5 ms·

Doom, Played over Curl

124 points by creaktive 5mo ago

fao_ 5mo ago
> The catch: the shell normally puts the terminal in *cooked mode,* Yeah, that's not the name of the mode. In this sense, it's "canonical mode". Description reads like AI slop where technical content was reformatted into marketing/PRspeak. It feels like a 30 year old PR representative desperately trying to twist any kind of technical language specifically to pander to the AAVE-derived slang of the younger set of internet-addled minds. As a result, this does not interest me. For anyone who is interested in ANSI terminal stuff, or building their own, Lexi Hale had a decent article on this: https://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html https://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html which got discussion here about eight years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436860
- bevr1337 5mo ago
  Top comment on the previous thread was someone complaining about the writing style of kids these days. Huh.
- cmovq 5mo ago
  Except it’s actually called “cooked mode” [1] and predates the use of the slang. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_mode https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/ https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/
  - fao_ 5mo ago
    "cooked mode" refers to physical teletypes, though. In the POSIX spec[1] it's called "canonical mode", same for the other specifications (if they're mentioned at all, I don't think the ANSI specification mentions either term). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX_terminal_interface#Canonical_mode_processing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX_terminal_interface#Canon...
    - xsawyerx 5mo ago
      Thank you for this correction. I'll update the readme!
      - fao_ 5mo ago
        [dead]
thomasfl 5mo ago
This is a good template for making terminal based apps that run on remote servers.
- kaoD 5mo ago
  Or just use SSH.
- anthk 5mo ago
  You are reinventing telnet.
- stratos123 5mo ago
  This idea has the rather severe problem that it requires piping an untrusted remote script directly into bash.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
varun_ch 5mo ago
One interesting side effect of having a LLM write the thing including the README, is that the models tend to leave little hints of the authors intention or prompt as over-explained passages that make it obvious that AI help was used. https://github.com/xsawyerx/curl-doom?tab=readme-ov-file#how-does-it-work https://github.com/xsawyerx/curl-doom?tab=readme-ov-file#how... eg. > A browser hitting the same URL gets a tiny landing page that just shows the one-liner it’s subtle but once you notice it, it’s hard to miss. As an aside, I feel like projects like this used to be really fun and impressive (I guess due to the fact that you’d think “Wow a human put their time into this wacky crazy thing”), whereas now you can have Claude consistently crap out something like this in 5 minutes, so it ruins the whole appeal to me…
- z3c0 5mo ago
  Not to mention that the objectively bad practice of piping a curl call to bash is nowhere close to "playing doom via curl". It's almost as if they simply prompted "play doom with curl". In my experience, almost any overly-ambitious prompt ends similarly.
  - varun_ch 5mo ago
    Oh wait I didn't even register that! yeah of course you can do anything in a terminal using curl if you're piping to bash!!!
  - moeffju 5mo ago
    But that's not what it does, the bash option just saves you from doing stty setup and reset I think? You can just type it all out by hand, too, as the readme explains
    - z3c0 5mo ago
      You know what, I stand corrected. I missed this portion of play.sh: https://github.com/xsawyerx/curl-doom/blob/ae1edb82e48efcd2dfde6e9f4bfd6d25bdb7ad92/play.sh#L117 https://github.com/xsawyerx/curl-doom/blob/ae1edb82e48efcd2d... I'm not changing where I stand on piping to bash.
Leomuck 5mo ago
What the hell. First, I thought this was crazy. How could you do anything crazy with curl? But of course, curling a bash script opens lots of opportunities. Given the right permissions, you could run an enterprise Jira server via only a curl to a bash script. Still cool that people find more ways to play doom, but calling it "via curl" seems a little missleading to me. "Playing doom via a simple bash script" would have felt more appropriate.
- anthk 5mo ago
  Play nethack with a simple oneliner: nc nethack.alt.org 23
- moeffju 5mo ago
  Isn't it literally playing it via curl though - curl reads STDIN and transmits that to the server, which responds. The whole bash thing is completely optional and only saves you some tty setup.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
reactordev 5mo ago
oddly enough, this is how it looked when I ran it on my 486 when I was a kid. Pretty accurate except this runs at a faster fps than mine did... ;)
- nurettin 5mo ago
  I remember Liquid crystal displays having an unintended blur effect when something animates or rotates, but it wasn't as bad as ansi chars.
  - reactordev 5mo ago
    rofl, my AGP VGA CRT had permanent ghosting damage from the Doom logo. So yeah, I feel this.
azalemeth 5mo ago
Reminds me of libcaca - http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca - which can render many things natively in ascii, really incredibly effectively.
- robinpie 5mo ago
  I'm writing an X server in libcaca right now. It's great fun. https://github.com/robinpie/xcaca https://github.com/robinpie/xcaca
ehtbanton 5mo ago
This is very impressive, have tried it out. If only everyone was as good at making performant terminal applications (cough cough Anthropic)
BobbyTables2 5mo ago
I’m shocked that curl is fancy enough to start reading and outputting the HTTP response before the request has even been fully sent! I wasn’t expecting that a “simple” command line application supports this kind of thing — the HTTP spec is crazy enough that I can’t say I’m surprised it’s not forbidden.
vjay15 5mo ago
So coool

124 points by creaktive 5mo ago

fao_ 5mo ago

> The catch: the shell normally puts the terminal in *cooked mode,* Yeah, that's not the name of the mode. In this sense, it's "canonical mode". Description reads like AI slop where technical content was reformatted into marketing/PRspeak. It feels like a 30 year old PR representative desperately trying to twist any kind of technical language specifically to pander to the AAVE-derived slang of the younger set of internet-addled minds. As a result, this does not interest me. For anyone who is interested in ANSI terminal stuff, or building their own, Lexi Hale had a decent article on this: https://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html https://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html which got discussion here about eight years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436860

bevr1337 5mo ago
Top comment on the previous thread was someone complaining about the writing style of kids these days. Huh.
cmovq 5mo ago
Except it’s actually called “cooked mode” [1] and predates the use of the slang. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_mode https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/ https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/
- fao_ 5mo ago
  "cooked mode" refers to physical teletypes, though. In the POSIX spec[1] it's called "canonical mode", same for the other specifications (if they're mentioned at all, I don't think the ANSI specification mentions either term). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX_terminal_interface#Canonical_mode_processing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX_terminal_interface#Canon...
  - xsawyerx 5mo ago
    Thank you for this correction. I'll update the readme!
    - fao_ 5mo ago
      [dead]

thomasfl 5mo ago

This is a good template for making terminal based apps that run on remote servers.

kaoD 5mo ago
Or just use SSH.
anthk 5mo ago
You are reinventing telnet.
stratos123 5mo ago
This idea has the rather severe problem that it requires piping an untrusted remote script directly into bash.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

varun_ch 5mo ago

One interesting side effect of having a LLM write the thing including the README, is that the models tend to leave little hints of the authors intention or prompt as over-explained passages that make it obvious that AI help was used. https://github.com/xsawyerx/curl-doom?tab=readme-ov-file#how-does-it-work https://github.com/xsawyerx/curl-doom?tab=readme-ov-file#how... eg. > A browser hitting the same URL gets a tiny landing page that just shows the one-liner it’s subtle but once you notice it, it’s hard to miss. As an aside, I feel like projects like this used to be really fun and impressive (I guess due to the fact that you’d think “Wow a human put their time into this wacky crazy thing”), whereas now you can have Claude consistently crap out something like this in 5 minutes, so it ruins the whole appeal to me…

z3c0 5mo ago
Not to mention that the objectively bad practice of piping a curl call to bash is nowhere close to "playing doom via curl". It's almost as if they simply prompted "play doom with curl". In my experience, almost any overly-ambitious prompt ends similarly.
- varun_ch 5mo ago
  Oh wait I didn't even register that! yeah of course you can do anything in a terminal using curl if you're piping to bash!!!
- moeffju 5mo ago
  But that's not what it does, the bash option just saves you from doing stty setup and reset I think? You can just type it all out by hand, too, as the readme explains
  - z3c0 5mo ago
    You know what, I stand corrected. I missed this portion of play.sh: https://github.com/xsawyerx/curl-doom/blob/ae1edb82e48efcd2dfde6e9f4bfd6d25bdb7ad92/play.sh#L117 https://github.com/xsawyerx/curl-doom/blob/ae1edb82e48efcd2d... I'm not changing where I stand on piping to bash.

Leomuck 5mo ago

What the hell. First, I thought this was crazy. How could you do anything crazy with curl? But of course, curling a bash script opens lots of opportunities. Given the right permissions, you could run an enterprise Jira server via only a curl to a bash script. Still cool that people find more ways to play doom, but calling it "via curl" seems a little missleading to me. "Playing doom via a simple bash script" would have felt more appropriate.

anthk 5mo ago
Play nethack with a simple oneliner: nc nethack.alt.org 23
moeffju 5mo ago
Isn't it literally playing it via curl though - curl reads STDIN and transmits that to the server, which responds. The whole bash thing is completely optional and only saves you some tty setup.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

reactordev 5mo ago

oddly enough, this is how it looked when I ran it on my 486 when I was a kid. Pretty accurate except this runs at a faster fps than mine did... ;)

nurettin 5mo ago
I remember Liquid crystal displays having an unintended blur effect when something animates or rotates, but it wasn't as bad as ansi chars.
- reactordev 5mo ago
  rofl, my AGP VGA CRT had permanent ghosting damage from the Doom logo. So yeah, I feel this.

azalemeth 5mo ago

Reminds me of libcaca - http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca - which can render many things natively in ascii, really incredibly effectively.

robinpie 5mo ago
I'm writing an X server in libcaca right now. It's great fun. https://github.com/robinpie/xcaca https://github.com/robinpie/xcaca

ehtbanton 5mo ago

This is very impressive, have tried it out. If only everyone was as good at making performant terminal applications (cough cough Anthropic)

BobbyTables2 5mo ago

I’m shocked that curl is fancy enough to start reading and outputting the HTTP response before the request has even been fully sent! I wasn’t expecting that a “simple” command line application supports this kind of thing — the HTTP spec is crazy enough that I can’t say I’m surprised it’s not forbidden.

vjay15 5mo ago

So coool