[!NOTE]
This repo was created for for teaching purposes only.

Text Adventure Game Bootstrap

Demo

How to Use This Repo

This repo is set up to bootstrap your basic Python text adventure game to function as a web page that’s shareable with friends.

Getting Started

0. Create a Github Account

1. If you don’t have one already, create your own github account.

1. Fork This Repository

1. Click the “Fork” button at the top right of this page
2. This creates your own copy of the repository under your GitHub account

2. Enable GitHub Pages

1. Go to your forked repository
2. Click on “Settings” (in the repository navigation)
3. Scroll down to the “Pages” section in the left sidebar
4. Under “Source”, select “Deploy from a branch”
5. Under “Branch”, select “main” and “/ (root)”
6. Click “Save”
7. Wait a few minutes for GitHub to build your site
8. Your game will be available at: https://[your-username].github.io/text-adventure-game/

3. Create Your Own Game

1. Click on game.py in your repository
2. Click the pencil icon to edit the file
3. Replace the sample game with your own Python code
4. Commit your changes (scroll down, add a commit message, and click “Commit Changes”)

Writing Your Game

Your game should be written in standard Python. The web terminal supports:

• print() statements for output
• input() for getting player input
• Functions (def) and variables
• Conditional statements (if/elif/else)
• Loops (while/for/break)

Sharing Your Game

Once your game is working, share the link with friends! They can play directly in their browser without installing Python.

Limitations

• Your game must be contained in a single game.py file.
• No external Python libraries are allowed, only those supported by Pyodide ^[1].
• Because standard Python input is not fully supported in Pyodide ^[2], the built-in input function is replaced with an asynchronous version ^[3]. All code is preprocessed so that calls to input become await input, all functions are defined with async def, and all function calls are prefixed with await ^[4].
• This approach is very error-prone and will break if you use lambdas, define functions inside other functions, or reassign functions to new variable names (such as when using callbacks).

Troubleshooting

• If your game doesn’t load, check for Python syntax errors
• Make sure your game.py file is in the root of your repository
• Allow a few minutes for GitHub Pages to update after making changes
• Check the browser console ^[5] for the preprocessed code

Useful Functions

Here are some helpful functions you may want to add into your text adventure game.

Get Menu Option

You may want to create a function for getting a menu option.

def get_menu_option(option_1, option_2, option_3):
    print("Menu:")
    print(f"1. {option_1}")
    print(f"2. {option_2}")
    print(f"3. {option_3}")
    while True:
        option = input("Enter option (1,2,3): ")
        if option == "1" or option == option_1:
            return 1
        elif option == "2" or option == option_2:
            return 2
        elif option == "3" or option == option_3:
            return 3
        else:
            # Loop back to top of while-loop
            print(f"Invalid input: {option}")

This is reusable in your code and lets your write your if-statements to only check a number instead of the full string.

action = get_menu_option("go north", "go south", "open door")
if action == 1:
    # Code for going north
elif action == 2:
    # Code for going south
elif action == 3:
    # Code for opening door
else:
    print(f"BAD ACTION {action}")

Clear Screen

You might prefer to clear the screen at the start of every new room. This can be done (in both a Google Colab notebook and when hosted as a webpage with xterm.js) using the following function:

def clear_screen():
    import os
    import sys
    # Check if running in Jupyter notebook
    try:
        from IPython import get_ipython
        if get_ipython() is not None:
            from IPython.display import clear_output
            clear_output(wait=True)
            return
    except ImportError:
        pass

    # For xterm.js in browser
    print("\033[2J\033[H", end="")

    # Fallback for terminal environments
    if os.name == 'posix':  # For Unix/Linux/MacOS
        os.system('clear')
    elif os.name == 'nt':   # For Windows
        os.system('cls')

Print With Color

def print_with_color(text, color, bold=False):
    colors = ["red", "green", "yellow", "blue", "magenta", "cyan"]
    if not color in colors:
        raise ValueError(f"Invalid color: {color}; Choose one of: {colors}")
    ansi_code = colors.index(color) + 31 # https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code
    print(f"\033[{ansi_code}m{text}\033[0m")

This will let you print specific colors:

print_with_color("this is red", "red")

${{\color{Red}{\texttt{ this is red }}}}$

print_with_color("this is cyan", "cyan")

${{\color{Cyan}{\texttt{ this is cyan }}}}$

---

1. https://pyodide.org/en/stable/usage/wasm-constraints.html ↩︎

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SggWFS15Do ↩︎

3. https://github.com/x/text-adventure-game/blob/43945a822d7c4c9231a854d490a4f287ead5cb21/index.html#L76-L107 ↩︎

4. https://github.com/x/text-adventure-game/blob/43945a822d7c4c9231a854d490a4f287ead5cb21/index.html#L212-L253 ↩︎

5. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/open ↩︎