A simple pong game implemented in Haskell, using the Gloss library, and SDL2 for sounds and music.

Pong was built using the command-line tool cabal, also known as cabal-install. If you do not already have this installed, find out how to do so at Haskell.org, under the section titled Minimal installers.

For example, on openSUSE, this was as easy as:

sudo zypper install ghc cabal-install
cabal update

Once you have the GHC compiler and cabal installed on your system, you can build Pong.

I highly recommend using a Cabal sandbox for building this project. After you have cloned the repo with:

git clone https://github.com/htoigo/pong.git

move into the newly-created pong directory with cd pong, then create a new sandbox:

cabal sandbox init

Now, install the required dependencies into the new sandbox (which will be isolated from any system-wide Haskell installation), and build Pong:

cabal install --only-dependencies
cabal build

You are now ready to play Pong!

Start a game of Pong by invoking:

cabal run pong

from the Pong directory. Press '1' to begin a single-player game, and press '2' to begin a two-player game. The left-hand player uses the 'w' and 's' keys to move her paddle up and down, while the right-hand player uses the up and down arrow keys. The full list of keys used is:

'1'      begin a single-player game
'2'      begin a 2-player game
'w'      move left paddle up
's'      "              " down
UP       move right paddle up
DOWN     "               " down
SPACE    pause/unpause the game
ESC      abort the game, closing the window
'r'      reset the game after it has ended

Rather than contributing here, I think it would be a great idea for you to work through Andrew Gibiansky's excellent tutorial for yourself, which was how this project started for me. (See the Credits section, below.)

This little Haskell game grew out of my working through the excellent tutorial blog post "Your First Haskell Application (with Gloss)" by Andrew Gibiansky, used under CC BY-SA. It really is a great resource for learning to build a Haskell application using Cabal. Thanks, Andrew! For someone with some experience programming in Haskell, but who has never before built a Cabal application, the included code gives you a solid foundation from which to build, and the exercises, especially, are meaty with just the right level of challenge to get you thoroughly engrossed. Go check it out!

New code contributions are licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3. New content is licensed under CC BY-SA. See the LICENSE file for details.