Prolog Adventure Game

https://github.com/stefanrodrigues2/Prolog-Adventure-game

166•shakna•9mo ago

Comments

agiacalone•9mo ago

Very nice. I gave a lab assignment like this once! It's a great way to learn Prolog.

https://github.com/agiacalone/cecs-342-lab-prolog

pacaro•9mo ago

There's even a book "Adventure in Prolog" by Dennis Merritt (ISBN 1520918917)

It's a lot of fun to work through, other prolog resources can be a little dry

shakna•9mo ago

This one? [0]

[0] https://amzi.com/AdventureInProlog/

pacaro•9mo ago

Yes! that one!. I have a paper copy, so it didn't occur to me that there would be an online version

Sn0wCoder•9mo ago

Going to tell the Preface story tomorrow at work, I guess if your reading this you now know my HN handle ;) Not sure I will do the 'game' but that into was worth clicking the link.

rickydroll•9mo ago

> I guess if your reading this you now know my HN handle

No worries. A great philosopher once wrote:

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what your HN handle is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by an HN handle even more bizarre and inexplicable."

agiacalone•9mo ago

I also heard:

"There is another theory which states that this has already happened..."

nottorp•9mo ago

Yep. That's how I passed my Prolog course as well :)

ForOldHack•9mo ago

If you wrote an adventure game in Prolog, you could write a client that would also solve the adventure.

mcv•9mo ago

I can imagine it's easier to write that client in Prolog than the adventure.

johnisgood•9mo ago

Or write a program that generates the adventure game!

ooopdddddd•9mo ago

That's only if you are using pure predicates. From a quick glance, the code makes liberal use of assert, retract, and the cut operator, so you can't write a query that solves the problem automatically.

asciii•9mo ago

Cool! I got stuck trying to figure out how to turn on the flashlight and then got stuck in the woods and died.

twothamendment•9mo ago

When I was in school I had to do some stuff with prolog. I got my wife interested enough that she added some rooms and items to a game like this. Good times!

wfurney•9mo ago

I have never heard of Prolog before so this was cool. I did think the "make sure the flashlight is turned on" point was kind of confusing. I have the battery and flashlight, but there's no way to turn it on. I couldn't run it with gprolog but swipl works fine.

klibertp•9mo ago

The flashlight should be automatically on in this case:

    flashlight_on :- at(flashlight,holding), at(battery,holding).

This condition is checked when you try to reach "woods" and "woods_1". (And that's the only place you can test if the flashlight is on, because it's otherwise not checked and doesn't change any of the descriptions.) The flashlight doesn't save you from dying in the "deepforest_X".

2mlWQbCK•9mo ago

Reminds me of Dialog, a domain-specific language for writing adventure games, heavily inspired by Prolog:

https://github.com/Dialog-IF/dialog/

https://linusakesson.net/dialog/

codesnik•9mo ago

is it generated by LLM using prompt at https://github.com/stefanrodrigues2/Prolog-Adventure-game/bl...?

Kaethar•9mo ago

Given [1], probably :)))

[1] https://github.com/stefanrodrigues2/Prolog-Adventure-game/bl...

johnisgood•9mo ago

Good catch! Although I do have some README.md templates where I use "yourusername" or whatever. I bet it would be said it was generated by an LLM. :/ Oh well, it still would take someone skilled to have it made by an LLM anyways. :D

hazymemory•9mo ago

Just for curiosity I just asked chat deepseek to load and solve the game and it solved it in half a second.

It suggested adding some riddle, for example:

   path(castle, up, tower) :-  
       at(blueprint, holding),  
       (solved_riddle -> true ;  
        write('Answer the riddle first: What walks on four legs in the morning...?'), nl,  
       read(Answer),  
        (Answer = 'human' -> assert(solved_riddle) ;  
         write('Wrong! Try again.'), nl, fail)).

klibertp•9mo ago

I only learned Prolog as a hobby, so I may be mistaken, but the quality of the code seems really bad? Starting from keeping game state in a bunch of magic globals (assert/retract everywhere), to a lack of input parsing (even though DCGs would be a perfect match), to comments that disagree with the code[1], to the game logic coupled with game mechanics as side effects (the winning condition is checked inside `take`)... I may be too used to Prolog code from books and tutorials, but the number of cuts also seems much larger than expected.

...now that I look at this, it's 3 years old. I wonder how much better today's LLMs would fare?

[1] https://github.com/stefanrodrigues2/Prolog-Adventure-game/bl... - no, the routine does not "wait" on Windows, you'd need to put `get_char(_)` or something before `halt`.

johnisgood•9mo ago

I love text-based adventure games in Prolog.

mparnisari•9mo ago

I can't get this game to start, am I stupid?

$ swipl -s treasure_hunt.pl

and then what?

klibertp•9mo ago

    -▶ swipl -s treasure_hunt.pl
    Welcome to SWI-Prolog (threaded, 64 bits, version 9.2.9)
    SWI-Prolog comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software.
    Please run ?- license. for legal details.

    For online help and background, visit https://www.swi-prolog.org
    For built-in help, use ?- help(Topic). or ?- apropos(Word).

    ?- start.  % <- this

    Enter commands using standard Prolog syntax.
    Available commands are:
    start.                  -- to start the game.
    up. down. right. left.  -- to go in that direction.
    ...etc...

mparnisari•9mo ago

Thanks!

OpenClaw Creator: Why 80% of Apps Will Disappear

What Happens When Technical Debt Vanishes?

AI Is Finally Eating Software's Total Market: Here's What's Next

Computer Science from the Bottom Up

Show HN: I built a toy compiler as a young dev

You don't need Mac mini to run OpenClaw

Learning to Reason in 13 Parameters

Convergent Discovery of Critical Phenomena Mathematics Across Disciplines

Ask HN: Will GPU and RAM prices ever go down?

From hunger to luxury: The story behind the most expensive rice (2025)

Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters

A New Crypto Winter Is Here and Even the Biggest Bulls Aren't Certain Why

Moltbook was peak AI theater

Why Claude Cowork is a math problem Indian IT can't solve

Show HN: Built an space travel calculator with vanilla JavaScript v2

Why a 175-Year-Old Glassmaker Is Suddenly an AI Superstar

Micro-Front Ends in 2026: Architecture Win or Enterprise Tax?

These White-Collar Workers Actually Made the Switch to a Trade

The Wonder Drug That's Plaguing Sports

Show HN: Which chef knife steels are good? Data from 540 Reddit tread

Federated Credential Management (FedCM)

Token-to-Credit Conversion: Avoiding Floating-Point Errors in AI Billing Systems

The Story of Heroku (2022)

Obey the Testing Goat

Claude Opus 4.6 extends LLM pareto frontier

Brute Force Colors (2022)

Google Translate apparently vulnerable to prompt injection

(Bsky thread) "This turns the maintainer into an unwitting vibe coder"

Software development is undergoing a Renaissance in front of our eyes

Can you beat ensloppification? I made a quiz for Wikipedia's Signs of AI Writing

OpenClaw Creator: Why 80% of Apps Will Disappear

What Happens When Technical Debt Vanishes?

AI Is Finally Eating Software's Total Market: Here's What's Next

Computer Science from the Bottom Up

Show HN: I built a toy compiler as a young dev

You don't need Mac mini to run OpenClaw

Learning to Reason in 13 Parameters

Convergent Discovery of Critical Phenomena Mathematics Across Disciplines

Ask HN: Will GPU and RAM prices ever go down?

From hunger to luxury: The story behind the most expensive rice (2025)

Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters

A New Crypto Winter Is Here and Even the Biggest Bulls Aren't Certain Why

Moltbook was peak AI theater

Why Claude Cowork is a math problem Indian IT can't solve

Show HN: Built an space travel calculator with vanilla JavaScript v2

Why a 175-Year-Old Glassmaker Is Suddenly an AI Superstar

Micro-Front Ends in 2026: Architecture Win or Enterprise Tax?

These White-Collar Workers Actually Made the Switch to a Trade

The Wonder Drug That's Plaguing Sports

Show HN: Which chef knife steels are good? Data from 540 Reddit tread

Federated Credential Management (FedCM)

Token-to-Credit Conversion: Avoiding Floating-Point Errors in AI Billing Systems

The Story of Heroku (2022)

Obey the Testing Goat

Claude Opus 4.6 extends LLM pareto frontier

Brute Force Colors (2022)

Google Translate apparently vulnerable to prompt injection

(Bsky thread) "This turns the maintainer into an unwitting vibe coder"

Software development is undergoing a Renaissance in front of our eyes

Can you beat ensloppification? I made a quiz for Wikipedia's Signs of AI Writing

Prolog Adventure Game

Comments