Lucas WintherandClaude Opus 5.5
34c655c1a4
Adds course/11-conditions: lesson, scenarios, nine test_11 tests in both tracks, the cumulative reference (Module 10's plus conditions) and the NEAR drop. The engine learns a condition role, rules carry conditions, and Level.hasProperty and conversion evaluate content's condition checks against the board whenever a rule is used. Resolution pairs only rules with the same conditions. Catalog, harness contract, research notes and the diff-tracks generator follow. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
54 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
54 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
# Systemic Design Course
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A free, hands-on course on **systemic game design**. You learn by rebuilding the rules machinery of two games, then extending it:
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- **Part I: Hearthstone** (cards, zones, triggers, death phases, auras, text assembly)
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- **Part II: Baba Is You** (rules as pushable text, parsing, movement, win/lose; Module 11 adds conditions, `BABA ON KEY IS WIN`)
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- **Part III: SpellGrid**, a small original game that combines both systems
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- **Module 13: Break your own engine**, an optional closing module on testing what the tests miss: mutation testing, invariants, metamorphic relations, undo and replay, and a level solver
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Every module follows the same beats: Observe, Predict, Spec, Build, Name it, Expansion Drop, Stress it, Further reading. The Expansion Drop is the test of your design: you add new content without touching the engine. Stress it is optional: edge cases and stretch exercises that push the design past what the module's tests check.
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## Two paths
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- **Designer path**: read the lessons and scenarios, predict outcomes, and reason about the design.
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- **Builder path**: also make the tests pass in your own engine.
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## Mentor path
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Prefer a Socratic partner? Install the [mentor skill](mentor/README.md) and let your AI agent guide you without writing your code.
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## Two tracks
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Builder path exercises exist in **Rust** and **TypeScript**. Both tracks have identical test names, matching the scenarios in each module's `scenarios.md`.
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## Quick start
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From the course repository:
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```sh
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node --version # Node 22 or later for the course tooling (CI uses 24)
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npm run test:tools # tooling tests
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npm run check # test names agree across Rust, TS and scenarios
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```
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Create your workspace from the template for your track (Module 00, "Before Module 1: choose your track", has the details). Copy the whole directory with `cp -r` so the hidden `.course.json` comes along:
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```sh
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cp -r workspace-template/rust ~/my-engine # or workspace-template/ts
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cd ~/my-engine && git init && git add -A && git commit -m "start from template" && cd -
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node tools/start-module.mjs 01 ~/my-engine
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```
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`start-module` copies a module's tests for your track (from your workspace's `.course.json`) and refuses to start a module if you have not yet taken the previous one. Module 00 uses the `naive-engine/` project and is not started this way, and Module 13 has no tests to start.
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Other tools: `tools/coupling-audit.mjs <workspace>` (engine code must not name specific cards or nouns), `tools/expansion-check.mjs <workspace> <baseRef>` (an Expansion Drop must change content only), `tools/verify-references.mjs [NN]` (reference solutions pass the tests; `--expansion` also checks every Expansion Drop solution), `tools/play-spellgrid.mjs <rust|ts> [l1..l10]` (play the Module 10 capstone, SpellGrid, on the command line with the reference engine), `tools/solve-spellgrid.mjs [l1..l10|level.json]` (search a SpellGrid level for its shortest solution by brute force; `--never-rule "X IS Y"` asks whether it can be solved without a given rule; see Module 13), `tools/verify-levels.mjs [level ...]` (checks every claim in `course/10-spellgrid/levels/proofs.json` with the solver: each level's shortest solution, and that it can't be solved without its idea; `npm run verify:levels`), `tools/diff-tracks.mjs [--seeds N] [--seed S] [--module NN] [--dir D] [--keep]` (differential fuzzer: plays random SpellGrid levels and scripts on the Rust and the TypeScript reference CLIs and fails on the first seed where they print different text or one of them crashes; `npm run diff:tracks`).
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## Licence
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MIT, for both prose and code. See [LICENSE](LICENSE). The course is and stays free.
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## Disclaimer
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Not affiliated with Blizzard or Hempuli. See the [disclaimer](site/src/content/docs/disclaimer.md) (also the Disclaimer page of the course website).
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