README.md

   1 # VIIper - a Snake Clone for Unicode-compatible Terminals
   2
   3 TODO: find a better name
   4
   5 ## Dependencies
   6
   7  - A VTE based terminal (like GNOME Terminal and a whole bunch of others)
   8  - Google Noto's Color Emoji Font (Fedora: `google-noto-emoji-color-fonts.noarch`)
   9
  10 ## Keybindings
  11
  12 hjkl or cursor keys move the snake.
  13 r to restart, p to pause, q to quit.
  14
  15 ## TODO
  16
  17  - DONE base game: fixed field size, fixed speed
  18  - food (unicode)
  19  - put 'sprites' into `schemes.h`
  20  - snake elongates
  21  - unicode chars
  22  - timer, score, increasing speed
  23  - special items: slower snake, shorter snake, etc.
  24  - input buffer (so fast 180° turns get executed)
  25  - wall-wrap-around mode?
  26
  27 ## Notes
  28
  29 ### terminal compat
  30
  31 to display emojis, we need a terminal that can handle a color emoji font (no
  32 shit, sherlock). mlterm, xterm and urxvt didn't work in my tests (mlterm might
  33 work if compiled correctly, the other two use bitmap fonts and i don't think
  34 there are any w/ emoji support). konsole will have to be tested in the future.
  35 i intend to put bonus items in the game that will only be visible for a short
  36 time. when they get near the end of their life, SGI-5 (blink) will make them
  37 blink. this is supported in gnome-term 3.28 (vte 0.52) which is supplied with
  38 fedora 28. [bug report](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=579964)
  39
  40 ### drawing the snake
  41
  42 to draw the snake with box chars, we need to know which glyph to draw.
  43
  44 our current position is X, and our predecessor and successor are on one of
  45 `[NESW]` of us (we need to compute the relpos from the absolute). we need to
  46 draw a line between them. note that head and tail have `NULL` as pre-/successor.
  47
  48 ```
  49    [N]
  50 [W][X][E]
  51    [S]
  52 ```
  53
  54 6 combinations (+ reverse):
  55  - N-S -> `||`
  56  - W-E -> `==`
  57  - N-E -> `'=`
  58  - E-S -> `,=`
  59  - S-W -> `=,`
  60  - W-N -> `='`