itsapi / pycraft

A Minecraft-inspired game for the terminal

Pycraft

A command line based 2D Minecraft, runs best on *nix with Python 3.3+. Built by geraintwhite and olls.

Usage: python3 main.py

Controls

For the best control, set keyboard repeat time to around 200-300ms.

Menus:
   Move up                    - W or UP
   Move down                  - S or DOWN
   Select                     - SPACE or RETURN
   Pause                      - SPACE or RETURN
Blocks:
   Break/place block          - K
   Move cursor clockwise      - L
   Move cursor anti-clockwise - J
Inventory:
   Cycle inventory down       - O
   Cycle inventory up         - U
   Toggle crafting menu       - C
   Craft selected item        - I
Movement:
   Move left                  - A
   Move right                 - D
   Jump                       - W

Crafting

A number of items are only obtainable through the crafting system. Items that can be crafted with the materials in the player inventory will automatically show up in the crafting grid. Press C to toggle selection between inventory and crafting grid. Press I to craft the currently selected item.

Recipes:

• 6 sticks:
  • 1 wood
• 4 torches:
  • 1 stick
  • 1 coal
• ladder:
  • 3 sticks
• wooden pickaxe:
  • 2 sticks
  • 3 wood
• stone pickaxe:
  • 2 sticks
  • 3 stone
• iron pickaxe:
  • 2 sticks
  • 3 iron
• diamond pickaxe:
  • 2 sticks
  • 3 diamonds

Tools:

Certain blocks require the right tool before being able to mine it. The tool has to be selected in inventory to be able to use it. Each tier of pickaxe can break more blocks than the previous tier.

• fist (i.e. don't need a tool):
  • grass
  • tall grass
  • wood
  • leaves
  • torch
  • ladder
• wooden pickaxe:
  • stone
• stone pickaxe:
  • coal
  • iron
• iron pickaxe:
  • redstone
  • gold
  • diamond
• diamond pickaxe:
  • emerald

Using the C Renderer

The C renderer is likely to be faster than the Python renderer. To use the C renderer, it must be compiled first. To complile, run the command: python3 setup.py build in the root of the repository. Then run the game as normal and go into settings to switch the renderers.

Please report any bugs in the C renderer, or differences between the Python renderer and the C renderer in issues.

Contributing

We welcome pull requests or issues for bug reports/fixes or new feature ideas! Help us make the game more fun :D

pycraft's Issues

Windows

It would be nice if we could get it running on most platforms. I sorta got it running on Windows, the main hurdle to get it running was input, then it is playable. The issues we have are:

• The Windows input is only blocking which means we can't use arrow keys on the menu, and the game only runs while the user is inputting.
  Fixed with 48b1629 - non blocking input works on windows.
• There is a problem with msvcrt.getch returning bytes instead of a string, this causes problems with arrow keys.
  Fixed with 3a0df67 - fix for Windows arrow keys input.
• Colours are the only real problem although it is playable without them.
• In Windows the clear screen code (and all escape codes...) doesn't work, and arrow keys don't work (No longer used). Add support for turning them off.

Add block placing rules

Only allow certain blocks to be placed on others.

E.g:

• tall grass can only be placed on grass blocks or other tall grass
• torches can only be placed on solid blocks

Terrain Gen Ideas

More terrain generation features would be a good idea. This is an issue to collect a list of possible ideas and work out how to implement them. Due to the limitations of the terminal we'll have to be careful which features we add and how they work.

• Caves
• Bigger hills (mountains) / more interesting
• Forests
• Biomes
• Structures (Villages?)

Make saves list match servers list

Ref #50, we could put new save and delete save in the saves list.

Coloured String Length

There are a few places where we might need to get the length of a string which may have been coloured. (For example in the first row, title, of the inventory/crafting grids) This causes a problem, because the escape codes add to the length of the string. Maybe we should make a function which strips the escape codes to get the correct length of a string

Biomes

The current implementation of biomes is just identified by the spawn rate of trees. This makes it hard to use for anything else, it should be rewritten to identify biomes properly, and maybe add more types (eg grass rates, ore rates?).

Problem with ui.error()

ui.error() seems to be called twice from the select server menu.

Disconnect Clients on Server Quit

Some sort of game meta.json

Related to #50, we should create a meta file to store certain settings:

• Server list
• Login name
• ...

Hierarchy of Blocks

There should be a hierarchy which shows which blocks are allowed to replace other blocks during the spawning process, for example to stop leaves spawning in other blocks.

Improving console I/O

A general issue for collecting ideas/resources for improvements to the I/O.

Links

http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/hackguide.html
http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#additional_reading
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Text-Terminal-HOWTO.html

Proper chunking

Rewrite save handling to work with chunks rather than keeping the whole map in memory.

Ghosts

All the players in meta are always displayed, this would probably be fixed as a part of #36.

Improve architecture of server-client interface

Split server and client into separate classes.
Have remote and local interfaces for both.
Improve handling of map #34.

Keyboard shortcuts confusing

The keyboard shortcuts may need changing as they are very confusing.

Reset craft counter when an item is crafted

List of Servers

Maybe show recent servers, or a user specified list?

Inventory grid scroll position changes

If the inventory selector makes the inventory scroll down, when you go into the crafting grid the inventory will scroll back up because the inventory selector isn't being passed into render grid.

CLS

The current CLS variable in console.py is chr(27) + '[2J', which is equivalent to the clear command in bash, which just scrolls the console down (at least in gnome-terminal). The code \033c actually clears the terminal, which makes the game much smoother. Unfortunately this conflicts with something in the program, probably the colors module, and causes like: ;37m to be printed out in the middle of the terminal. There is lots of info here but I can't find one which works.

Cannot Connect to Server Error Message

Also validation for port

Multiplayer

In order to do this:

• rewrite save handling to use chunking in memory #23
• write a server program to handle distributing chunks to clients, keeping track of player locations (we will need something similar for keeping track of mobs)
• modify client code to accept chunks from the server and render other players
• combine server and client code #36

Ingame Debbuging Info

Server doesn't close socket on disconnect

Cannot load world until game restarted.

Escape codes

In windows the clear screen code doesn't work, and arrow keys don't work.

Make multiplayer a toggle in the pause menu

Replace show port with a multiplayer enable toggle.
Pausing should behave differently on single player/server #46

Show selector in different colour in not selected grid

Mentioned in #25 and #21, to allow placing and breaking blocks while in crafting menu the inv sel should be a different colour.

Help section

To display keyboard shortcuts and such #1

Global Tick for Servers

Clients need to keep the tick in sync with the server

Tree Leave Positioning

The positioning of the leaves is still broken :( If you add the following tree, for some reason it places the leaves one block up from where they should be:

# These works:
((0, 1, 1),
 (0, 1, 0),
 (0, 1, 1)),
((0, 1, 1),
 (1, 1, 0),
 (0, 1, 1)),
#This dosn't:
((1, 1),
 (1, 0),
 (1, 1))

Sockets on Server Server not Closed on Client Disconnect

Investigate chunk sizes

The chunk sizes for a world generated in the multiplayer branch:

[('12.chunk', 16), ('4.chunk', 16), ('8.chunk', 16), ('18.chunk', 16), ('0.chunk', 64), ('7.chunk', 16), ('3.chunk', 16), ('5.chunk', 16), ('14.chunk', 16), ('17.chunk', 16), ('20.chunk', 16), ('6.chunk', 16), ('-1.chunk', 64), ('11.chunk', 16), ('1.chunk', 64), ('10.chunk', 16), ('9.chunk', 16), ('16.chunk', 16), ('-2.chunk', 64), ('19.chunk', 16), ('13.chunk', 16), ('15.chunk', 16), ('2.chunk', 16)]

A world from the master branch:

[('12.chunk', 16), ('4.chunk', 16), ('21.chunk', 16), ('8.chunk', 16), ('18.chunk', 16), ('0.chunk', 16), ('7.chunk', 16), ('3.chunk', 16), ('5.chunk', 16), ('14.chunk', 16), ('17.chunk', 16), ('20.chunk', 16), ('6.chunk', 16), ('-1.chunk', 16), ('11.chunk', 16), ('22.chunk', 3), ('1.chunk', 16), ('10.chunk', 16), ('9.chunk', 16), ('16.chunk', 16), ('-2.chunk', 11), ('19.chunk', 16), ('13.chunk', 16), ('15.chunk', 16), ('2.chunk', 16)]

Comments

The comments in the source code need some work. Lines like this:

inp = char if char in 'wadkjlh;b'+chr(2) else None

shouldn't exist without a comment.

Unicode Blocks

Using Unicode we can probably create a much better looking blocks, the problem is finding the correct characters to use, I have found a few possibilities using this site. We also have to be careful to use single character width characters.

Player

These are some ideas for the player, but they aren't quite right.

Top

o
𝙾
⍾
⚘
⟟
𐌒
😒😔😵😣😱🐵

(Maybe the player can have different states: expressions, move arms, legs etc...)

Bottom

Λ ᴧ
ᐱ ^
ⴷ ⑃
⋀ 𝝠
𐌡 ꘍
ʌ ƛ
Ʌ ⎍
∧ ⚻
𐤂 ⵅ
╳ 

This would be nice, but not really going to work: 웃.
(Hand (Cursor): ☟) :P

Grass

⌒
𐤆
~
┉
┈
ᨏ
ᚇ
෴
░ (Current)

Ores

⠫ ❋
∷ ⚫
። 𝌹
⢍ ☀
⣒ ⎔
ꖜ ✴
∵ ⌘
ꗷ ▦
• ▢

Leaves

♧
❋
✻
❇

Feature Ideas

We should add more features at some point to make the game something you can actually play for longer than ten minutes before getting bored.

I think the design is quite scalable, it's more a question of working out how to add cool features within the restrictions of the terminal. For example a crafting system is relatively doable, the harder part would be figuring out the recipes because we've got such a limited range of blocks. The other sort-of barrier at the moment is the frame updates, anything that needs to be continuously moving without interaction with the player, is kind of out of the question. So we need to find ways to implement features like this without continuous movement, like the sun, it moves so slowly, it doesn't really matter that it only updates when the player moves. (As of 4746469 we have proved continuous movement is possible)

Some brainstorming:

Crafting Ideas

Some recipes to maybe make it worth implementing:

• Wood > sticks > torches, ladders 139ae03 (torches 49c7b09)
• Wood > doors
• Stone > bricks
• Sticks + stone > tools 39f90f0
• Wood > Amour

Tools

We could give different blocks different durabilities, so you need different tools to break them, e.g.: pick needed for stone, axe needed for wood, at minimum. 39f90f0

Health (Hunger?)

Plants -> Food?
Amour would be a nice easy feature to add visually to this, just need to change the characters of the player.
Killing animals can increase health, (ae1d878 Eat mob drops to restore health) ~~ mobs can decrease your health. ~~ (ff427e0 Mobs attack players)

Light levels

Maybe we could add light levels and a day/night cycle to the game. We would have limitation with the colours, but I think even if we can get two or three levels it will be worth it. Or maybe it could use denser characters to represent darker light levels? Torches are another feature which would go with this. I think the limitations of the colours will be too much to make this work. It works! (49c7b09) Maybe there could be a sun to represent the time? There is!

Worlds

Things like the Nether, End... This feature would be less susceptible to the limitations of the terminal as it does not need to fit in to the current world (other than a portal, but maybe you could access them another way , e.g.: crafting something?).

Mobs?

Zombies: take your health
Sheep: give you food

Blocks

Plants? e.g.: long grass a0dfa73

Game hangs when logging in with same username as already connected

And other multiplayer bugs...

Loading from the save file on server

The load_chunks method in both RemoteServer and Server assume the chunks passed are not already loaded in memory, this is checked in the main loop. But now the server has different chunks loaded in memory to the client, so the server might have chunks already loaded in memory, but it will always reload them when load_chunks is called externally.

I'm not sure what would be the best way to fix this. If we add checks to the Server.load_chunks function then it will be doing the checks twice unnecessarily on the host, but we need to do the checks on the clients and the server.

Selector doesn't show up when item added to empty crafting grid

If the crafting grid is empty and an item is added to it when you are focused on the inventory, the selector doesn't show up when you focus on the crafting grid.

supported_chars does not always work

On some platforms, with certain characters, the console.supported_chars function does not seem to work. For example the grass character: ░ causes the game to crash on several platforms.

Improve ui.py menus

We need to allow different types of menu items:

• spacer entries
• label entries that have no click action

Config

I don't like that we've now got some config in JSON and the rest in Python, it should probably all be in JSON. We should also be using the JSON data to generate the help and to detect key presses.

Remove item from empty slot

Program crashes if you try to remove item from an empty slot.

Differential Output is Weird when the Window is too Small

For some reason when the window is too short, the bedrock still gets rendered at the bottom.

Normal:

Too small:

Pausing

Pause on a server shouldn't pause anything, related: #48

Generic Structure Generation

As we add more structures to the game ( #10 ), it is going to get messy with each of them having roughly the same code, just with some different rules. It would be good if we could define the placement rules in the data.py along with the structures, and then have one function which generates the structures based on that data.

It's possible to go into the ceiling when climbing over a block

Possibly happens in chunk errors.

Changing crafting number when crafting grid is empty gives IndexError

If you craft all the items in the crafting grid, and then press +/- while still selected on the crafting grid it gives IndexError: list index out of range.

We should probably switch back to inv when crafting grid is empty.

Network Communication Buggy

It keeps missing bits! Why are we still losing bits of the data? TCP should be reliable!

From Wikipedia:

TCP detects these problems, requests retransmission of lost data, rearranges out-of-order data, and even helps minimize network congestion to reduce the occurrence of the other problems. If the data still remains undelivered, its source is notified of this failure

TCP Definition:

TCP uses error correction and data stream control techniques to ensure that packets to arrive at their intended destinations uncorrupted and in the correct sequence, thereby making the point-to-point connection virtually error-free. Packets are the most fundamental unit of data transmission on TCP/IP networks.

We need to figure out why it's not.

Unicode

If we are going to start using more Unicode characters (#9) we need to make sure we are encoding them properly when saving and reading (The save files already use plain ASCII), and we need to provide fallbacks for terminals which don't support the chars. We should be using supported_chars to find a supported character for every character that gets printed.

You can break/place blocks while in the crafting menu

While you are focussed on the crafting grid it is possible to break/place blocks using K. Because the inv_sel is hidden it means you can't see what you're placing.

ui.py is very confusing :(