Airtest VS invaders

You can try such mobile app test softwares like AirTest. AirTest is cross-platform and supports testing Windows, Android, iOS and Web apps. I'm using AirTest to perform some repeated tasks in the mobile game I'm playing.

I have been using Airtest IDE https://github.com/AirtestProject/Airtest as device automation tool for Android and iOS for the last little while, basically it lets you write Python code which can do device automation with image recognition etc. It works pretty well on Android Emulators so I used to use it to setup macro farming where the built-in macro/function was lacking as it doesn't support image recognition. However on iOS devices it is extremely slow apparently due to how XCUITest was designed so it literally takes like a minute for any interactions to execute.

I hold VileR's work on int10h.org in high esteem, given its exceptional quality. As someone whose initial exposure to computers was through IBM PCs, I find VileR's website to be a treasure trove of IBM PC fonts, BIOS fonts, and related resources.

Inspired by IBM PC games from the 1990s, I aspired to create my own invaders-like game. However hindered by limited access to computers and limited computer programming knowledge, the most I could manage to make were a few text-based adventure games. Although 25 years too late, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I revisited this dream and spent a weekend writing my own Invaders game[1] using HTML5 Canvas.

Initially, I used CanvasRenderingContext2D: fillText() to display text (current score, info screen, etc.). However, dissatisfied with the text rendering quality, I began looking for IBM PC OEM fonts online and came across the Oldschool PC Fonts[2] on int10h.org. I downloaded the font packs from the website, used a Python script to convert them to bitmaps[3] (arrays of integers), and then used the bitmaps to draw text on the canvas, one cell at a time, to get pixel-perfect results!

I eventually switched to a different font pack called Modern DOS[4] developed by Jayvee Enaguas. Nevertheless given how extensive VileR's website is and how convenient the font preview tools[5] on the website are, int10h.org remains as my go-to website whenever I am doing any type of retrocomputing work for fun.

[1] https://susam.net/invaders.html

[2] https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/

[3] https://github.com/susam/pcface

[4] https://www.dafont.com/modern-dos.font

[5] https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ibm_vga_...

The entire game is written as a single HTML page, so using the "View Page Source" feature (if available) of your web browser shows the entire source code of this game. The auto-play algorithm is present in the function named autoMove(). It is about 100 lines of code that decides the next move of the player.

Direct link to the autoMove() source code: https://github.com/susam/invaders/blob/0.9.0/invaders.html#L...

I wrote an invaders-style game last year: https://susam.net/invaders.html

It was, in fact, a childhood dream of mine to write a game like this. However, the little GW-BASIC programming I knew and the very limited access to computers I had then was insufficient to write anything more sophisticated than simple text-based input/output programs. Although 25 years too late, writing this little game fulfilled that childhood dream of mine!

An update regarding this thread:

I received a pull request that adds pixelated rendering to the game canvas: https://github.com/susam/invaders/pull/4

I have merged it now. Thank you, everyone, for the discussion regarding retro-style rendering on this thread.