WEBVTT

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>> Hello and welcome to the Haskell weekly
podcast as you might have guessed this

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show is about Haskell, which is a purely
functional programming language.

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I'm your host Dustin Segers and
I'm an engineer here at IT Pro TV.

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>> Hi, I'm Cody Goodman.

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I'm a senior engineer here at IT Pro TV.

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What are we talking about today Dustin?

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>> We're talking about game
development and Haskell.

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I thought it would be cool to

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kind of bring together my
love of game development and

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video games in general and Haskell, which
is what I use daily here at IT Pro TV.

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I actually have a few questions for
you and

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I figured it would be cool to kind of
just look into the Haskell Game Dev

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community and space and
see what all was out there.

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>> Yeah.

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I think a lot of people are in
your position, you know,

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if you browse the Haskell subreddit,
you'll see occasionally questions about

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people want to make games and
people frustrated trying to make games.

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So if you don't take the right path,
it can be pretty frustrating.

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One recommendation I've
seen over the years and

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tried a little myself is to start
out with a 2D library called gloss.

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>> Gotcha.

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Have you ever heard of it?

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>> Yeah actually are our lead engineer.

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I think he did a few just
very basic games using gloss.

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I heard it was super intuitive and
quick to get something up on the screen.

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>> Right, right.

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Yeah.
That's that's one of

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the reasons I recommend it and I think
a lot of other people recommend it is

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you can you can draw window and
draw a circle and a single line and

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it's all and you know plain English words
that you might be able to guess yourself.

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>> Nice.

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>> You know gloss is really
aimed at simplicity.

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There's a ton of tutorials available,
not just like basic tutorials,

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but tutorials of you know,
how do you make pong?

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>> Yeah.

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>> Right.

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It's more of an end to end thing which has
Haskells sorely lacking in other areas,

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but when you're just getting started,
it's a new paradigm, a new language.

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You you need you know
a little bit of hand-holding.

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You just get all the way from point A to
point B at least exactly least once.

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>> That's it.

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So gloss seems really
attractive to me in that aspect

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mainly because I'm not super
proficient at Haskell.

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I've only been doing it for
a little while, but I do enjoy it and

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I think I have more experience in
game development mainly as a hobby

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right versus you know
programming in Haskell.

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So I would like to merge both of them and

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gloss seems like a pretty good
pretty good way to do that.

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>> Yeah, and for people trying to merge
their game development experience or

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interest in their love Haskell,
you'll probably run into a functional

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reactive programming which you have few
are really in proficient in a school.

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It can be a bit of a mind Bender
wrap your head around that.

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>> Gotcha, yeah.
I actually just doing a little bit

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of research before this podcast.

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We stumbled upon FRP functional
reactive programming and

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then also just your classic mean
Iterating over your main game Loop.

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And do you have any like,
I guess a concise way,

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if you could explain functional reactive
programming to those who don't know?

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>> I didn't come up with the best
answer myself, but I looked around and

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hope I'd say the name right here T
cange Elvis as they talk on answering

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that that question, you know, you have
to have a whole talk to answer it yet.

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He says if I had to summarize it
in one sentence, I would say that

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functional reactive programming is
programming with time varying values.

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Now, that's not the most satisfying
answer person one who might already be

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overwhelmed.

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>> Yeah.

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Yeah, but basically that's for

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lack of anything better
to use at this moment.

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It's state right like so
I represent State.

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>> Yeah.

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It's a lot like state.

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The so it's still encodes
the information that state would encode

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the difference would be that the way
that these things composed together or

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different we won't get too deep into that.

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And that's why the reasons we
recommend gloss to start out with.

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Yeah, so you can just you
know gloss over FRP I guess.

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>> Yeah, see what you did there.

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Okay, cool.

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So do we have any like games
that may have used FRP and

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examples of that or up top your head?

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Or any packages that might implement or
use this?

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>> Yeah recent a recent really cool
game with an interesting premise that

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we might recognize
the roots of is people mon.

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>> Yes.

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I did see that believe is by
Alex Stewart like wrecked.

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>> Right, right.

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And so the premise is that
you you catch people and

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battle with them and style of Pokémon.

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>> I got you.

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That's pretty funny.

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Yeah, I did.

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I got a chance to at least watch
the little trailer for it and

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go to the site but I have not yet
played it I plan to play it here.

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It's pretty short, but looks pretty
entertaining at the very least.

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>> And I recommend at least check out
their homepage is some pretty hilarious

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images on got you.

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Let's see.

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So people mine.

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Was it based on it was yamp,
I think okay, which is an FRP Library,

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you'll notice that the more complex
examples of Haskell games use FRP.

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I think we had an exception
which used a classic game Loop,

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which we'll talk about in a second, but

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just to answer why these libraries might
prefer FRP as as complexity skills up.

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FRP seems to have some
advantages over the classic game

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Loop much in the way that Haskell has
advantages over imperative languages.

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>> Yeah, that actually reminds me Cody.

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We will be linking the package
Yabba as well as people Mon and

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other things mentioned in this podcast
on our Haskell weekly podcast page.

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So if you're, you know interested in,

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you know finding these not really having
to Google them even though you totally can

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we'll have those links available
at the Haskell weekly podcast page

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what the mention of people Mon and then
also Pokemon, which is a mainstream game.

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I found out just a little while ago

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that there was actually a Haskell game
that was greenlit on Steam now, they've

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retired the whole green light thing on
Steam, but so this is a little bit older,

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but it was still pretty cool to see
that I think it was even back in 2012.

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Right people were using Haskell to create
games and they actually, you know,

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we're getting somewhere with it.

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>> Trail Blazers for sure.

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That was Nikki in the robots.

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And I remember watching on excitedly
in their development blog and

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tracking their progress trying to get
everything building myself is exciting and

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then to see that they
got on Steam Greenlight.

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It was like wow.

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So in 2012, it's possible to write
a Haskell game if you put in enough effort

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and get it greenlit on Steam.

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>> It's actually really cool.

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Yeah and
notice that I went to their page and

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I did a little a little snooping
around and I saw their Tech stack

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consisted of hipmunk,
which is the physics engine, right?

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Yeah.

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It's a Haskell take on chipmunk.

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Hmm, which is pretty cool.

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It looks like the package
is now deprecated.

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So it might be a little old, but
it was still nice and cool to see that,

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you know the community is out there and
they're doing things with it.

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>> You know, I rewatch that Nikki and

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the robots video after after looking
around for some examples and

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it just made me think you know, what would
it take to revive Nikki in the robots and

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make it something compiling something
that people for instance in this

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podcast you heard about this could go and
download the source code and try it out.

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How much work is it to update that there
was an older FPS game made in Haskell.

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I can't recall the name of it.

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But somebody did the work
to like bring it current.

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Well, it's really cool.

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>> Nice.

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>> Maybe somebody maybe Me Maybe you or

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someone hearing this can try
to revive Nikki in the robot.

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>> Right?

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And it's also just it would
be good to I guess have

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something else to do to merge
these I guess these hobbies and

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this love of Haskell together and
which would help progress.

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You know, my Gillan has school as well.

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So I guess that's like another right other
bonus and doing this on the topic of that.

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>> On the topic of that,
there's also Dino Rush,

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you know if you're wanting to merge your
hobbies with Haskell and game development,

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but you're kind of new, you might want
to use like a classic game Loop and

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Dino Rush actually went that route and
they used a classic game Loop.

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So highly recommend anyone who
wants to do that to check out

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their blog posts that I think you're
probably going to put the resources to yes

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download the source code get it
building poke around in there.

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>> Nice.

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Yeah, I'm definitely going to do that
actually went to the page earlier and

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checked it out and it's pretty cool.

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I like the pixel art for the game.

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It looks pretty.

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>> Right and in for context their
game Diner Rush, it's you know,

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when you lose internet
connection on Google Chrome.

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Yes, there's a little diner.

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Jumping over stuff.

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>> I think we have a high score board
somewhere around in the office.

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Yep.

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>> Yep.

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I remember that day.

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>> Those examples are pretty
inspiring Cody, but

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if I get lost, how could I get support?

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>> Right, you know, we're talking
about Nikki in the robots and their

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Trail Blazers there wasn't there weren't
really a lot of people trying to do have

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school Game Dev back then so they had to
figure out all these things yourself, but

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then at some point past that they started
a for someone started a subreddit

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called are / Haskell Game Dev and

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they made a Wiki of how to get started.

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Now they're getting started I think
is more fitted to complex games and

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I would still recommend using gloss to get
started since it'll won't get you up and

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running the fastest but
some really good resources there.

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They also have a Haskell Game Dev Channel
on freenode if you're familiar with

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IRC chat and you can usually get pretty
quick help in the Haskell chat room.

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I'm guessing
the Haskell Game Dev is similar,

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then there's always stack Overflow.

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I've noticed quite a few
Game Dev questions and

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ask will get answered on stack Overflow.

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>> Gotcha.

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Nice.

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Yeah, I'll definitely give those a shot
it just to clarify somebody coming from

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let's say unity3d developing their
there's nothing like that currently for

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the high school Community right
like is basically C sharp for

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the most part in right Unity, right?

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>> Yeah.
Nothing is complete is Unity.

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There is a game engine that I think
attempted to be something like Unity

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called Helm that you might want to take a
look at I think it's still compiles latest

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GHC and is is working couldn't find any
good game examples of Though got you.

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>> Okay, cool.

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Thanks for
being on the show with me today Cody.

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>> No problem.

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It's been a lot of fun and thank you for
listening to the Haskell weekly podcast.

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>> And thank you for
listening to the Haskell Weekly Podcast.

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If you liked what you heard find out
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