How to build and play Snake via Native Binary, JVM and JS/Browser (Kotlin)

A three part blog (all included in this one) that goes through

1. How Kotlin Multiplatform works (compiler and everything)
2. How to build a game (Snake) and finally
3. how to make it multiplatform.

All the code is available here.

It’s highly recommended using IntelliJ, a free (community) edition can be downloaded from jetbrains.com.
It’s also required that your Kotlin version is above 1.4 (some huge Multiplatform changes was added in release 1.4).

Disclaimer: this post is pretty long and I recommend reading one part at a time (it’s 3 parts).

Personally I hate unfinished blogs that are multiple parts, hence I uploaded all at once. So be assured, you’re getting all parts - right here, right now! :happy:

Finally, the first part is purely informational about how everything works and the second part is how to actually code the game. The second part is interactive and contains a lot of TODOs. The third, and final, part covers how we are able to use the same code on JS/Browser & Native

All the finished code is available here (open master if you wish to have the unfinished code).

Introduction

First off, what is Kotlin?

Image from kotlinlang.org

By my own account it’s a language that has learned from many mistakes done in the past and tries to extend and embrace the good ones!

The most obvious one solved by Kotlin is “The Billion Dollar Mistake” as the inventor Tony Hoare calls it himself, namely null. Kotlin is not alone about this, but certainly off to a good start!

Some mentionable features on top of this is

• Coroutines - A more efficient (lightweight) threading model, also called “green threads” sometimes. Feels very natural and easy.
• Data-Science & Jupyter support
• Extension functions - Perhaps my favourite feature, do you feel a class is missing a function? No problem, you’re free to do so!
• Excellent typing - Perhaps not Scala, but still very good.
• & more!

All of this is available through Kotlins Multiplatform effort, where Multiplatform does not mean Mac/Windows/Linux but rather that we can compile into different platforms such as Java Bytecode (JVM), Native and JS/Browser.

Enough praises, let’s get onto how the multiplatform solution actually works through Part 1.

Part 1: How does Kotlin Multiplatform work?

Let’s begin by understanding exactly what Native is? From the landing page of kotlinlang.org/native.

Kotlin/Native is a technology for compiling Kotlin code to native binaries, which can run without a virtual machine. It is an LLVM based backend for the Kotlin compiler and native implementation of the Kotlin standard library.

This statement tells us a few things, such as native refering to binary executables that can run on a OS (natively) using no virtual machine or browser!
But in practice?

✔️ Small file size
✔️ No overhead
✔️ Incredibly fast starting-time

As usual it isn’t a win-win situation but you loose some

❌Development speed

LLVM

LLVM is probably the biggest project (compiler) that exists to build native binaries. Languages such as C, C++, Haskell, Rust & Swift compile into native binaries through LLVM.

From the info-box previously,

It is an LLVM based backend for the Kotlin compiler and native implementation of the Kotlin standard library.

So… What is a backend? More specifically, what is a backend for a compiler?

How the Kotlin Compiler works, Frontend to Backend

A compiler is like a translator, just as you’d translate Swedish into English a compiler instead translates computer code written in one programming language into another one of lower level, e.g. assembly.

In general all compilers follow the same pattern, and Kotlin is no different. Even though it’s a similar path it’s interesting to learn about, even more if you don’t know how it usually works!
The Kotlin Compiler first compiles Kotlin code into a Intermediate Representation, or IR, which it later turns into Java Bytecode, when targeting the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

Compiler Chain

The first part is called the Compiler Frontend

The Kotlin Compiler Frontend

Compiler Frontend

The Compiler Frontend turns the Kotlin code into a Intermediate Representation of the code which is represented by a abstract syntax tree. The abstract syntax tree in turn is built from concrete syntax, e.g. strings.
The process involves lexical analysis which creates tokens and pass it forward to the parser that finally builds the abstract syntax tree.
For those interested this could be a really fun challenge and learning lesson to implement yourself!

Moving on, the second and final part is called the Compiler Backend.

The Kotlin Compiler Backend

Compiler Backend

The Compiler Backend turns this abstract syntax tree, or IR, into computer output language.
In the image that is Java Bytecode which is understood by the JVM. The backend is the part that actually optimize code to remove for-loops where applicable, exchange variables into constants and so on.
Just as with the frontend it’s a really good challenge to either implement a backend without optimizations, or focus on a existing one and adding a optimization yourself!

What is interesting about Kotlin is that it has different compiler backends, which means that the IR compile not only into Java Bytecode but also JS/Browser & Native binaries.

Different Kotlin Compiler Backends

Side-note: For Native Backend there’s in fact two Intermediate Representations, first Kotlin IR which then compiles into LLVM IR. LLVM finally turns this into a native binary through its own Compiler Backend.
During the final step in LLVM all the optimizations applied to C, C++, Swift & many more is also applied to Kotlin Native code!

How Kotlin keeps multiplatform clean

It might sound messy to target multiple platforms like this, and how could it possibly end up clean?

By using the standard libraries that are included with Kotlin, which includes almost everything you need, and multiplatform-developed community libraries, e.g. SQLDelight, you get code that looks the same and works the same irregardless of target (JS/Browser, Native or the JVM).

To give an example of how Kotlin std-lib works, let’s take one of the most common types - String.

How Kotlin types are compiled

By using Kotlin.String rather than the usual Java.lang.String you do when programming Java you get a type that works on multiple platforms, including some awesome convenience functions. Imagine, you can write native code using .substring, .take(n) & .replace - amazing compared to c right? :happy:

To put this in context of the compiler, this means that the Compiler Backend automatically maps the IR of a Kotlin.String into the correct type.

You can take this concept and apply to anything such as IO , network & more - all which are included in the std-lib!

Summarizing how Multiplatform works

Let’s recollect what we’ve gone through

1. Kotlin Compiler compiles Kotlin code into a Intermediate Representation (IR) through the Compiler Frontend.
   1. IR is a abstract syntax tree.
2. Kotlin Compiler then goes the Compiler Backend which turns the code into the lower level language, e.g. Java Bytecode, and applies multiple optimisations.
3. Kotlin has a std-lib which has functionalities as Kotlin.String, Kotlin.List, networking and much more.
   1. Kotlin.String turns into KString in the case of targeting Native. KString is Kotlins own native strings with some cool helper methods.

Native is usually considered “dangerous” and “hard” because of all the quirks like pointers, address space and other.

Kotlin Native deals with memory allocation in the same way as Swift, namely reference counting which deallocates objects once they’ve got no references. There’s some advantages such as being really fast, but also downsides such as reference cycles which it handles poorly when compared to the JVM Garbace Collector (GC).

Kotlin also has some really nice convenience syntax such as the memScope-block.

Outro: Kotlin Multiplatform and why it matters

✔️ One code-base for common logic
- Serialization logic, e.g. parsing JSON into a data class - Networking - Database

✔️ Development speed
✔️ Required Knowledge

❌ Still requires some code in said language
- Especially for UI

So all in all we can share our code between platforms which improves development speed & quality in multiple ways.

The biggest “downside” is that even though we share the code we most likely will need some kind of specific code for the platform, for the GUI on iOS as an example. Perhaps compose can help us get closer to that reality soon - who knows.
The final, and perhaps obvious, one I’d like to mention straight away is that platform specific libraries of course are not usable on multiplatform. This includes libraries such as React (JS) & ncurses (native).

Personally I see Kotlin Multiplatform as a great way to share core logic between different targets, but one must use it with care and not try to force it into being used everywhere in every way.

Part 2: How to set up Multiplatform and build Snake

OBS: Make sure to have Kotlin 1.4 or higher before starting the project. You can verify version & update through File > Settings > Languages & Frameworks > Kotlin. There you see “current version” and if a newer one is available, make sure it’s at least 1.4 (any higher will work too)!

First we’ll have to set up a Multiplatform project. The official guide is actually really good, and if you’re using IntelliJ it’s a breeze to setup! Just as in the guide make sure to select Library.
OBS: For each target (JVM, JS & Native) select “Template” and choose Application for each.

Select a project template

Run the build.

Side-note: gradle is a really good build-tool that I’d like to discuss more. But for now let’s just enjoy the simplicity of how our whole project ‘automagically’ just works and builds as expected while targeting different platforms.

Building a JVM App (Snake)

Let’s start simple, Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) principle applied, and create a JVM app. JVM has multiple advantages while developing such as

1. Easy to run on all OS:es
2. Great debugging!
3. A ton of resources

First off, we need to draw something. This is easiest done through the Swing library which is included in the default jdk, some might call it old but hey - it does the job.Create a file called main.kt in src/jvmMain/kotlin.

Swing has a built-in threading solution (almost too bad, because Coroutines are awesome in Kotlin!) and the best way to start the GUI is by using the existing EventQueue class and its invokeLater function. invokeLater makes sure the code runs last in the EventQueue if you add more methods, which makes sense - you want to draw the UI as the final thing.

fun main() {
    EventQueue.invokeLater {
        JFrame().apply {
            title = "Snake"
            isVisible = true
        }
    }
}

Where the apply is a context wrapper that takes the object and uses it as context (this) inside of the block/scope ({}). See its signature:

inline fun <T> T.apply(block: T.() -> Unit): T

This would equate to

val jframe = JFrame()
jframe.title = "Snake"
jframe.isVisible = true

in more Java-like syntax. Why use apply? It allows us to achieve some interesting chaining concepts which I really enjoy.

Now run the main-function, there should be a green “run”-button at the left, press that. Hopefully it compiles and a window will appear, with the title set to “Snake”.

Awesome! We need to render something inside of the box, a game soon enough, let’s see how we can achieve that.

Adding some minor refactoring and some new classes we can draw something

class Board: JPanel() {
    init {
        TODO("""
        - Set background to black
        - Allow focus
        - Set preferredSize to some 200x300
        """)
    }
}

class GUI: JFrame() {
    init {
        title = "Snake"
        isVisible = true
        isResizable = false
        setLocationRelativeTo(null)
        defaultCloseOperation = EXIT_ON_CLOSE

        TODO("Add the Board to the JFrame, through add()")
    }
}

fun main() {
    EventQueue.invokeLater {
        GUI()
    }
}

What are we doing?
JFrame was refactored GUI which then is a subclass of JFrame, with a few extra attributes added such as defaultCloseOperation = EXIT_ON_CLOSE that makes sure the program exits if we close the window, feel free to test it out!
Further a Board was added which extends JPanel, it’s in the Board the game will be rendered.
Finally, add(Board()) allows us to add our Board to the JFrame.

Run!
Something is not right.. The background seems black enough, but the size is most likely not correct. We can’t even resize as isResizable=false was set.
Make sure to add pack() at the end, as in

class GUI: JFrame() {
    init {
        { /** same code as before */ }
        add(Board())
        pack()
    }
}

What pack() does is that it packs and resizes the JFrame to include all its component(s) and their current size(s).

Super! We’re now able to render our Board and see the whole board.

Drawing the snake & apple

We’ve got the canvas (Board), now we just need to get artsy and add a Snake and some Apples!
I’ll keep it simple and will make the Board exist of a few cells, all pretty large. On each cell you either have nothing, Snake or Apple - pretty simple right?
JPanel has some nice-to-have methods built-in, such as repaint() which simply repaints the component, which in turns calls paintComponent(g: Graphics?) to paint/render it.

Disclaimer: the code might not be the most idiomatic, but I try to introduce a few concepts.

class Board: JPanel() {
    init { /** same code as before */ }

    override fun paintComponent(g: Graphics?) {
        super.paintComponent(g)
        
        val g2d: Graphics2D = g as? Graphics2D ?: return
        
        g2d.scale(20.0, 20.0)
        g2d.color = Color.GREEN
        g2d.fill(Rectangle(5, 6, 1, 1))
        g2d.fill(Rectangle(5, 7, 1, 1))
        g2d.fill(Rectangle(5, 8, 1, 1))
    }
}

Once again, let’s dive into what’s happening ‘under the hood’.

First, we override the function paintComponent which renders Board layout. The input is a nullable Graphics, which is shown by the type having a ? at the end. This is a cool property of Kotlin, if something can be null it actually is a type. No Option/Maybe, just pure type.

Then Graphics? is cast to non-null Graphics2D through a safe approach using as?, without ? the cast can crash, with ? the cast would return null if failing.

Finally we use a elvis-expression ?: which is basically a wrapper for if (null) doThis else doThat, so if the left-hand-side is null it’ll give the right-hand-side. The right-hand-side in our case is a empty return statement, meaning that we just make a early-exit. If the value is not null it’ll give the non-null variant of the type!

Example use-case of elvis-operator ?:
val a: Int = 1 ?: 0 // a = 1
val b: Int = null ?: 0 // b = 0

Detailing the code further we now have g2d: Graphics2D where Graphics2D which gives us a few nice functions to draw components on the Board.

• We set the scale to 20
  • This simplifies the behaviour, we can now use 20x30 grid where each cell is size 1, but it’s scaled into the 200x300 grid.
• We use fill to draw Rectangle’s with set Color.

Side-note: For those wondering how you safely execute on nulls by chaining, like you do with Monads (Option)

val nullableGraphics: Graphics? = null
nullableGraphics?.scale(20.0, 20.0)   // This is safe! No operation executed if null

Summing up, we now know how to render stuff on the Board and it’s all very static.
The next step is to make the rendering less static and I believe the natural step from now is to create the data structures that’ll contain the game & its state. Then we can make sure the data structures are able to update, so we can render new states.

Creating the data structures

Data structures are required to have a game state, that is the score and position of everything.

The natural state is Game which contains everything, let’s begin by creating a Game structure which contains the size of the Board.

data class Game(val width: Int, val height: Int)

Side-note: A data class is essentially the same as a case class from Scala. And for those who don’t know what a case class is it’s basically a class that simplifies a lot of stuff, mainly used as a data structure.
You get equals, getters & setters, and much more for free.
Anyone from Java knows how awesome this is.

Moving on we need to define the cells mentioned, something like

data class Cell(val x: Int, val y: Int)

Wrapping up our current state we got most of what we need, Game which contains our game state & Cell which is our co-ordinates.
The next step is to actually draw the Cell’s and wrap the Cell in other classes such as Apple and Snake.

Let’s add all the required code.

data class Apples(val cells: Set<Cell> = emptySet())

data class Snake(val cells: List<Cell>) {
    val head: Cell = TODO("Take the first cell.")
    val tail: List<Cell> = TODO("Drop one cell and return the rest.")
}

data class Game(
    val width: Int,
    val height: Int,
    val snake: Snake,   // Adding snake and apples
    val apples: Apples
)

class Board: JPanel() {
    private val game: Game = Game(
        20,
        30,
        Snake(listOf(Cell(2,3),Cell(2,4),Cell(2,5),)),
        Apples(setOf(Cell(4,5)))
    )

    init {
        background = Color.black
        isFocusable = true
        preferredSize = Dimension(200, 300)
    }

    override fun paintComponent(g: Graphics?) {
        super.paintComponent(g)
        val g2d = g as? Graphics2D ?: return
        g2d.scale(20.0, 20.0)

        g2d.color = Color.GREEN
        game.snake.tail.forEach { cell -> TODO("Render the cells using the previously used technique") }

        TODO("Render the head using the color YELLOW")

        TODO("Render the apples using the color RED")
    }
}

Fixing the added TODOs and keeping the same GUI & fun main we can now run the code. You should be seeing something like

Snake Game

Pretty cool right!? We’ve got
✔️ Rendering
✔️ Data Structures

What’s left?

1. A game loop
2. Ability to actually move the data structures ( Snake)

Adding a Direction

To be able to move we need to know what directions to move in. In my humble opinion this is simplest done through a Enum.

enum class Direction {
    UP,
    DOWN,
    LEFT,
    RIGHT
}

Simple enough. But let’s make it better, even though pre-optimization is the root of all evil it is sometimes fun :grinning:.
Enums in Kotlin are pretty awesome, they can both keep values and have methods! Let’s add dx and dy.

enum class Direction(val dx: Int, val dy: Int) {
    // -->
    // |
    // v
    UP(0, -1),
    DOWN(0, 1),
    LEFT(-1, 0),
    RIGHT(1, 0);
}

Through dx and dy we can add it to the current cell to move in the direction which Direction is!

Updating Snake.kt & Cell.kt to have Cell with Direction and some turn.

data class Cell(val x: Int, val y: Int) {
    fun move(direction: Direction) = TODO("Create new cell which moves in direction. OBS: Remember Direction now has dx, dy!")
}

data class Snake(
    val cells: List<Cell>,
    val direction: Direction, // new attribute
    val eatenApples: Int = 0 // new attribute
) {
    fun move(): Snake {
        val newHead = TODO("Move head")
        val newTail = TODO("Move tail!")
        return TODO("Create a new Snake with the updated position!")
    }
    fun turn(newDirection: Direction?) = TODO("Make sure to turn correctly")
}

This is all fine & dandy, but there is some improvements to be made that’ll clean up the code.
I mentioned that Kotlin Enums can have methods, which is awesome. We can simplify the turn-logic by adding a method to Direction, namely isOppositeTo. See the code below.

enum class Direction(val dx: Int, val dy: Int) {
    /** Same code as previously */

    fun isOppositeTo(that: Direction) =
        dx + that.dx == 0 && dy + that.dy == 0
}

Right, we can now turn the snake and render the game. We need the Game-state to update to actually re-render the updated Snake, let’s add a update-function that does this.

fun update(direction: Direction?): Game {
    return TODO("""
    Make sure to
        1. Turn snake in direction
        2. Move
        3. Update the game state by returning Game
    """)
}

And our GUI

class Board: JPanel() {
    var dir: Direction = Direction.RIGHT
    var game: Game = Game(
        20,
        30,
        Snake(listOf(Cell(2,3),Cell(2,4),Cell(2,5),), dir),
        Apples(setOf(Cell(4,5)))
    )
    
    init {
        addKeyListener(object : KeyAdapter() {
            override fun keyPressed(e: KeyEvent?) {
                dir = when (e?.keyCode) {
                    VK_I, VK_UP, VK_W -> Direction.UP
                    else -> TODO("Add the other key bindings. Reflect of how the object works and what is happening.")
                }
                game = game.update(dir)
                repaint()
            }
        })
    }
}

In our init (equal to a constructor) we add a keyListener which will listen on whenever we move. We moved game to be a var which allows us to change the reference.

Side-note: The difference between a val and var is not about immutability of the value, but rather that you cannot change the pointer to the object. By using val the compiler don’t allow you to change the reference.

val a = 1
a = 3 // CRASH -- This is not allowed
var b = 1
b = 3 // b = 3, this is allowed.

Please note that this means that if your object is mutable, you can mutate the state of the object even though it’s a val.

Why put game on a var you might ask? Otherwise how would we update our Game as the data structure itself is “immutable”, i.e. cannot be changed, which would mean that we’d need to add a new Game object each time and save it on the stack (never cleaning it up) and that’d pretty fast make the application crash because of out of memory.

Finally, we update the game by calling our created update-method and then we use repaint() which draws the components!

Remember: paintComponent draws the canvas (game), so whenever repaint is called paintComponent draws the game again based on the game and cell’s in the game.

In conclusion this gives us an incredibly simple game, the snake moves whenever we press a key as we still don’t have a game loop based on time. So how do we add a game loop based on time?

The JVM got you covered! In the keyListener remove the update & repaint, then add a timer

fixedRateTimer(TODO("Explore options to use for the timer and how they work")) {
    TODO("Insert a game loop here, essentially the same as done in the keyListener previously!")
}

Run the game! …amazing right?

We now move our snake, and it moves by itself if we don’t. But the game is still pretty boring… We never die, no apples can be eaten and finally no new apples appear. We have a few additions to make to make the game a bit challenging..

Let’s start by fixing the apples. Update the Apples.kt to randomly add apples to the board when calling grow().

To simplify the logic we use a set which means that all apples added are unique.

data class Apples(
    val width: Int,
    val height: Int,
    val cells: Set<Cell> = emptySet(),
    val growthSpeed: Int = 3, // this could actually be to only spawn apple when there is no other apple. Up to user
    val random: Random = Random // Once again, Kotlin provides a superb class, in this case a Random wrapper that works on JVM, JS & Native - cool right?
) {
    fun grow(): Apples {
        return TODO("""
        If we have a random number greater than growthSpeed, return no update. 
        Otherwise add a new cell.
        """)
    }
}

Then we should allow the Snake to eat them, make sure to add eat(apples: Apples) method and implement it for Snake.kt.

fun eat(apples: Apples): Pair<Snake, Apples> {
    return TODO("""
    If our head is on a Apple location, return a pair of Snake and Apple untouched.
    Otherwise make sure to remove the apple from apples and increase body size of snake!
    """)
}

At the end of all this we need the Game.kt to allow this logic to be used. This is done through updating update to allow the snake to eat apples and also grow apples to add new ones.

Great! We can eat apples, add new apples and all. But we’re still pretty invincible and we’ll just keep going forever. We need to make sure that the end can be lost, let’s do it by adding a new attribute isOver to Game.kt

val score: Int = TODO("Score based on snakes size, e.g. cell size")
val isOver: Boolean = TODO("Game is over if snake head in tail or snake head not on the map!")

fun update(dir: Direction): Game {
    if (isOver) return this
    { /** same code as was here before */ }
}

Wrapping up the code with some minor refactoring / new functionality

Kotlin has a wonderful concept of extension functions, which simply is incredible. An extension function extends a class with new functionality. Did you ever wish Double had a rounding to string? fun Double.roundTo(n: Int): String = "%.${decimals}f".format(this) solves this for you! Now your Double’s automatically gives you a hint to use .roundTo as one of Double’s built-in functions!

With these we can update our main-method to be a tiny bit cleaner.

g2d.color = Color.GREEN
game.snake.tail.forEach { cell -> g2d.fill(Rectangle(cell.x, cell.y, 1, 1)) }

// Turns into -->

fun Graphics2D.renderCells(color: Color, cells: Iterable<Cell>) {
    this.color = color
    cells.forEach { cell -> fill(Rectangle(cell.x, cell.y, 1, 1)) }
}

/**
    Which allows us to just call `g2d.renderCells(Color.GREEN, game.snake.tail)` etc.
*/

What more improvements can be made?

Exercises left for the reader:

1. Add Score on the loosing screen
2. Add a win-condition (basically impossible, but taking all apples)
3. Reinforcement learning to train a bot (might be a future blog!)
4. Better & cleaner code!

Part 3: True multiplatform (moving to JS & Native)

I’ll begin by saying that this part is more of a reader exercise. If you want the finished code please go to the GitHub repository.
The idea is that this part will be solved by yourself during the workshop this is intended for.

All the snake-related code that isn’t in your main.kt-file should be moved into src/commonMain/kotlin which makes it multiplatform-code. This means that it can target JS, Native & JVM instantly!

Side-note: because all the functionality for the Data Structures (e.g. take, List, Random) exists in Kotlin std-lib it’s automatically possible to use in multiplatform.

This is not true all the time, if we use platform-specific code. Our platform-specific code, tied with the JVM, is the timer and Swing which means that our whole GUI is tied to the JVM.

When the code has been migrated and import-paths are updated, run the JVM app again and validate that everything works.

JS/Browser target

Now create src/jsMain/kotlin/main.kt.

In this file we need to define how to draw the browser-based GUI. Some key methods, for the full code check out the git repository.

KeyListener document.onkeydown = { event -> onkeydown(event).also { keyDir -> dir = keyDir } } where onkeydown is your own method that handles key-events.

Timer window.setInterval({ game = game.update(dir); render(canvas, game) }, 200)

Canvas

val canvas = document.getElementById("snake-canvas") as HTMLCanvasElement
val ctx = canvas.getContext("2d") as CanvasRenderingContext2D

On this ctx from the canvas you can use fillRect to draw rectangles, and fillStyle to set color.

HTML-Canvas
<canvas id="snake-canvas" width="400px" height="300px"></canvas> (put in index.html)

The game is run through ./gradlew jsBrowserRun, or selecting the gradle-icon at the top right (elephant) and typing jsBrowserRun.

And the code for the GUI using these components is pretty much exactly the same as in Swing to be honest.

Congratulations, you have now achieved creating a desktop game and a browser game!

Native target

And onto our final target, Native Binary, that runs completely without a browser or a virtual machine.

For the Native target the GUI will be supported through the library ncurses which unfortunately is only supported on Linux & MacOS. If you’ve windows you can solve this through Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Begin by creating src/nativeMain/kotlin/main.kt.

To begin, in the main-function do the following:

fun maint(): Unit = memScoped {
    // insert code
}

The memScoped part means that all memory allocated in the block is automatically disposed at the end, incredibly useful! :happy:

Then reading how to use ncurses we can figure out how to init this. The final end-goal being

fun main(): Unit = memScoped {
    initscr()

    defer { endwin() }
    noecho()
    curs_set(0)
    halfdelay(2)

    var game: Game = TODO()
    val window = newwin(game.height + 2, game.width + 2, 0, 0)!!
    defer { delwin(window) }

    var input = 0
    while (input.toChar() != 'q') {
        window.draw(game)

        input = wgetch(window)
        val direction = when (input.toChar()) {
            'i' -> TODO("")
        }
        game = game.update(direction)
    }
}

private fun CPointer<WINDOW>.draw(game: Game) {
    wclear(this)
    box(this, 0u, 0u)

    game.apples.cells.forEach { mvwprintw(this, it.y + 1, it.x + 1, ".") }
    game.snake.tail.forEach { mvwprintw(this, it.y + 1, it.x + 1, "o") }
    game.snake.head.let { mvwprintw(this, it.y + 1, it.x + 1, "Q") }

    if (game.isOver) {
        mvwprintw(this, 0, 6, "Game Over")
        mvwprintw(this, 1, 3, "Your score is ${game.score}")
    }

    wrefresh(this)
}

Try running it in the terminal.

This blog was created as a companion to a workshop I’m gonna do at AFRY, it has a bit more content including a presentation in person.

All the finished code is available here, if you prefer the unfinished code head to master-branch.

Thanks!

~Hampus