Overview

This project is a custom pygame implementation of the old flash game Hex Empire. This game is between 4 players on a hex board that take turns moving armies around the board to capture towns and eventually your opponent's capitals.

To run this project locally:

.venv/bin/python main.py

To run in a web browser, see the Web Build section below.

Todo

1. Make the options for the game editable through an interface
2. Run evolutionary algorithm to determine the best values for the CPU players
3. Tasks in the plan.txt file

Environment

Set up a Python virtual environment and install dependencies (tested on macOS with zsh):

# create venv and install
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# alternatively run the helper script
bash scripts/setup_env.sh

Notes:

• This project requires pygame-ce, numpy, and pygbag (listed in requirements.txt).
• The scripts/setup_env.sh script will create or reuse .venv, upgrade pip, and install from requirements.txt.

Web Build

The game can be run in a browser via pygbag, which compiles the pygame loop to WebAssembly.

First-time setup (once per machine, after the venv is created):

# Generate the HTML shell from template.tmpl — wait for "Serving python files from..." then Ctrl+C
.venv/bin/python -m pygbag --port 8000 --template template.tmpl main.py

# Build the game bundle and download the pygame-ce WASM wheel
.venv/bin/python build_web.py

After any code change:

.venv/bin/python build_web.py
.venv/bin/python -m http.server 8000 --directory build/web

Then open http://localhost:8000 in a browser. Click the page to dismiss the start prompt; on first load the WASM runtime (~25 MB) downloads from the pygbag CDN and is cached for subsequent runs.

Controls:

• Space — new game
• S — toggle stepping mode (pauses before each AI move; press Right Arrow to step, Left Arrow to undo)
• E — end turn (when playing as a human player)
• P / L — save / load a game state