BPG, a Game for Linux and Mac

Note, this is a copy of the post I made on audiogames.net before I found this community. There are a few posts there that tell how to get things going on the Mac, and in Cygwin for Windows. Also, as posted there, even though this game is for sale at a price of $10, I would much rather people play my game and have fun than not be able to afford the price and not have access. So, if you would rather obtain it in a different way, let me know. There’s always something that can be done, reviews, how-to(s) etc.

This is an optionally interactive explore and RPG style combat game. If you choose to not interract, it will make all decisions for you. The timeouts are reasonably long to give you a chance to review the screen if needed. The requirements are minimal, you need bash greater than version 4.2, bc, dialog and sox. The game is available for a cost of $10 from https://stormux.org/products/bpg and is available under the DBAD License. Here is the README in its current incarnation.

[code]## Requirements

To run, the game needs:

  • bc
  • dialog
  • sox

Please make sure you have the required programs installed before launching the game.

About the Game

You are on an adventure through several soundscapes. Along the way, you will encounter enemies, find items, and gain aid from allies, your pet and mount. Exploration is done automatically, you will walk through the level without having to do anything.

Playing the Game

You can put as much or as little effort into the game as you wish. If you just want to listen to the events, you need not interact in any way. The game will play itself, making decisions on its own. If you do want to interact, however, you can press enter on informational dialogues, and select your attack type in battle. Your options will change based on the items you have available.

You can find several items, including scrolls, runes, daggers, and other items that will unlock new areas. Just a note on runes, to use one in combat, just arrow down to rune and press enter. As the game warns, beware, the magic that happens from using a rune is unknown, runes are useful, but not much is understood about them.

Exploration Keybindings

Press any key while you are walking to check your current status. If there is an item in range, you will get it. Items make an alert sound while in range. If you do not get the item, the character will automatically get it about half of the time. All modification keys are combined with the shift key. The following keys interact with your character.

  • shift+H: Use a heal scroll.
  • shift+I: Toggle item alerts. Useful if you want to just listen, and not interact.
  • shift+N: Toggle battles. If you just want to walk through the soundscapes peacefully.
  • shift+P: Pause the game. Use enter to resume. Useful to review the screen without being interrupted by a battle.
  • shift+Q: Exit the game.
  • shift+R: Realtime updates. Useful if you are not using a screen reader and want information displayed as it changes.

Combat keybindings

  • Down: move down the battle options list.
  • Up: move up the battle options list.
  • Enter: Select the chosen item, or dismiss informational dialogues.

Program Flags

To get a list of the available flags for the game, type:

./bpg.sh -h

The help screen explains each flag and what it does. Most flags, except for volume, start the game in a given mode such as no combat or item alerts off. The toggle keys will still work in game if you want to change modes later.
[/code]

OK, this is interesting indeed, at least we now have proper games that only run on linux and unix like operating systems.
I know this might be so of-topic that it will be unexpected, but since android is a kinda unix based OS at its core, meh, only the kernel is, but anyways, is it possible to run such a game with termux or a similar app?

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It is actually awesome that you would ask about Termux. I just rediscovered it a few days back, and wondered if I could get BPG working on it. So, I did and it does.
It is not a stellar experience by any means though. If you use talkback, it is hard to interract with the game. You can install TDSR, and it works somewhat better. You will have best results with an external keyboard, but even then, speech-dispatcher is quite flakey, and requires lots of cursing, yelling, and screaming at to work, and it hasn’t ever worked twice in a row without a repeated performance of the prescribed yelling etc.
The way I had the most success with it is to ssh into the phone and run it like that. But, at that point, may as well run it on the computer. lol

It might be possible, but I don’t know how pallitable the experience would be with Talkback. Last I tried it, Talkback would read the entire screen again after I finished typing in a command, but it might be worth a shot just to flex the brain a bit.

indeed, plus the use of the password keyboard, unable to edit previous commands, etc.
I noticed that all terminal emulators kinda look like this there’s a canvas that tb can somehow read, but only the whole screen at a time, plus no way to reinput the previous commands, unlabled buttons that I DK what they do, etc.
I wander, can we rise this issue with termux devs? should we tell them about this accessibility issue?
because of how the app is ment to look like a terminal, how much of what I said above can be fixed? I don’t even imagine how an accessible terminal app would look on droid, as I can’t imagine properly exploring a terminal with a touchscreen.
any ideas, anyone?

I guess it would be each line of output would be its own element for maximum reviewability, with a keyboard element for typing. You could have an onRender handler to have TalkBack read each incoming line.