Terminal Snake Game

A classic Snake game implementation using the Termeric terminal graphics engine. The game features smooth animations, performance monitoring, and responsive controls in a terminal environment.

Overview

This Snake game demonstrates the capabilities of the Termeric engine with:

• Smooth snake movement with variable speed based on direction
• Apple collection mechanics for snake growth
• Collision detection
• Screen wrapping
• Performance monitoring

Game Features

Controls

• w - Move Up
• s - Move Down
• a - Move Left
• d - Move Right
• Ctrl+q - Quit game

Gameplay Elements

• Snake (#): Controlled by the player
• Apple (*): Collect to grow longer
• Screen wrapping: Snake can move through edges
• Collision detection: Game ends if snake hits itself

Technical Features

Movement System

• Different render intervals for horizontal/vertical movement to account for terminal character spacing
• Smooth movement using timer-based updates
• Configurable movement speeds:

  #define X_RENDER_INTERVAL 50000  // Horizontal movement timing
  #define Y_RENDER_INTERVAL 100000 // Vertical movement timing
  #define MOVE_INTERVAL 100000     // Base movement speed

Snake Implementation

• Dynamic body growth using vector data structure
• Efficient collision detection
• Separate rendering and movement logic
• Random apple placement

Requirements

• Termeric engine (included)
• POSIX-compliant operating system
• C compiler with C11 support
• Terminal with ANSI escape sequence support

Building

gcc main.c -o snake

Key Features

Snake Structure

typedef struct Snake {
    Vec* x;         // X coordinates of snake segments
    Vec* y;         // Y coordinates of snake segments
    int8_t vx;      // X velocity
    int8_t vy;      // Y velocity
    uint8_t size;   // Current snake length
    int16_t apple_x; // Apple X position
    int16_t apple_y; // Apple Y position
} Snake;

Performance Monitoring

• Frame timing statistics
• Configurable update intervals

Implementation Details

Initialization

The snake starts with:

• Initial size of 5 segments
• Moving right
• Centered position
• Random apple placement

Game Loop

1. Input processing
2. Movement updates
3. Collision detection
4. Apple collection
5. Screen rendering

Collision System

• Self-collision detection
• Apple collection detection
• Screen boundary handling with wrapping

Performance

The game includes built-in performance monitoring that tracks:

• Frame times
• FPS calculations
• Min/max frame times
• Average performance metrics

Configuration

Several parameters can be adjusted in the source:

• Initial snake size (INIT_SIZE)
• Movement intervals
• Buffer sizes
• Screen update rates