ANIMALS(6)

📦 version 202601041054Z, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ ANIMALS ✨

okay bestie, gather round, because this is a section 6 game page (that's Games Manual territory, iykyk) and it's about animals 💖

🌸 NAME 🌸

animals — the traditional AI game that literally learns about animals from you. yes, from the player. you're the teacher. main character energy fr fr 🫶

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

animals [DatabaseFile [TypeString [PluralTypeString]]]

or

animals {-h|--help}

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so this manual page documents, briefly, the animals game. and animals? it's a text-based animal guessing game. that's the whole vibe. no graphics, no controller, just you, a terminal, and a creature you're keeping secret 💅

👑 RULES 👑

okay so here's how it goes, step by step:

  1. you think of an animal. any animal. hold it in your head.
  2. hit enter once you've got one — the game is waiting on you, don't leave it on read.
  3. then the game hits you with yes-or-no questions that successively narrow down your animal. it's converging on you. it's giving detective 🔥
  4. eventually the game makes a guess and asks you if it was right.
  5. if it was wrong? you win! 🎉
  6. and then you teach it about your animal. that's it. that's the whole loop. it literally learns from you.

🍓 FILES 🍓

  • /var/games/animals/animals.db

that's where the whole animal brain lives, no cap.

💜 AUTHOR 💜

this manual page was originally written by Jim Lynch <jim@laney.edu> (for the Debian GNU/Linux system, for the record). the current Author is Philipp "ph3-der-loewe" Schafft <lion@lion.leolix.org>. 🫶

🌈 HISTORY 🌈

  • animals was initially released on Fri, 4th of Jun 1999. vintage. iconic. a true elder.
  • on Fri, 16th of Jul 2010, the first non-Debian-native version was released. ✨
  • this was part of the takeover by Philipp Schafft (see AUTHORS) of the Debian — because it was orphaned, poor thing 😭
  • on Wed, 27th of Jun 2012 he abdicated Debian maintainership, but he's still upstream author. king behaviour. he didn't leave the group chat, he just changed roles 👑

that's the whole page, bestie!! 💖 and yeah — this version is from July 2012, it's ANIMALS(6) from the Games Manual, so if you ever forget how to teach a computer about a capybara, you know exactly where to look 🦋🌸

📦 where this page comes from