bambam(6)

🎀 bambam — the manual page, bestie edition ✨

okay so you found bambam in the Games Manual and you're like "what is this" — don't worry, I got you 💖

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🌸 NAME 🌸

bambam — a keyboard mashing and doodling game for babies and toddlers 🍼✨

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🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

bambam [OPTIONS]

that's it. that's the whole vibe check. 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay first the flags, because we're organized like that 👑

• -u, --uppercase — shows UPPER-CASE letters. all caps era fr 🔠
• -d, --deterministic-sounds — produces the same sounds on the same key presses. predictable queen behavior 🎵
• -D, --dark — use a dark background instead of a light one. dark mode stays winning 🌙
• -m, --mute — starts muted. silent but deadly 🤫
• --sticky-mouse — starts with sticky mouse buttons enabled 🖱️
• --sound_blacklist=GLOB — a list of sound filename patterns to never play. banned. blocked. not on my watch 🚫
• --image_blacklist=GLOB — a list of image filename patterns to never show. also banned 🙈
• --extension=EXTENSION — use the specified extension 🧩
• --wayland-ok — do not prevent running under Wayland. see the NOTES section, bestie, this one matters 👀

so like, what even is bambam? it's a keyboard and mouse game for babies, written in Python 🐍✨

pressing letter keys prints them in random locations and colours 🌈 pressing any other key draws little pictures in random locations 🎨 dragging the mouse while the mouse button is pressed draws in randomly changing colours 💫 and the screen gets cleared at random. chaos. iconic. no notes. 👑

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💜 NOTES 💜

to quit, you literally just type the command mentioned in the upper left-hand corner of the window. in the English locales, that word is:

quit

⚠️ but bestie, be aware — there are ways to switch to another application from bambam. pay attention:

• when running under Wayland, it is not currently possible for bambam to grab all key presses 😭 a consequence of that is that if you use GNOME Shell, pressing the Windows (a.k.a. Super) key will activate the activities overview. please check your environment. as a workaround, starting with version 1.1.2, bambam will try to detect if it is running under Wayland. if this is the case, bambam will display a warning and refuse to work. you can disable this workaround with the --wayland-ok option 🔧
• bambam does not block virtual terminal switching (e.g. CTRL+ALT+F1). see the example 50-dont-vt-switch.conf file if you would like to block that 📄
• there may be other yet unknown ways in other environments and window managers 👻

for the above reasons, starting with version 1.2.0, it is possible and recommended to run bambam in a dedicated login session 🫶

• one way to do this is to select BamBam session type from your display manager settings when logging in (look for a gear icon) ⚙️
• another way is to use a command such as exec startx bambam from a text console 🖥️

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to turn the sound off and on, type:

sound

in the game 🔇🔊 the legacy mute and unmute commands are also supported for now — they will be removed in a future version, so don't get attached 💀

to toggle sticky mouse buttons, type:

mouse

in the game 🐭 in this mode, the mouse button only needs to be pressed once to start or stop drawing. one tap wonder ✨

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bambam loads images (GIF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF files) and sounds (WAV and OGG files) from the following directories:

• the data directory distributed with the game 📦
• the data directory in bambam's $XDG_DATA_HOME subdirectory (typically ~/.local/share/bambam/data) 🏠

when scanning directories for files, bambam does follow symbolic links and descend directories. this makes it easy to have bambam use files located elsewhere 🔗 lowkey so convenient.

as of version 1.3.0, bambam has experimental support for extensions, which are a way of changing the program behaviour 🧪 bambam loads extensions from the following directories:

• the extensions directory distributed with the game 📦
• the extensions directory in bambam's $XDG_DATA_HOME subdirectory (typically ~/.local/share/bambam/extensions) 🏠

see the EXTENSIONS.md file for documentation on creating and modifying extensions 📚

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Spike Burch <spikeb@gmail.com> Marcin Owsiany <marcin@owsiany.pl> 💖

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was version 1.4.0, dated 24 August 2024 — so when you're out here mashing keys with a toddler, you're literally running the 1.4.0 era of bambam 🎀✨ slay, have fun, and remember: quit in the corner when you're done 💅🦋