README.md

   1 # VIIper - a Snake Clone for Unicode-compatible Terminals
   2
   3 TODO: find a better name
   4
   5 ## Dependencies
   6
   7 You'll need either a terminal emulator with good Unicode (Emoji) support and a
   8 compatible font, or an actual DEC VT220 to fully enjoy the graphics of this
   9 game. This is what I'd recommend:
  10
  11  - A VTE based terminal (like GNOME Terminal and a whole bunch of others)
  12  - Google Noto's Color Emoji Font (Fedora: `google-noto-emoji-color-fonts.noarch`)
  13
  14 ## Keybindings
  15
  16 `h`, `j`, `k`, `l` or cursor keys move the snake.
  17 `r` to restart, `p` to pause, `q` to quit.
  18
  19 ## TODO
  20
  21  - DONE base game: fixed field size, fixed speed
  22  - DONE food (unicode)
  23  - DONE put 'sprites' into `schemes.h`
  24  - DONE snake elongates
  25  - DONE unicode chars
  26  - DONE input buffer (so fast 180° turns get executed)
  27  - DONE only redraw changing parts of the screen
  28  - DONE input out of whack when stopping (^Z) and resuming
  29  - DONE keybindings for restart, pause, redraw
  30  - DONE on dying: show end screen, allow restarting
  31  - DONE score, increasing speed, ~~timer~~
  32  - DONE bonus/special items: slower snake, shorter snake, etc.
  33  - decaying points? (more points the faster you get the food)
  34  - wall-wrap-around mode?
  35  - fix all `grep -n TODO viiper.c`
  36
  37 ## Notes
  38
  39 ### terminal compat
  40
  41 to display emojis, we need a terminal that can handle a color emoji font (no
  42 shit, sherlock). mlterm, xterm and urxvt didn't work in my tests (mlterm might
  43 work if compiled correctly, the other two use bitmap fonts and i don't think
  44 there are any w/ emoji support).
  45 i intend to put bonus items in the game that will only be visible for a short
  46 time. when they get near the end of their life, SGI-5 (blink) will make them
  47 blink. this is supported in gnome-term 3.28 (vte 0.52) which is supplied with
  48 fedora 28. [bug report](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=579964)
  49 for KDE's konsole you'll need [this
  50 fontconfig](https://gist.github.com/IgnoredAmbience/7c99b6cf9a8b73c9312a71d1209d9bbb)
  51 and follow the steps inside.
  52
  53
  54 ### strange behaviour of SIGALRM
  55
  56 I'm using SIGALRM to advance the snake's position. during some refactoring I
  57 noticed that when the signal handler returns, a STX (ASCII 0x02) byte gets
  58 pushed onto stdin.