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The International Obfuscated C Code Contest

1993/rince - Most well rounded

← 1993/plummer ↑ 1993 ↑ 1993/schnitzi → C code Makefile Inventory ✓

Author:

To build:

    make all

NOTE: there are two alternate versions of this program, both allowing one to slow down the game and the second one with movements more familiar to vi users. See the Alternate code section below.

Bugs and (Mis)features:

The current status of this entry is:

STATUS: INABIAF - please DO NOT fix

For more detailed information see bugs report with 1993/rince.

To use:

    ./rince [cabbage]

where:

[cabbage] is a CABBAGE description file (default: rince.c)

Alternate code:

Some people may want to slow down the game by increasing the value 17 in the lines:

    struct timeval v= {0,1<<17} ;

and

    refresh(),c=select(k,&y,0,0,(v.tv_usec=1<<17,&v))?getch():0;

to another value like 18 or 19 which you can do with the alternate code.

In the case of rince.alt2.c the movement keys for the default game are slightly different and will feel more familiar to vi users: h for left, l for right (that was not changed) and k for fire (that was also not changed).

Alternate build:

    make SLEEP=18 clobber alt

Replace 18 with whatever number you wish.

Alternate use:

Use rince.alt or rince.alt2 as you would rince above.

Judges’ remarks:

The author has provided several CABBAGE files for your amusement:

For a brief design description, see design.html.

WARNING for SunOS 4.1.x:

If you are running SunOS 4.1.x (assuming you can find an ANSI compiler in the first place), this program may be used to log out very quickly. Unfortunately, you can’t do anything else with it.

Additional notes

Some people report that rince dumps core on their system.

On some systems that use gcc, the curses.h used by gcc (typically /usr/local/include/curses.h if not /usr/include/curses.h) is not compatible with the curses library (typically /lib/libcurses.a for static libraries) used. It has been suggested that the following gcc command may help:

    gcc -fno-builtin -I/usr/include -o rince rince.c -lcurses -ltermcap

Author’s remarks:

This is a Cellular Automata Based, Beautifully Abysmal Game Environment (or CABBAGE for short). To execute the program simply type ./rince gamefile, where gamefile is a game description file. A few are supplied for your enjoyment. Alternatively, with no arguments it will default to using it’s own datafile (the source code in fact). This happens to be a game of Space Invaders. To prevent people from firing too often a very simple method is employed; you must move after firing to be able to fire again.

Keys

This is a new breed of generic games. For instance:

Game play : Whatever you define Keys : Whatever you define Score : If you can figure out how to update it! Levels : Ahh well… it’s not totally generic.

The proper definition for usage would be: ./rince [data_filename]

Portability

I have compiled in on the following systems:

    System              OS              Compiler (and flags)
    DECstation 5000/240 Ultrix 4.2A     c89 -std
    SPARCstation 1+     SunOS 4.1       gcc -ansi -pedantic
    SPARCstation 10/31  Solaris 2.1     gcc -ansi -pedantic     (*)
    DECAlpha 3000/500   OSF/1 V1.2      c89 -std
    SGI Indigo (R4000)  IRIX 4.0.5F     cc -ansi
    Alliant FX2800      Conentrix 3.0.0 fxc

* I never said it worked! The guidelines state that you dislike programs that won’t compile under both BSD or SysV Unix. This compiles, and indeed runs on all the others (both BSD and SysV) correctly.

Alas, on Solaris it compiles, but mysteriously stops displaying output after a while until you quit with control-c, when it all catches up again. I think the problem may lie in either select(2), or curses, (or perhaps conflict of the two).

The use of select(2) no doubt makes it less portable to STRICT SysV machines. However I have tested this on several so-called SysV machines, and all of them support select(2). In fact, the select(2) they support appears to be more portable between them than their poll(2) call.

Obfuscation

I have tried to use as many different obfuscation techniques, including some of which (such as sizeof confusion) I have not seen in any entries (hmmm - perhaps there’s a reason for that…) so far. Also, very poor structure (yes, I use goto’s) has led to apparently having an fgets(3) as the last line of main. Note that I have still tried to aim at least some efficiency (provided it makes things slightly more obfuscated of course). One such thing is the way I dynamically allocate a 2-dimensional array using only ONE malloc(3). Hence this program could be used as a tutorial for all those people who consistently ask this question in the C newsgroups.

Also, the program does require a volatile type (especially when optimising) to perform correctly. This is the first time I have ever truly needed this when not accessing memory external to this process :-)

Of course, all the usual obfuscation lurks within, such as combining multiple for loops into single ones; warped and twisted logic; plus a plethora of other minor oddities. It’s up to you to discover some of them of course… Sometimes I have sacrificed length for obfuscation. It is all too easy to change the arguments in main() to one character identifiers, but in my opinion they add to obfuscation in this case by being longer.

lint complains about lots of things. Firstly the use of curses immediately makes lint complain. The Alpha’s lint gave me some positive encouragement! precedence confusion possible: parenthesize! :-) :-) main() does not return correctly, because, basically, it doesn’t return.

Bugs

Very little error checking is performed. I do check for not being able to open the requested filename and return 1 upon failure. However, badly formatted data files will cause major problems. No other checking (such as insufficient memory) is performed.

There is no ‘end of game’ checking method. Hence games like Sokoban rely on the user to decide when they have had enough. Also, there is no quit mechanism other than control-c.

Inventory for 1993/rince

Primary files

Secondary files

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