = circleCollision (Circle (innerMinX, innerMaxY) rr) circle
      -- test if collision with rectangle occured
      | not $ pointInRectangle (cx,cy) (Rectangle ((minX-cr), (minY-cr)) ((maxX+cr), (maxY+cr))) = Nothing
      -- collision definitly occured, find correct normal
      | otherwise = Just $ fst $ minimumBy (\(_,a) (_,b) -> compare a b)
                          [
                          (Collision (-1.0,0.0), cx - minX),
                          (Collision (1.0, 0.0), maxX - cx),
                          (Collision (0.0,-1.0), cy - minY),
                          (Collision (0.0, 1.0), maxY - cy)
                          ]
      where
        innerMinX = minX + rr
        innerMinY = minY + rr
        innerMaxX = maxX - rr
        innerMaxY = maxY - rr

I am a bit unhappy that I have to define the inner function "circleRoundedRectCollision'", but I do not know how else I could use this nice pattern guards.

Wire helpers

To handle bullets and blocks we need some way to manage a set of objects where objects can be removed. For this I got a lot of help here and here. The code is here. Let's look at the type of a wire:

data Wire e m a b

The m parameter is the underlying monad. We will set it to Identity and be fine with it. "a" is the input type. Quoting from here: From these inputs it (the wire)

• either produces an output value of type "b" or inhibits with a value of type "e",
• produces a new wire of type Wire e m a b.

When a wire produces, it is the same as our Coroutines producing output. The possibility that a wire can inhibit is often used to switch to different wires. See here. We will explore this possibility a little bit further down.

dynamicSet

When a wire inhibits, there are several combinators which allows to switch to other wires (permanently or just for one instance). Here inhibiting wires will be removed from the set. To create new wires a creator function and an additional input will be used.

dynamicSet :: (Monad m) => (c -> Wire e m a b) -> [Wire e m a b] ->  Wire e m (a, [c]) [b]
dynamicSet creator ws' = mkGen $ \dt (i,new) -> do
            res <- mapM (\w -> stepWire w dt i) ws'
            let filt (Right a, b) = Just (a,b)
                filt _            = Nothing
                resx = mapMaybe filt res
            return (Right $ (fmap fst resx), dynamicSet creator $ (fmap snd resx) ++ (map creator new))

mkGen is passed a function that is turned into a wire. The parameters for this function are the time delta (dt) and the input (i,new) of the wire. We use the do notation because we are in the inner Monad "m" (of which we know nothing but that it is a monad). After we stepped all wires ("stepWire" steps a wire ,see netwire tutorial) we filter those that produced (by returning a right value) and return there outputs as list. The new wire is again a dynamics set with the ramaing wires and the newly created ones using the creator function.

dynamicSetMap

To use dynamic set in the breakout game, we assign each wire in the set a unique key (Int) and change the input to a Map that maps from the key to the input values of the individual wires. Since a map lookup may fail, the input of the wires will be Maybes.

To archive this we define a wire that takes a list as inputs and pairs it with a given (infinite) list (which will be our keys):

-- queue for the objects in the list given as parameter
-- The Int argument says how many objects should be returned
staticQueue :: (Monad m) => [a] -> Wire e m Int [a]
staticQueue set = unfold give set
  where
  give s n = (take n s, drop n s)

-- Pairs the input list with the given list, which is assumed to be infinite
pairListsWith :: (Monad m) => [p] -> Wire e m [a] [(p,a)]
pairListsWith pairs = proc as -> do
  p <- staticQueue pairs  -< length as
  returnA -< zip p as

using these wires we define dynamicSetMap:

dynamicSetMap :: (Monad m) => (c -> Wire e m (Maybe a) b) -> [Wire e m (Maybe a) b] -> Wire e m (M.Map Int a, [c]) [(Int,b)]
dynamicSetMap creator ws = dynamicSet creator' ws' . (second $ pairListsWith restKeys)
  where
  wireWithLookupAndKey :: (Monad m) => Int -> Wire e m (Maybe a) b -> Wire e m (M.Map Int a) (Int,b)
  wireWithLookupAndKey i w = (pure i) &&& (w . (arr (M.lookup i)))
  keys           = [0,1..]
  restKeys       = drop (length ws) keys
  ws'            = map (uncurry wireWithLookupAndKey) $ zip keys ws
  creator' (i,c) = wireWithLookupAndKey i (creator c)

shrinking and shrinkingMap

Since blocks can not be created, only destroyed, we define a simplified version of dynamicSet and dynamicSetMap where no new wires can be created.

-- same as dynamicSet, only that it can not grow
shrinking :: (Monad m) => [Wire e m a b] -> Wire e m a [b]
shrinking ws = dynamicSet undefined ws <<< arr (\a -> (a,[]))

-- same as dynamicSetMap, only that it can not grow
shrinkingMap :: (Monad m) => [Wire e m (Maybe a) b] -> Wire e m (M.Map Int a) [(Int,b)]
shrinkingMap ws = dynamicSetMap undefined ws <<< arr (\a -> (a,[]))

To conclude these helper wires, I am not sure if these are the best choices but they work for now.

The Game

Finally we are ready to define the game itself! The code is here.

Input

In difference to the last post, we will step the wire on every input event. An input event will be a keyboard event or an "Update" event which causes the main wire to update all game objects.

data InputEvent = KeyUp Int | KeyDown Int | Update
  deriving (Eq)

Data objects

Here are the data objects defining the state of the game:

-- state of game objects
data Paddle     = Paddle { xPos    :: Double }
data Gun        = Gun    { ammo    :: Int    }
data Ball       = Ball   { ballPos   :: Vector,
                           ballSpeed :: Vector}
data Block      = Block  { blockType :: BlockType, blockPos :: Vector, blockState :: BlockState}
data BlockState = Alive Int | Dying Double
data BlockType  = NormalBlock | PowerBlock deriving (Eq)

data Bullet     = Bullet { bulletPos :: Vector }
data GameState  = GameState {
                     paddle  :: Paddle,
                     gun     :: Gun,
                     ball    :: Ball,
                     blocks  :: [Block],
                     bullets :: [Bullet]}
                  | StartScreen String

The StartScreen constructor of the GameState is to show a message when the game is not running (in the beginning and when the player won or lost). We gave the ball the ballSpeed property (which is not necessary for viewing the game state) because it will be needed outside the balls own wires later. You will see. The Double parameter for a Dying block is the fade level (going from 1.0 to 0.0 as the block is removed). A Block now also as a BlockType. A PowerBlock is a block that gives the player ammo when destroyed.

constants

A lot of constants follow which define the properties of the game

-- constants
screenWidth      = 600.0
screenHeight     = 400.0

paddleColor      = Color 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0
paddleYPos       = screenHeight - paddleHeight
paddleHeight     = 15.0
paddleWidth      = 50.0
paddleRadius     = 7.0
paddleSpeed      = 7.0
initPaddleXPos   = (screenWidth - paddleWidth) / 2.0
initPaddle       = Paddle initPaddleXPos

initGun          = Gun 1

ballColor        = Color 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0
ballRadius       = 5.0
initBallSpeed    = (3.0, -3.0)
initBallPos      = (screenWidth / 2.0, screenHeight - 50.0)
initBall         = Ball initBallPos initBallSpeed

blockWidth       = 60.0
blockHeight      = 20.0
blockRadius      = 5.0
normalBlockColor = [Color 0.0 0.0 1.0 1.0, Color 0.0 0.0 0.5 1.0]
powerBlockColor  = [Color 0.0 0.5 0.0 1.0]
initBlocks       = [Block t (x,y) (Alive l) | x <- [20.0, 140.0, 240.0, 340.0, 440.0, 520.0], (y,t,l) <- [(60.0, PowerBlock, 1), (100.0, NormalBlock,2), (140.0,NormalBlock,1), (180.0,NormalBlock,2), (260.0,NormalBlock,2)]]

bulletRadius     = 3.0
bulletSpeed      = (0.0, -10.0)
bulletColor      = Color 0.0 0.5 0.0 1.0

-- technical constants
leftKeyCode  = 37
rightKeyCode = 39
startKeyCode = 13
fireKeyCode  = 32
canvasName   = "canvas4"

The canvas name is the same name as defined in the outer html where the canvas is located.

Startup and key events

As said earlier, we step the main wire on every key event. But besides that the key event and startup functions look very similar to the last post. Also the drawing function has been extended to draw bullets and fading blocks. To produce the game state to draw, the wire is step with "Update". See here if you want to see the code.

Key events

In netwire an Event is a Wire that behaves as the identity wire when the event occurs and inhibits when the event does not occure. There are many functions to create events in netwire. Most require the inhibition type of the wire to be a monoid. That is very useful for switching on events. For now just accept that, you will see later.

So we create events that produce when the input event is a certain key down or release event:

keyPress :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Int -> Event e m InputEvent
keyPress code = when (==KeyDown code)

keyRelease :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Int -> Event e m InputEvent
keyRelease code = when (==KeyUp code)

now we can write a wire that returns a different value depending on if a key is pressed:

import qualified Data.Function as F

valueFromKeyDown :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Int -> a -> a -> Wire e m InputEvent a
valueFromKeyDown code upValue downValue = F.fix (\start ->
                                               pure upValue   . notE (keyPress code) -->
                                               pure downValue . notE (keyRelease code) -->
                                               start)

• The "-->" operator is the infix version of "andThen". It takes two wires and behaves like the first until that inhibits. After that it behaves like the second.
• pure takes a value and makes a constant wire from it
• if you do not know fix, read here. Here it is used to loop back the chain of wires to the beginnig.

The paddle

The speed of the paddle is direct transformation of the input state while the paddle wire integrates the paddle speed bounding it the the limits of the screen.

paddleWire :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Wire e m InputEvent Paddle
paddleWire = Paddle <$> (integralLim1_ bound initPaddleXPos <<< (paddleSpeedWire &&& pure ()))
  where
  bound _ _ pos = max 0.0 $ min (screenWidth-paddleWidth) pos

paddleSpeedWire :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Wire e m InputEvent Double
paddleSpeedWire = (valueFromKeyDown leftKeyCode 0.0 (-paddleSpeed))
                  +
                  (valueFromKeyDown rightKeyCode 0.0 paddleSpeed)

The ball

Similar as in the last Post, the ball moves with constant speed and reacts to collision events.

accum1Fold :: (Monad m) => (b -> a -> b) -> b -> Wire e m [a] b
accum1Fold f init = accum1 step init
  where
  step last as = foldl' f last as

ballSpeedWire :: (Monad m) => Wire e m [Collision] Vector
ballSpeedWire = accum1Fold (collide) initBallSpeed
  where
  collide v0 (Collision n) = v0 - (2.0 * (n <.> v0)) *^ n

ballWire :: (Monad m) => Wire e m [Collision] Ball
ballWire = (Ball <$> integral1_ initBallPos) . ballSpeedWire <*> ballSpeedWire

Notice the use of accum1. In difference to accum, accum1 does not delay its output by one invocation. accum1Fold does the same as accum1 but takes a list as input over which it folds. Here it is used to fold over the incomming collision events.

What happens when the ball collides with an object? Assuming the collision is fully elastic, the velocity along the collision normal is inverted. The velocity (v0) along the collision normal (n) is <n,v0> (the scalar product of n and v0). Expressed with vector space, this is n <.> v0. To invert this part of v0, we have to substract this twice from v0. This gives us: v0 - (2.0 * (n <.> v0)) *^ n.

Blocks

A block behaves as its initial state, removing a live whenever it is hit (its input is not Nothing). When the lives are out, the block changes into the Dying state. And fades out in 30.0 "time units". Afterwards the block wire inhibts (so it is removed from the set).

blockWire :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Block -> Wire e m (Maybe Collision) Block
blockWire init = while blockAlive . accum1 update init -->
                 Block (blockType init) (blockPos init) <$> (Dying <$> (pure 1.0) - (time / (pure 30.0))) . for 30.0
  where
  update old Nothing = old
  update old@(Block _ _ (Alive l)) _ = old { blockState = Alive (l - 1) }
  blockAlive (Block _ _ (Alive l)) = l > 0

Notice the expression "(pure 1.0) - (time / (pure 30.0)))" for the fading level. We can use "-" and "/" because wires are members of the Fractional and Num type classes. We could even leave out the "pure" and write "(1.0) - (time / (30.0)))". At present this does not work with haste because "framRational" needs some not yet supported primOps (see here).

When a "PowerBlock" is destroyed, the player is supposed to gain ammo. Therefore there is a blockAmmoWire that returns the number of ammo the player should gain. For a normal block it returns always 0. For a PowerBlock it returns 0 except the moment the block is destoryed (the input is not Nothing).

blockAmmoWire :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Block -> Wire e m (Maybe Collision) Int
blockAmmoWire (Block PowerBlock _ _) = (pure 0) . while (isNothing) --> once . (pure 1) --> pure 0
blockAmmoWire _ = (pure 0)

blockWithAmmoWire :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Block -> Wire e m (Maybe Collision) (Int,Block)
blockWithAmmoWire b = blockAmmoWire b &&& blockWire b

Isn't it nice how easily this can be expressed with "-->"?

Now we create a set of blocks using "shrinkingMap":

blocksWire :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Wire e m (M.Map Int Collision) (Int,[(Int,Block)])
blocksWire = (shrinkingMap $ map blockWithAmmoWire initBlocks) >>> (arr reorder)
  where
  reorder as = (sum $ map (fst . snd) as, map (\j -> (fst j, snd $ snd j)) as)

The output of "(shrinkingMap $ map blockWithAmmoWire initBlocks)" is [(id,(ammo,block))] where "id" is the id of the corresponding block, "ammo" the ammo given by the block and "block" its state.

But what we want is (sumAmmo, [(id,block)]) with sumAmmo being the sum over all ammo. That is what reaorder takes car of.

Bullets

Bullets simply move up while

• They do not collide
• They are not out of the screen

bulletWire :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Bullet -> Wire e m (Maybe Collision) Bullet
bulletWire (Bullet init) = while bulletAlive . (Bullet <$> (pure bulletSpeed >>> integral1_ init)) . while (isNothing)
  where
  bulletAlive (Bullet (x,y)) = y > 0.0

bulletsWire :: (Monad m, Monoid e) => Wire e m (M.Map Int Collision,[Bullet]) [(Int,Bullet)]
bulletsWire = dynamicSetMap bulletWire []

Gun

The gun gets a set of bullets as input (these are the fire requests) and an integer with the amount of new ammo. It outputs the bullets that really have been fired and the gun state

gunWire :: (MonadFix m) => Wire e m ([Bullet],Int) ([Bullet],Gun)
gunWire = proc (bs,new) -> do
  rec
    let fires = take ammo bs
    ammo <- accum (+) (ammo initGun) -< new - (length fires)
  returnA -< (fires,Gun ammo)

Collecting collision information

We define some helper functions for collecting collisions betwen the ball, the paddle, the walls, blocks and bullets:

fromMaybeList :: Ord a => [(a,Maybe b)] -> M.Map a b
fromMaybeList [] = M.empty
fromMaybeList ((k,Nothing):xs) = fromMaybeList xs
fromMaybeList ((k,Just v):xs) = M.insert k v (fromMaybeList xs)

calcBallBlockColls :: Ball -> [(Int,Block)] -> M.Map Int Collision
calcBallBlockColls ball = fromMaybeList . map (\(id,block) -> (id,circleRoundedRectCollision ball block))

calcBallWallColls :: Ball -> [Collision]
calcBallWallColls (Ball (bx,by) _) = map snd $ filter (fst) $ [
  (bx <= 0          , Collision (1.0 , 0.0)),
  (bx >= screenWidth, Collision (-1.0, 0.0)),
  (by <= 0          , Collision (0.0 , 1.0))
  ]

calcBallPaddleColls :: Ball -> Paddle -> [Collision]
calcBallPaddleColls b p =
  maybeToList $ circleRoundedRectCollision b p

pairUp :: [a] -> [b] -> [(a,b)]
pairUp as bs = [(a,b) | a <- as, b <- bs]

calcBlockBulletColls :: [(Int,Block)] -> [(Int,Bullet)] -> (M.Map Int Collision,M.Map Int Collision)
calcBlockBulletColls blocks bullets = foldl' buildColls (M.empty, M.empty) $ pairUp blocks bullets
  where
  buildColls (blList, buList) ((blId,block), (buId, bullet)) = case circleRoundedRectCollision bullet block of
                                                                    Nothing -> (blList, buList)
                                                                    Just c  -> (M.insert blId c blList, M.insert buId c buList)

Putting it all together, the main wire

Switching game state

Let's first look at the outer wire, that manages when the game starts and when to show the start screen. It should behave like this:

• In the beginnig it shows "Press Enter to start (click canvas to focus)". When the user pressed enter the game is started.
• When the player looses, is shows "Sorry, you loose! Press Enter to restart." and lets the user press enter to restart.
• Similar when the player wins, with the message "Congratulations, you won! Press Enter to restart."

So when the game ends we need to switch differently depending on if the game was lost or won. Remember that the inhibition if wires can be used to switch wires (for example with "-->"). If we want to have different wire we have to encode this in the inhibition Type (see also this thread):

data GameEnd = Win | Loose | None
instance Monoid GameEnd where
  mempty = None
  mappend x None = x
  mappend None x = x
  mappend _ Win = Win
  mappend Win _ = Win
  mappend _ _ = Loose

type MainWireType = Wire GameEnd Identity InputEvent (Maybe GameState)

The inhibition value must be a Monoid, because that is what most switches and events require. Now we can use this with switchBy:

mainWire = switchBy start (start None)
  where
  start None = startScreenWire "Press Enter to start (click canvas to focus)" --> mainGameWire
  start Win  = startScreenWire "Congratulations, you won! Press Enter to restart." --> mainGameWire
  start Loose = startScreenWire "Sorry, you loose! Press Enter to restart." --> mainGameWire

Now the mainGameWire only has to inhibit when the game is lost, or won. This is done with these wires:

looseWire :: (Monad m) => Wire GameEnd m Ball Ball
looseWire = unless ballOut --> inhibit Loose
  where
  ballOut (Ball (x,y) _) = y > screenHeight

winWire :: (Monad m) => Wire GameEnd m [Block] [Block]
winWire = (once --> unless null) --> inhibit Win

The "once" in the win wire is necessary because in the first invocation of the main wire there are no blocks.

The main game

This is the only place, where we use arrow syntax:

mainGameWire :: MainWireType
mainGameWire = proc input -> do

  paddle <- paddleWire -< input

  let newFR old
       | input == Update              = []
       | input == KeyDown fireKeyCode = (createBullet paddle):old
       | otherwise                    = old

  fireRequests <- accum (flip ($)) [] -< newFR

  if input == Update then do
    rec
      let validCollDir (Collision n) = n <.> ballSpeed oldBall < 0.0
          ballBlockColls                      = M.filter validCollDir $ calcBallBlockColls  oldBall oldBlocks
          ballWallColls                       = calcBallWallColls   oldBall
          ballPaddleColls                     = filter validCollDir $ calcBallPaddleColls oldBall paddle
          (blockBulletColls,bulletBlockColls) = calcBlockBulletColls oldBlocks oldBullets

      ball <- ballWire -< ballWallColls ++ ballPaddleColls ++ (M.elems ballBlockColls)
      oldBall <- delay initBall -< ball
      _ <- looseWire -< oldBall

      (newAmmo,blocks)    <- blocksWire -< ballBlockColls `M.union` blockBulletColls
      oldBlocks <- delay $ [] -< blocks
      _ <- winWire -< (map snd oldBlocks)

      (newBullets,gun) <- gunWire -< (fireRequests,newAmmo)

      bullets    <- bulletsWire -< (bulletBlockColls,newBullets)
      oldBullets <- delay $ []  -< bullets
    returnA -< Just $ GameState paddle gun ball (map snd blocks) (map snd bullets)
  else
    returnA -< Nothing

First the paddle is updated using the input. The fireRequests are build by accumulating all presses of the fireing key. These are later filtered in the gun, so that no more bullets are fired than there is ammo. When an Update event is issued the queue is purged. Remember that accum delays by one, so that when the input event is "Update", fireRequests is purged one invocation later.

The rest of the wire is only invoked when the input event is "Update" (otherwise Nothing is returned). Note that we can use "if" to invoke a different wire depending on some condition. Creating the collision data is done using the functions introduced earlier. Note the filter with "validCollDir". Due to the rounded edges, it can happen that the ball collides with a block in a way that the ball is not outside the block the next frame. To prevent "double collisions" all those collision events, that are not directed against the moving direction of the ball are filtered.

If we would have used "accum" instead of "accum1" in a couple of places, the output of all the game objects would be delayed by 1 and we would not need the "old..." objects. This is personal preference, I find the use of the "old.." objects more transparent to what is happening.

Conclusion

I am getting more confortable with haskell and its getting easier for me to read haskell code. Netwire seems to be a nice library, but I feel like I have so far only scratched its surface. I wonder what cool things one could do if one would use the inner monad. Also I wonder how Arrowrized FRP compares with FRP without arrows. Unfortantly reactive banana does not yet work with haste. I had a quick peek at elerea but it also needs some PrimOps not supported by haste.

Again: I encourage you to comment if you think something could be done better. For a lot of things I might not use a better alternative because I am simply not aware of it. After all I am still a haskell beginner.

Writing JavaScript games in Haskell by Nathan Hüsken is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany License.

Breakout

Hi, welcome to the 5th article of this blog.

I am very exited! In the last Post we wrote a Pong like ... well ... let's call it javascript application. In this post I have expanded it by the following properties:

• The game does not start until you hit enter.
• There are blocks that can be hit by the ball and disappear.
• There are even blocks with 2 lives (dark blue) that turn into normal blocks on the first hit.
• The game stops when the ball leaves the canvas downward.

This means, there is a goal and there is a game over situation. So at this point one could actually call it a game. And it even has a start screen ... did I mention that I am exitied? /,anma But, now, as always, here is a preview. As always you have to click the canvas to get input focus. If you are not viewing this blog article on blogspot and the application does not work, try the original article page.

Note: This currently only works if you are viewing this article only (not in the flow of the complete blog). I am working on the problem ...

But let me tell you how I did it :).

By the way, this post assumes that you have read the last Post.

More Coroutine helpers

There are two aspects of this game (yes, game!)

• The blocks are a dynamic set of objects, that disappear as the game progresses
• There are different "game states" (the start screen and the actual game)

So this has been added to Coroutine.hs

-- manages a set of coroutines which are deletet when returning Nothing
manager :: [Coroutine a (Maybe b)] -> Coroutine [a] [b]
manager cos = Coroutine $ \is ->
  let res  = map (\(co, i) -> runC co i) $ zip cos is
      res' = filter (isJust . fst) res
      (result, cos') = unzip res'
  in (catMaybes result, manager cos')

-- switcher, starts with a specific coroutine and switches whenever a new coroutine is send via an event
switch :: Coroutine a b -> Coroutine (Event (Coroutine a b), a) b
switch init = Coroutine $ \(e,i) ->
  let init' = last $ init : e --the last coroutine sent through
      (o, init'') = runC init' i
  in  (o, switch init'')

-- replace the contents of an event
(<$) :: Event a -> b -> Event b      
(<$) events content = map (\_ -> content) events

manager: The manger is for managing the blocks. Every blocks state is produced by a coroutine, and in the beginning there is a set of blocks in the game (first parameter to manager). The manager distributes its input to all its coroutines. So the input list should have the same length. The output if each coroutines are collected in a list which is the output of the manager.

Every block Coroutine returns "Nothing" when the block is destroyed, the manager than removes the block from the set.

Note that at present there is no way of inserting new blocks in the manager, it is not needed in this game.

switch: Switch allows us to switch between different game states, which all are described by coroutines of the same type.

Initially switch behaves as the init Coroutine (its first parameter) with an extra parameter holding events with other Coroutines. Whenever one of these events occurs, switch switches to the coroutine carried in the event.

<$: This is a operator. When applied to an event it replaces the contents of the event with the second parameter. We need this to replace the content of the KeyDown event with the main Coroutine when the start key is pressed. You will see!

From Pong to Breakout

All very exiting, but the real excitement start now. The main source file Breakout.hs is based on the last posts Pong.hs. Here I will go over the differences.

Definitions

The game state needs to reflect the blocks and the start screen. It has changed to:

data PlayerState = PlayerState {xPos :: Double}
data BallState = BallState {ballPos :: Vector}
data BlockState = BlockState {blockPos :: Vector, blockLives :: Int}

data GameState = GameState {player :: PlayerState,
                            ball :: BallState,
                            blocks :: [BlockState]}
                 | StartScreen

data BallCollision = LeftBounce | RightBounce | UpBounce | DownBounce
data BlockCollision = BlockCollision
data Rect = Rect { x::Double, y::Double, width ::Double, height::Double}

The BlockState has been added, which contains the block position and the number of lives (1 or 2) of the block. The GameState has been expanded by a list of BlockStates AND can be just the start screen (when the game has not started).

BlockCollision is a type for creating Events where the block collides with the ball. A type synonym to () would also work, but I choose this more verbose way.

blockWidth = 60.0
blockHeight = 20.0
blockColor1live = "blue"
blockColor2live = "darkblue"

initBlockStates = [BlockState (x,y) lives | x <- [20.0, 140.0, 240.0, 340.0, 440.0, 520.0], (y, lives) <- [(60.0,2), (100.0,1), (140.0,2), (180.0,1), (220.0,1), (260.0,1)]]

restartKeyCode = 32
canvasName = "canvas3"

The color of the blocks depend if they have 1 or 2 lives. initBlockStates describes the blocks as the game starts. They are evenly spaced, 6 in x and 6 in y directions. 2 of the y rows have 2 lives, the rest 1.

The restartKeyCode is the key code of the enter bar and the canvasName is the name of the canvas in the html code of this blog.

Drawing

draw :: GameState -> IO ()
draw StartScreen = do
  ctx <- getContext2d canvasName
  clear ctx
  -- draw the text
  setFillColor ctx "black"
  fillText ctx "Press Enter to start --- (click the canvas for input focus)" (screenWidth/2.0 - 100.0) (screenHeight/2.0)

draw (GameState playerState ballState blockStates) = do
  ctx <- getContext2d canvasName
  clear ctx
  -- draw player
  setFillColor ctx playerColor
  let pRect = playerRect playerState
  fillRect ctx (x pRect) (y pRect) (width pRect) (height pRect)
  --draw blocks
  mapM_ (drawBlock ctx) $ blockStates
  --draw ball
  setFillColor ctx ballColor
  let (x,y) = ballPos ballState
  fillCircle ctx x y ballRadius

drawBlock :: Context2D -> BlockState -> IO ()
drawBlock ctx bs = do
  setFillColor ctx (if blockLives bs == 1 then blockColor1live else blockColor2live)
  let r = blockRect bs
  fillRect ctx (x r) (y r) (width r) (height r)

draw pattern matches its argument, to test if it is the start screen. If so, a short message telling the player to press enter is displayed (see fillText in some javascript documentation).

helpers

gameOver :: GameState -> Bool
gameOver (GameState _ (BallState (_, by)) _) = by > screenHeight
gameOver _ = False

blockRect :: BlockState -> Rect
blockRect (BlockState (bx,by) _) = Rect bx by blockWidth blockHeight

gameOver is a little helper function to test if the ball has left the canvas. It returns False on the start screen.

blockRect returns the rectangle occupied by a block.

Main coroutine

mainCoroutine :: MainCoroutineType
mainCoroutine = proc inEvents -> do
  rec
    let startEvent = filter (\ke -> ke == KeyUp restartKeyCode) inEvents <$ mainGameCoroutine
        stopEvent  = if gameOver oldState then [mainStartScreenCoroutine] else []
    state <- switch mainStartScreenCoroutine -< (startEvent ++ stopEvent, inEvents)
    oldState <- delay StartScreen -< state
  returnA -< state

mainStartScreenCoroutine :: MainCoroutineType
mainStartScreenCoroutine = arr $ const StartScreen

mainGameCoroutine :: MainCoroutineType
mainGameCoroutine = proc inEvents -> do
  plState <- playerState -< inEvents
  rec
    let (ballBlockColls, blockColls) = ballBlocksCollisions oldBallState oldBlockStates
    let colls = (ballWallCollisions oldBallState) ++ (ballPlayerCollisions plState oldBallState) ++ ballBlockColls
    currBallState   <- ballState            -< colls --long names ...
    currBlockStates <- blockStates          -< blockColls
    oldBallState    <- delay initBallState  -< currBallState
    oldBlockStates  <- delay initBlockStates-< currBlockStates
  returnA -< GameState plState currBallState currBlockStates

The original main coroutine has been renamed to mainGameCoroutine. There is a new "main coroutine" mainStartScreenCoroutine which is used while in the start screen. The new mainCoroutine switches between these two coroutine when the player pressed enter, or the game is over.

Remember, the <$ operator replaces the contents of an event with its second parameter (here the mainGameCoroutine) and switch receives events containing coroutines to which it switches.

mainGameCoroutine has been extended by the blocks. ballBlocksCollisions, as we will see later, returns a tuple with the ballCollisions events due to collisions with the blocks, and a list of BlockCollision events. This list has the same length as the list of blocks (in oldBlockStates). The n-th element of this list are the collisions with the n-th block.

The block collisions are than passed to the blockStates arrow while the ballCollisions are added to the collisions passed to ballState.

I dislike the long names like "currBallState" here. I would have called it ballState, but there is already an arrow with the same name. I wonder if there is a less clumsy way of doing this ...

Ball-Block collisions

ballBlocksCollisions :: BallState -> [BlockState] -> (Event BallCollision, [Event BlockCollision])
ballBlocksCollisions ballState blockStates =
  let ballR = ballRect ballState
      foldStep (ballC, blockC) blockState =
        if rectOverlap ballR (blockRect blockState) then
          (ballRectCollisions ballState (blockRect blockState) ++ ballC, blockC ++ [[BlockCollision]])
        else
          (ballC, blockC ++ [[]])
  in foldl' foldStep ([],[]) blockStates

In my opinion, this is the most complicated function. It takes the ball state and the block states (as a list) and produces ball collisions events, and a list of block collision events, which has the same length as the input block state list.

The foldStep function takes the next block, tests it for collision and updates the list of ball and block collisions. Here the ball collision events are only expanded when a collision happens. The list of block collision events is always expanded. By an empty event (empty list) when no collision happens, and by a BlockCollision event in case of collision. This is because the position in this list reflects the block that will receive it.

Updating the block state

blockState :: BlockState -> Coroutine (Event BlockCollision) (Maybe BlockState)
blockState initState = scanE update (Just initState)
  where
  update :: Maybe BlockState -> BlockCollision -> Maybe BlockState
  update Nothing   _ = Nothing
  update (Just bs) _ = if (blockLives bs == 1) then Nothing else Just $ bs{blockLives=1}

blockStates :: Coroutine ([Event BlockCollision]) ([BlockState])
blockStates = manager $ map blockState initBlockStates

Every block has its own coroutine, which receives block collision events. In case of such an event, the number of lives is reduced or the block is removed (if there are no lives left). The coroutines return a Maybe data type, because they are inserted into the manager. Nothing is returned if the block should be deleted.

blockStates uses the manager to manage all "living" blocks.

Compiling

The compilation is the same as for Pong int the last post.

Haste

For haste make sure the newest version is installed. Because we use vector-space we need to install it for haste.

vector space is needed, see the last post.

Now put Breakout.hs, Coroutine.hs, the haste version of JavaScript.hs and the javascript helper functions helpers.js in a directory and compile with

hastec Breakout.hs --start=asap --with-js=helpers.js

You should receive a file "Breakout.js" which can be included in a html file, like this one: haste html

UHC

With UHC it is a little bit more work. UHC does not support arrow syntax, so we must translate the haskell file with arrowp:

cabal install arrowp
arrowp Breakout.hs > BreakoutNA.hs

I choose the name BreakoutNA.hs for "Breakout no arrows". For some reason I also can not get vector space to compile with UHC. Luckily we have not used much of vector space, only the ⁺ operator. So edit PongNA.hs and replace the line

import Data.VectorSpace

with

(^+^) :: Num a => (a,a) -> (a,a) -> (a,a)
(^+^) (a1,a2) (b1,b2) = (a1+b1, a2+b2)

Now copy Coroutine.hs and JavaScript.hs (the UHC version) into the directory and compile with

uhc -tjs BreakoutNA.hs -iuhc 

The canvas needs to be added to the generated html file, so add

<canvas height="400" id="canvas3" style="background-color: white;" width="600" tabindex="1"></canvas>

Since we do not need any additional javascript functions, the generated html page should work!

Conclusion

Well that is it. At places I find it a bit clumpsy and I wonder if another FRP library like Reactive Banana or elerea would help. I will look into these!

Writing JavaScript games in Haskell by Nathan Hüsken is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany License.

Pong

In the last Post we wrote the first interactive javascript application in haskell where a paddle on the bottom of the canvas could be moved via keyboard input.
In this next step we will add ball (a moving circle) that can bounce of the paddle and the walls.
Here is a preview (again, click on the canvas to get input focus). If you are not viewing this blog article on blogspot and the application does not work, try the original article page.
** Note: ** This currently only works if you are viewing this article only (not in the flow of the complete blog). I am working on the problem ...

But first we will need some perquisites. I will utilize Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) using the functions defined here: Purely Functional, Declarative Game Logic Using Reactive Programming. I take the terminus "coroutine" from that blog article. I like to think of a coroutine as "state full function". The output of the coroutine does not only depend on its input but also on the input passed to it in previous calls. So make sure you read and understand that blog article. The resulting code can be found here: Coroutine.hs.
So, let us get started!

Imports and definitions

I follow the source file Pong.hs and therefor start with the imports and some definitions used later in the game.

{-# LANGUAGE Arrows #-}

module Main where

import JavaScript
import Coroutine
import Data.IORef
import Control.Arrow

import Data.VectorSpace

-- input data
data Input = KeyUp Int | KeyDown Int deriving (Eq)

-- Game data
type Vector = (Double, Double)

data PlayerState = PlayerState {xPos :: Double}
data BallState = BallState {pos :: Vector2D}

data GameState = GameState {player :: PlayerState,
                            ball :: BallState}

data BallCollision = LeftBounce | RightBounce | UpBounce | DownBounce
data Rect = Rect { x::Double, y::Double, width ::Double, height::Double}

We will use Arrow Syntax and tell the compiler that we do. Actually UHC does not support Arrow Syntax (yet?), but more about that later.
We import Data.VectorSpace allowing us to use some basic vector operation with tuples of Doubles. Here we only need addition, but if we need more VectorSpace is handy.
The input data will be a series of Keyboard up and down events with corresponding key codes. BallCollision describes a collision of the ball with the wall or the paddle in a certain direction.
The rest is types we need in the game and should be self explaining.
Next we will declare some values defining subtleties of the game.

-- game values
screenWidth = 600.0
screenHeight = 400.0
playerColor = "black"
ballColor = "red"
playerYPos = screenHeight - playerHeight
playerHeight = 15.0
playerWidth = 40.0
ballRadius = 5.0

initBallState = BallState ((screenWidth / 2.0), (screenHeight - 50.0))
initBallSpeed = (3.0, -3.0)

initPlayerState = PlayerState ((screenWidth - playerWidth) / 2.0)

playerSpeed = 5.0

-- technical values
leftKeyCode = 37
rightKeyCode = 39
canvasName = "canvas2"

Again, these should be relatively self explaining. Keycode 37 and 39 correspond to the arrow keys. canvas2 is the name of the canvas defined in the html code of this blog.

Entry point and callbacks

In difference to the last blog article we will not use a javascript function to save and store global objects. Instead the objects will be stored in IORefs which are passed to the callbacks.

-- entry point
main = setOnLoad initilize

initilize = do
  state <- newIORef mainCoroutine
  input <- newIORef ([] :: [Input])
  setOnKeyDown canvasName (onKeyDown input)
  setOnKeyUp   canvasName (onKeyUp input)
  setInterval 20.0 (update state input)

-- input
onKeyDown :: IORef [Input] -> Int-> IO ()
onKeyDown input keyCode = do
  i <- readIORef input
  let i' = i ++ [KeyDown keyCode]
  writeIORef input i'

onKeyUp :: IORef [Input] -> Int-> IO ()
onKeyUp input keyCode = do
  i <- readIORef input
  let i' = i ++ [KeyUp keyCode]
  writeIORef input i'

So main sets the initilize function to be called then the window is loaded. initilize creates 2 IORefs, one for the main coroutine (which will be defined later) and one for the input stream, which is a list of input events.
The main coroutine is the place where the game logic happens. The output of the main coroutine is the current game state. Because the current main coroutine depends on the previous calls to it, it must be stored between game updates.
onKeyDown and onKeyUp are called when a key is pressed or released and expand the input stream.
update is set to be called every 20 milliseconds with the state and input IORefs passed to it.

Updating and drawing the game sate

Next we will draw the game state (the output of the main coroutine). This is basicly the same as what we did in the last blog article, only that now we also need to draw a circle for the ball.

-- draw a gamestate
draw :: GameState -> IO ()
draw gs = do
  ctx <- getContext2d canvasName
  clear ctx
  -- draw player
  setFillColor ctx playerColor
  let pRect = playerRect . player $ gs
  fillRect ctx (x pRect) (y pRect) (width pRect) (height pRect)
  --draw ball
  setFillColor ctx ballColor
  let (x,y) = pos . ball $ gs
  fillCircle ctx x y ballRadius

-- update function
update :: IORef MainCoroutineType -> IORef (Event Input) -> IO ()
update state input = do
  co <- readIORef state
  i <- readIORef input
  writeIORef input ([] :: [Input])
  let (gs, co') = runC co i
  draw gs
  writeIORef state co'

The draw function should be self explaining. If not, read my last blog articles. Some javascript functions have been added, but they all follow the same principle as in the last blog article.
The update function reads the current main coroutine and input stream. The coroutine is updated and the new game state is obtained by calling the coroutine with the current input stream. Finally the game state is drawn and the new coroutine is saved.

Some helper functions

Before the main game logic a few helper functions are defined.

-- helper functions
keyDown :: Int -> Coroutine (Event Input) Bool
keyDown code = scanE step False
  where
  step old input
    | input == KeyUp code   = False
    | input == KeyDown code = True
    | otherwise             = old

rectOverlap :: Rect -> Rect -> Bool
rectOverlap r1 r2 
  | x r1 >= x r2 + width r2 = False
  | x r2 >= x r1 + width r1 = False
  | y r1 >= y r2 + height r2 = False
  | y r2 >= y r1 + height r1 = False
  | otherwise                = True
  
playerRect :: PlayerState -> Rect
playerRect (PlayerState px) = Rect px playerYPos playerWidth playerHeight

ballRect :: BallState -> Rect
ballRect (BallState (bx,by)) = Rect (bx - ballRadius) (by - ballRadius) (2.0 * ballRadius) (2.0 * ballRadius)

keyDown takes a keycode and outputs a coroutine indicating at all times if the given key is down given the input stream (The Event type comes from Coroutine.hs). We will need this because the paddle is supposed to be moving as long as an arrow key is pressed.
Note that this is a little different that what we did in the last post. Actually there it only worked because javascript fires continuous "keyDown" events when a key is hold down, but that is a platform dependent behavior and we do not want to rely on it. Also this firing of key down events does not immediately start when a key is pressed. There is a short break. If you go back on that post and try the application, you will note that the paddle does not start moving immediately, but there is a short delay after pressing a key.
rectOverlap tests two rectangles if they overlap (used for collision detection). playerRect and ballRect return the rectangle occupied by the paddle and ball respectively.

The main Coroutine

The main coroutine takes input events as input and outputs the game state. The type synonym MainCoroutineType is introduced for verbosity. Earlier it allowed us to create the IORef for the main coroutine in a more readable way (in my opinion).

-- Game logic
type MainCoroutineType = Coroutine (Event Input) GameState

mainCoroutine :: MainCoroutineType
mainCoroutine = proc inEvents -> do
  plState <- playerState -< inEvents
  rec
    let colls = (ballWallCollisions oldBlState) ++ (ballPlayerCollisions plState oldBlState)
    blState <- ballState -< colls
    oldBlState <- delay initBallState -< blState
  returnA -< GameState plState blState

The player state is computed with the input events. The collisions of the ball with player and wall solely depend on the previous ball state. ballWallCollisions and ballPlayerCollisions can therefore be pure functions and not coroutines. That is why "colls" is defined in a let expression. The new ballState is calculated using this collisions information.
The construct with "rec" and "delay" is needed because the ball state from the last frame is required. This construct is explained in Purely Functional, Declarative Game Logic Using Reactive Programming.

The Player

The player is moved with the arrow keys without crossing the bounding of the game.

playerState :: Coroutine (Event Input) PlayerState
playerState = proc inEvents -> do
  vel <- playerVelocity -< inEvents
  xPos <- boundedIntegrate (0.0,screenWidth-playerWidth) (xPos initPlayerState)  -< vel
  returnA -< PlayerState xPos

playerVelocity :: Coroutine (Event Input) Double
playerVelocity = proc inEvents -> do
  leftDown <- keyDown leftKeyCode -< inEvents
  rightDown <- keyDown rightKeyCode -< inEvents
  returnA -< if leftDown then -playerSpeed else (if rightDown then playerSpeed else 0.0)

boundedIntegrate is a coroutine defined in Coroutine.hs which integrates the input and clips it to a given range.

The Ball state

Collisions

The ball state needs the collision events as input (see the main coroutine).

ballWallCollisions :: BallState -> (Event BallCollision)
ballWallCollisions (BallState (bx,by)) =
  map snd . filter fst $ [(bx < ballRadius,                LeftBounce),
                          (bx > screenWidth - ballRadius,  RightBounce),
                          (by < ballRadius, UpBounce)]

ballRectCollisions :: BallState -> Rect -> (Event BallCollision)
ballRectCollisions (BallState (bx, by)) (Rect rx ry rw rh) =
  map snd . filter fst $ [(bx <= rx,       RightBounce),
                          (bx >= rx + rw, LeftBounce),
                          (by <= ry,       DownBounce),
                          (by >= ry + rh, UpBounce)]

ballPlayerCollisions :: PlayerState -> BallState -> (Event BallCollision)
ballPlayerCollisions playerState ballState =
  if rectOverlap (playerRect playerState) (ballRect ballState)
  then ballRectCollisions ballState (playerRect playerState)
  else []

Updating the ball state

Using this collisions events the ball is updated by moving and bouncing according to the collision events.

ballState :: Coroutine (Event BallCollision) BallState
ballState = proc collEvents -> do
  vel <- ballVelocity -< collEvents
  pos <- scan (^+^) (pos initBallState) -< vel
  returnA -< BallState pos

ballVelocity :: Coroutine (Event BallCollision) Vector2D
ballVelocity = scanE bounce initBallSpeed
  where
    bounce :: Vector2D -> BallCollision -> Vector2D
    bounce (vx,vy) coll = case coll of
      LeftBounce -> (abs(vx), vy)
      RightBounce -> (-abs(vx), vy)
      UpBounce -> (vx, abs(vy))
      DownBounce -> (vx, -abs(vy))

The ⁺ operator is defined in the vector space package and adds two vectors (in our case tuples of doubles).

Compiling

That it. Now we need to compile ...

haste

For haste make sure the newest version is installed. Because we use vector-space we need to install it for haste.
First install vector space via cabal:

cabal install vector-space

Now unpack vector-space with cabal, and install AdditiveGroup.jsmod.

cabal unpack vector-space
cd vector-space-0.8.2/src
hastec --libinstall -O2 Data.VectorSpace Data.AdditiveGroup

That it! Now put Pong.hs, Coroutine.hs, the haste version of JavaScript.hs and the javascript helper functions helpers.js in a directory and compile with

hastec Pong.hs --start=asap --with-js=helpers.js

You should receive a file "Pong.js" which can be included in a html file, like this one: haste html

UHC

With UHC it is a little bit more work. UHC does not support arrow syntax, so we must translate the haskell file with arrowp:

cabal install arrowp
arrowp Pong.hs > PongNA.hs

I choose the name PongNA.hs for "Pong no arrows". For some reason I also can not get vector space to compile with UHC. Luckily we have not used much of vector space, only the ⁺ operator. So edit PongNA.hs and replace the line

import Data.VectorSpace

with

(^+^) :: Num a => (a,a) -> (a,a) -> (a,a)
(^+^) (a1,a2) (b1,b2) = (a1+b1, a2+b2)

Now copy Coroutine.hs and JavaScript.hs (the UHC version) into the directory and compile with

uhc -tjs PongNA.hs -iuhc 

The canvas needs to be added to the generated html file, so add

<canvas height="400" id="canvas2" style="background-color: white;" width="600" tabindex="1"></canvas>

Since we do not need any additional javascript functions, the generated html page should work!

Conclusion

I have little experience with FRP (this blog article is my first attempt to write a FRP application). I would have liked to use Reactive Banana for this, but at present I am unable to compile Reactive Banana with UHC or haste.
According to this Reactive Banana has been compiled with UHC, but in the new version, support for UHC will be dropped.
haste failed to compile Reactive Banana because of missing PrimOps. According to the maintainer of haste, that is a solvable problem and will be fixed in the future.
In the next article, we will add "blocks" that can collide with the ball and disappear to have a breakout like game.

Writing JavaScript games in Haskell by Nathan Hüsken is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany License.