Termfront

Termfront is a terminal FPS built in Ruby with a raycasting renderer, campaign scripting, audio support, and experimental PvP multiplayer.

Features

  • DDA raycasting renderer for ANSI terminals
  • Singleplayer mission mode
  • Wavesfight PvE mode with wave-based survival arenas
  • Campaign mode with intro/outro scenes and in-mission terminals
  • Experimental PvP over TCP + TLS
  • Radar, pickups, weapons, shields, and enemy projectiles
  • External audio manifest with BGM, SE, and looped shield regeneration audio

Requirements

  • Ruby >= 3.2
  • A terminal with ANSI escape sequence support
  • One of these audio players if you want sound:
    • ffplay
    • afplay
    • paplay
    • aplay

RubyGems metadata currently targets Ruby 0.1.0.

Installation

If the gem is published:

gem install termfront

For local development from this repository:

bundle install
bundle exec rake test
bundle exec rake install

Running

Start the game:

termfront

Start a PvP server:

termfront-server

Use a custom port:

termfront-server 9000

Default PvP port is 7777.

Controls

  • W A S D: move
  • Left / Right: turn
  • Space: fire
  • T: swap weapon
  • E: interact / pick up / use terminal
  • Q or Esc: quit or back out
  • Enter: confirm menus

In story scenes:

  • Enter / Space: next page
  • Esc / Q: skip scene

Modes

Singleplayer

Quick mission start for testing the core combat loop.

Campaign

Campaign missions include:

  • mission start scenes
  • mission complete scenes
  • optional in-mission terminal logs

Story/event data lives in data/events/*.json.

Wavesfight

Wavesfight is a PvE survival mode built on selected campaign maps.

  • Select from Corridor Sweep, Stronghold, and Final Push
  • Survive escalating enemy waves
  • Difficulty ramps up every few waves
  • Shield, health, and ammo get a partial refresh between waves
  • Supports both solo play and 2-player online co-op

PvP

PvP is currently marked experimental.

  • The server listens on TCP and wraps traffic with TLS.
  • The client connects directly to host:port.
  • Matchmaking now supports 1v1, 2v2, and 4v4.
  • Players choose the match size on the client, and the server keeps separate queues for each mode.
  • Team matches end when one side is fully eliminated.
  • Local relay/start/state/ping behavior is covered by tests.
  • Internet/WAN play still needs broader real-world verification.

For internet testing, the simplest setups are:

  • direct TCP port forwarding to the host running termfront-server
  • nginx stream TCP passthrough on a VPS
  • a mesh/VPN overlay such as Tailscale

Audio

Audio mappings are defined in:

Third-party audio notices are tracked here:

If no supported audio player is available, the game still runs without sound.

Development

Run tests:

ruby -Itest test/test_termfront.rb

Build the gem:

gem build termfront.gemspec

Install the built gem locally:

gem install ./termfront-0.1.0.gem

License

Code is available under the MIT License.

Third-party audio assets remain under their own licenses as documented in data/audio/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.