Basics of a Bash action game

If you want to write an action game in bash, you need the ability to check for user input without actually waiting for it. While bash doesn’t let you poll the keyboard in a great way, it does let you wait for input for a miniscule amount of time with read -t 0.0001.

Here’s a snippet that demonstrates this by bouncing some text back and forth, and letting the user control position and color. It also sets (and unsets) the necessary terminal settings for this to look good:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Reset terminal on exit
trap 'tput cnorm; tput sgr0; clear' EXIT

# invisible cursor, no echo
tput civis
stty -echo

text="j/k to move, space to color"
max_x=$(($(tput cols) - ${#text}))
dir=1 x=1 y=$(($(tput lines)/2))
color=3

while sleep 0.05 # GNU specific!
do
    # move and change direction when hitting walls
    (( x == 0 || x == max_x )) && \
        ((dir *= -1))
    (( x += dir ))


    # read all the characters that have been buffered up
    while IFS= read -rs -t 0.0001 -n 1 key
    do
        [[ $key == j ]] && (( y++ ))
        [[ $key == k ]] && (( y-- ))
        [[ $key == " " ]] && color=$((color%7+1))
    done

    # batch up all terminal output for smoother action
    framebuffer=$(
        clear
        tput cup "$y" "$x"
        tput setaf "$color"
        printf "%s" "$text"
    )

    # dump to screen
    printf "%s" "$framebuffer"
done

2 thoughts on “Basics of a Bash action game”

  1. Very clever! However, it breaks when you move the line above the screen…

    Reply

  2. This script is a clean interactive CLI example.

    You call a game the info that is represented :) but you can create anything you imagine, like active monitoring actions.

    I’ll try to learn some of the commands that you use for each action :)
    Also liked the Linux ate my ram graphics.

    Thank you.

    Reply

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