ASCII / curses arcade style games written in Perl
My first introduction to computers started back in the 1980s when, as a kid, I enjoyed creating simple ASCII games to keep myself entertained with both the programming and playing aspects.
Back then I was using a Tandy Model 2 computer. Later, as an adult I thought it would be fun to recreate a couple of those games. In the early 2000s my favorite language and one I was teaching classes on, was Perl, and so that is the language I used.
Amazingly enough, one of my games "Perl Defense Blaster" caught the eye of Marcel Gagné who was writing articles for Linux Journal magazine, and so I got a few fun paragraphs written about it, with a nice shout-out:
Linux Journal article with PerlDefenseBlaster
Now, with more code and solutions available online, I thought it would be a good time to add it to GitHub, along with several other projects of mine from over the years.
Last I looked, it requires the Curses.pm, Term::ReadKey.pm and Time::HiRes Perl modules.
These are just simple Perl scripts, so aside from getting those dependencies installed, these scripts just need to be run with:
perl PerlDefenseBlast.pl
and the like.
This collection should have 3 separate games:
-
Defend your planet from the alien invasion!
Use the "4" and "6" keys on the number pad to move -
Vertical scrolling racing game!
-
Kill the mutants!
In my eyes, these small games are finished, as they are very close to the same look and feel of what I created as a kid in the 80s. However, if we find bugs or efficiency tweaks, there's always room for improvement.
I've got a growing community in our Discord server. I'd love to hear from you!
https://discord.gg/PmuBvGF5Sp
If you'd like to support my work (coding, livestreaming, teaching, etc) please consider buying me a "coffee"!
https://ko-fi.com/rock808
And joining / subscribing to my Twitch and YouTube channels, where I'm often doing livestreams:
https://www.twitch.tv/rock808/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@rock808
