SNAKE4(6)

🐍 SNAKE4 — the game starring a fruit-eating snake 💅

okay bestie, sit down, because we're talking about snake4 and its lil sibling snake4scores — and no, it's not just "a game starring a fruit-eating snake", it's the game starring a fruit-eating snake. periodt. 🍓🐍

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

snake4 [-hHV] [-M file] [--help] [--highscores] [--version]
[--merge-highscores=file]

snake4scores

like. that's it. that's the whole vibe. 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so snake4 is the fourth implementation of the snake game, written for Unix and X11. the previous versions were written for MS-DOS — yes, we've been doing this since before it was cool. ✨

you move the snake around the screen and eat food. the snake grows in length as you eat. and you need to avoid hitting the fence, eating lethal mushrooms and rotten food, and biting your own tail. that's the whole game loop, no cap. 🐍

now and then a slim-pill will bounce around. if you eat this, you will get shorter, and you will gain bonus points for every length you loose. the bonus is also given when a round is over. it's giving glow-up via subtraction. 💅

when food starts blinking, it's about to rot. rotten food is poisonous, and thus uneatable. as long as it blinks, it can still be eaten. ⚠️ so pay attention bestie, the blink is your warning shot.

oh, yes — I almost forgot: you may be visited by the evil headbanger. take my advice and run away from him before he hits you in the head! he won't stay long. 😭 like not me getting jump-scared by a headbanger in a snake game.

the keys used to control the game are given at startup. ⌨️

snake4 features a site-wide highscore file. the file contains the top 200 users. each user may appear once only in the highscore table. 👑

for technical reasons, snake4 connects to the X11 server before parsing options. this makes it impossible to eg. browse the highscore table using -H if no server is available. to be able to see the scores in such a case, snake4scores produces the same output as snake4 with option -H, but does no attempt on connecting to the X11 server. 🫠 the struggle is real.

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -h, --help — print a usage message on standard output, and exit successfully. the "just tell me what to do" button. 🫶
• -H, --highscores — dump the highscore list to standard output, and exit successfully. starting snake4 with the name snake4score does the same thing, without first connecting to the X11 server. note that this will possibly print more entries than the 20 or so that will fit within the game startup screen. 👀 (yes, more than fit on screen — the whole list, bestie)
• -V, --version — print version information on standard output, then exit successfully. 💌
• -M, --merge-highscores=file — merge separate highscore file file into the default highscore file, and exit successfully. displays the new highscore table. this option is for the game owner or root only. 🔒 no touching unless you own the place.

🌈 X11 OPTIONS 🌈

in addition to the above mentioned options, snake4 accepts the standard X11 toolkit options. so go wild, it's got range. ✨

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Sverre H. Huseby <shh@thathost.com>. the icon, the legend, the moment. 💜

and that's a wrap on the SNAKE4(6) of it all, bestie 🎀 — this page came from the Games Manual, dated 11 October 1996 (yes, it's been serving looks since the 90s 💅), so go forth, dodge the headbanger, and protect your tail. slay. 🐍💖