Achievements.el is meant to be a fun way to learn about Emacs. There is so much to learn about Emacs, that it can be quite daunting. Using an achievements system can hopefully make it fun. Achievements.el definitely doesn't take itself too seriously.
It is in a very rough state and any help is appreciated. Especially, since no single person can know everything about Emacs, achievements.el will need contributions by many people to be really useful. So if you have ideas, send a pull request, open an issue, or just spread the word.
The easiest way to install emacs achievements is through MELPA. To do this on a recent version of Emacs, add the following to your .emacs:
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "http://melpa.milkbox.net/packages/"))
(package-initialize)
Then run package-list-packages and install achievements via the interface.
Alternately, you can run (package-install 'achievements) via M-: or the
scratch buffer.
After installation, simply add (require 'achievements) to your .emacs if you
wish it to be loaded everytime.
There are two main entry points to the achievements package, namely:
achievements-list-achievementswhich shows a list of all the known achievements and whether you have earned them or not. This (re)calculates which achievements you have earned. Similar achievements are usually listed close to each other in this list. That's the only hint I'm going to give you.achievements-modeis a global minor mode which runs an idle timer (controlled byachievements-idle-time) to (re)calculate which achievements you have earned. Unfortunately, the recalculation can be somewhat slow, so you may not wish to run with this mode enabled. Many achievements can be deduced withoutachievements-moderunning. Therefore, you might want to only keep it on when you are trying to unlock a particular achievement. On the other hand, if you run with it disabled, you'll never know the pleasure of recieving a "You've earned the XXX achievement!" message.
With very few exceptions, an achievement once achieved will stay achieved. Achievements can be earned by running commands, setting variables, installing packages, or just about any other thing you can think of.
P.S. No cheating! (unless you want to)
I was introduced to the idea by this reddit discussion about a similar feature for Visual Studio. A few days ago I started thinking about achievements.el again. I couldn't stop thinking about it, and sometimes the only way for me to move on is to start working on it. So there you have it.
There is also another similar project achievements-mode. We are hoping the two will be merged at some point.
If you have an idea for an achievement, or a bug that needs to be fixed, head over to the repository and open a pull request or an issue.