Archetype

Archetype is a programming language designed originally for writing text-based adventure games. Its syntax is object-oriented and message-passing, making it natural to model the rooms, objects, and actors of an interactive fiction world. A brief introduction and historical notes can be found at derektjones.net/archetype.

The language was originally created in the early 1990s in Turbo Pascal and has been fully reimplemented in modern C++. Compiled game files (.acx) are fully resumable, so that a save file is simply a mutated copy of the original binary, which makes it straightforward to deploy an adventure as a stateless cloud service (see Cloud deployment below).

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Building

The preferred build method uses CMake:

cmake -S src -B build
cmake --build build

This produces a build/archetype binary. The source is also simple enough that a direct compile works:

c++ src/*.cc -o archetype

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Running a game

Games are in the games/ directory and are written in .arch source files.

Compile and run from source

./build/archetype --source=games/gorreven.arch --include=games

--include tells the compiler where to find standard.arch and other shared library files.

Compile to a binary, then run

This is the preferred method if you are intending to share your game as a single file.

Compile once to a .acx binary:

./build/archetype --source=games/gorreven.arch --include=games --create
# Creates: gorreven.acx

Then run the compiled binary:

./build/archetype --perform=gorreven.acx

Resume / update (stateless step-by-step)

--update loads a .acx file, processes one command, and writes the mutated state back to the same file. This is the mechanism underlying the cloud driver:

./build/archetype --update=gorreven.acx --input="look"

The game's response is written to stdout, and the file is updated in place. Running --update again from the same file continues exactly where you left off.

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The REPL

Archetype includes an interactive Read-Eval-Print Loop for general exploration:

./build/archetype --repl

From the REPL you can load a binary, inspect state, and send messages directly to objects:

> "gorreven.acx" -> system
> 'UPDATE' -> main

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Running the tests

./build/archetype --test

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Cloud deployment

Archetype's --update mode powers a GCP Cloud Run driver that lets a player step through a game one command at a time via HTTP. The game state lives in a Google Cloud Storage bucket as a .acx file that is updated on every request.

Full build and deployment instructions are in drivers/README.md. A quick taste:

# Deploy
gcloud builds submit --config cloudbuild.yaml
gcloud run deploy archetype --image gcr.io/PROJECT_ID/archetype \
  --platform managed --region us-west1 --allow-unauthenticated

# Play via curl
ENDPOINT=https://archetype-HASH-REGION.a.run.app
curl -X POST $ENDPOINT/update/gorreven.acx -F command=look
curl -X POST $ENDPOINT/update/gorreven.acx -F command="go north"

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Repository layout

Path	Contents
src/	C++ source for the Archetype interpreter
games/	Adventure game sources (.arch) and compiled binaries (.acx)
drivers/	Cloud Run driver (Python/Flask) and its README.md

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License

See LICENSE.