Starwars

Simple ncurses implementation of old terminal game, can run in a terminal or Web.

Terminal implementation uses lanterna ncurses Java library, while Web version uses HTML <canvas> and TeaVM Java => JavaScript transpiler.

To rebuild everything, use this command:

./gradlew --no-daemon clean assemble teavm

(NOTE: The reason we're using --no-daemon is because in some circumstances teavm task fails to take into account updated source; though I suspect that's only a problem with multi-module gradle projects, but anyway)

There are three ways you can run it:

• Using lanterna-based Java terminal emulator:

./gradlew run

• In the current terminal, using lanterna-based ncurses implementation:

etc/javarun.sh build/distributions/starwars-1.0-SNAPSHOT.zip

• In the browser, by opening file docs/starwars.html

open docs/starwars.html

Or simply use hosted version https://kign.github.io/starwars/starwars.html.

Commands:

• SPACE shoot
• ← and → to control ship's movements and speed
• P to pause
• Q or ESC to quit (pause in Web version)

Implementation notes

• Project is designed in a modular fashion to make it possible to similarly add other terminal games;
• We don't yet use colors; terminal version will use your current foreground and background colors, lanterna emulator used white on black, Web version is white on teal, which has a benefit of working nicely despite one's local configuration. Still, we might adopt some color palette in the future;
• Similarly, we don't use Unicode symbols. This makes it more fun 😉;
• TeaVM doesn't yet support some Java standard library methods added in Java 1.8 or later. This necessitates special library Utils.java
• Originally, I was planning to generate Web Assembly from Java classes, but current version of TeaVM sadly has Web Assembly generator broken. That said, there is little downside to using JavaScript version;
• Also, for simplicity I am not using minifying, which makes generated 3,500-lines JavaScript file almost readable. There is an option to turn it on in build.gradle;
• When run in a terminal (native or emulator), we save a "trail file" which could then be replayed (when passed as an argument) for testing or for fun.