Typespeed
Test your typing speed and get your fingers' CPS.
Table of Contents
News
- 2008-08-13 Tobias Stoeckmann
Quite some time has passed, and a new reliability release had to be
created due to miss management of memory, as well as some portability
fixes. If you don't have a good reason to stay with an older version,
please upgrade. With this version, you can also reorder high score list,
if you want to grade accuracy higher than speed or points, for example.
- 2007-12-01 Tobias Stoeckmann
Reliability fix for 0.6.3 in network code: If a malicious packet is
sent to typespeed, a division by zero is possible. Beside of that, a
big news for everyone is that tCPS has been dropped, WPM added. Also
the status bar can be adjusted much better in locales.
- 2007-11-09 Tobias Stoeckmann
0.6.3 is out. If you like to play with your friends, I realy urge you
to update due to massive rework of network code. There were a lot of
problems in it. Some bugs have been notified by mail, others I have
noticed by myself and of course some others were spotted in the code.
Beside of that, a french translation is included, an italian one is in
development. Of course other bugs have been fixed, so please update if
you don't have a good reason to not do so.
- 2007-09-15 Tobias Stoeckmann
Although it might seem there was no activity on typespeed, this is
not true. Right now I try to get in a very nice network code in order
to solve bugs, and client support in a way that word lists are parsed
from server. Why I write this news is that we switched IRC server due
to problems some people had on old one. Feel free to hang out with us,
it's fun!
- 2007-06-01 Tobias Stoeckmann
I have to admit that I included a lot of bugs with 0.6.1 and I am
sorry for not supplying 0.6.2 earlier. I have got contacted by some
users that typo ratio is measured wrong, i.e. a finishing enter or
space has been considered a typo. Beside of these bug fixes, you can
supply a random seed from an earlier game to typespeed. This way you
can compete against other players much better, because words come in
predictable.
About
Typespeed's idea is ripped from ztspeed (a DOS game made by Zorlim). The
Idea behind the game is rather easy: type words that are flying by from
left to right as fast as you can. If you miss 10 or more words, game is
over.
You can play typespeed for your own or with a friend using TCP/IPv4.
These options are called Single player and Multiplayer
respectively.
- Single player: In this mode you can play for yourself and
try to get a place in your top 10 list. As you enter correct words, the
speed will increase, so watch out. You can even pause the game if you
are skilled enough to play so long that you need a little break. In
Single player, you can adjust the game as you wish through a mechanism
known as game rules. These are simple configuration files in which you
specify how fast the game is, how many words can be left out until game
over and many other things.
- Multiplayer: If you are brave enough to use our current
network code (or sit in LAN with your friends), you can experience the
most fun of typespeed: challenge an opponent. During the game, written
words by you or your opponent will be thrown into the opposite game, so
words can be strategicaly used to make life of your opponent even
harder.
Typespeed is written in C and uses curses to display the menu and game.
The network code is written using core library functions.
Generally any POSIX-compatible system with a curses library and some
advanced functions (like snprintf(), etc.) should work, although
development concentrates on GNU/Linux (x86_64) and ncurses. Feel free to
contribute patches for your system, too! Beside of that the following
systems have been tested and/or have maintained ports:
- Cygwin
- FreeBSD
- GNU/Linux (various distributions)
- Mac OS X
- OpenBSD
- Windows
Download
Please refer to your system's handbook how to install an available
port of typespeed. If you want to compile typespeed from source, please
remember that you need working development tools (gcc, make, curses
headers, and so on).
If you are interested in previous versions of typespeed, please look
at download page for typespeed on sourceforge.net.
Fedora Core 6 - rpm
Maintained by: Andrew Ziem
Mandriva 2008 - rpm
Maintained by: Nicolas Vigier
PS2 Linux - rpm
Maintained by: Tobias Stoeckmann
Slackware - tgz
Maintained by: Kanedaaa Bohater
For more information or newer versions, visit http://kaneda.bohater.net/slackware/packages/.
Windows (32 Bit) - zip
Maintained by: Tobias Stoeckmann
These packages are compiled with MinGW 5.1.3 and pdcurses on Windows XP.
Version 0.6.3 and newer also include parts of gettext 0.16.1 and libiconv 1.11 as DLLs. All required
changes that had to be done are available in zip (in directory "docs").
Please note that not all functionality of typespeed is included in this
port yet.
Release Notes
0.6.3 - Network Changes
The format of network messages has changed in order to ease the debugging,
also it has less bugs than before. This means that previous versions won't
work with 0.6.3, but now you will be informed about this during connect.
0.6.0 - High score file format has changed (yet again):
The high score file format has changed yet again. This means that you
have to convert your old high scores to new format. Unfortunately, due
to new saved values, old high scores are very imprecise (mostly due to
float precision and alike). If you convert your old scores, please
respect that cps and tcps can (and almost will) vary. You should convert
only if you realy want to keep your old scores!
Usage:
$ cd typespeed-0.6.0
$ make convert
...
$ # for typespeed < 0.5.0
$ ./convert /usr/local/share/typespeed/high.* /usr/local/var/games/typespeed.score
$ # for typespeed 0.5.0 - 0.5.3
$ ./convert /usr/local/var/games/typespeed/high.* /usr/local/var/games/typespeed.score
You can remove your old high score files if you are satisfied with the
new precision.
0.4.0 - About the new way to calculate speed:
In versions before 0.4.0, the speed of words going across the screen was
calculated exactly as in ztspeed (looked up from ztspeed's source code).
It didn't work as we wanted it to (and probably was the cause of some
odd bugs), so we changed it.
From version 0.4.0 the speed increases linearly. It makes the game a bit
harder, because using the old way speed didn't increase almost at all in
the beginning. But hopefully scores will now reflect player's actual
typing speed more accurately. Scores will be about 10-25% smaller than
with older versions (according to our tests). The CPS levels are not
affected (why would they be?), but they might improve a little, because
you won't be typing so long... <g>
Copyright
Copyright (C) 1999-2004 Jani Ollikainen & Jaakko Manelius
Copyright (C) 2006-2008 Tobias Stoeckmann
Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
notice and this notice are preserved.
Reporting Bugs
Bugs/Ideas/Comments to tobias at openbsd dot org.
Cygwin is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
Gentoo is a trademark of Gentoo Foundation, Inc.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Mac OS X is a trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
POSIX is a registered trademark of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc.
PS2 is registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Windows is registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
All trademarks are property of their respective owners.
© 1999-2004 Jani Ollikainen,
© 2006-2008 Tobias Stoeckmann
