This idea was originated in a hackathon - the concept was a silly take on text based adventures where the fun bit was literally using sms. The goal here is to parse a twilio message body, updating game state for the given number, and responding to the requested action. The engine will rely on a structured story map with actions like use and take relying on deep merging map values. A thing I'd like to eventually make is a way to generate a game using a website.

This app is auto deployed using heroku and using github to run tests. In order to set this up you need to:

1. Create a new heroku project
2. Add a DB connection
3. Add a new DB_URL env var to the app (Heroku's default DATABASE_URL can't be parsed easily by ragtime or next.jdbc)
4. Set up a twilio account, and secure a number
5. point the sms webhook to the deployed app

https://adventures-in-texting.herokuapp.com/

Interact by texting (608)-471-6866

• POST /api/v1/sms, expects two query parameters: From and Body
• GET /, html page

• core - main app entrypoint, where the service lives
• engine - parses out a request string into a command map the game can work with
• twilio - generates a TwiML payload from a response string
• db.migrations - runs migrations on startup
• db.game - handles upsert, delete, and getting game instances
• game.core - dispatches on command value and returns an updated game with a response
• game.message - holds default messages for error states etc
• game.story - contains the default game map as well as helper functions to deal with handling game state

• use - use an item in your inventory
• look - Get descriptions for the room etc
• take - Pick up an item
• guide - "Help" functionality, help means something special to twilio so this is a way to get through that
• inventory - see items you've picked up so far
• meow - do it for the bit
• restart - reset your game state

Nested under :interactions items are represented by a collection of applicable commands

{:key {:look "look at the key"}}

The keys are the name of the location and are nested directly under the :maps key.

{:maps
 {:location1 {}
  :location2 {}}}

The main things in a location are interactions and initial description.

{:initial "You walk into the room"
 :interactions {:key {:look "It's a key"}}}

Note that under interactions there should be a default key to provide backup values for when things are tried in certain rooms.

run tests by running

lein test

Copy the env file and update the DB_URL to have a jdbc connection string cp env.example .env

Then source the env file

source .env

Start the DB

docker-compose up -d

Start the server

lein ring server

Go to http://localhost:8080 to see the homepage

or test the sms endpoint

http POST localhost:8080/api/v1/sms From==woof Body=="look around"