ACES

A multiplayer WWI-themed dogfighting game played entirely in the terminal over SSH.

    _    ____ _____ ____
   / \  / ___| ____/ ___|
  / _ \| |   |  _| \___ \
 / ___ \ |___| |___ ___) |
/_/   \_\____|_____|____/

Connect to a server, pick a callsign, and engage in side-scrolling aerial combat with other players. No client installation required — just SSH.

ssh your-server.com

Gameplay

You fly a biplane in a horizontally-wrapping world filled with floating airships. Shoot down other players, collect power-ups, and climb the scoreboard.

Controls

Key	Action
Left / Right	Change direction
Up / Down	Move vertically
Space	Shoot
Double-tap Left/Right	Activate boost
W	Drop mine
Q	Quit

Combat

• Bullets travel horizontally in your facing direction
• Hitting another player scores a point; they respawn after 3 seconds
• Crashing into an airship destroys your plane (shields absorb one hit)
• Head-on collisions kill both players

Power-ups

Power-ups spawn randomly throughout the world:

Icon	Type	Effect
D	Double Shot	Fires two parallel bullets (10s)
S	Scatter Shot	Fires a 3-bullet spread (10s)
M	Mine Pack	Grants 3 mine charges
O	Shield	Absorbs one hit (10s)

Mines

• Drop mines behind your plane with W
• Mines are triggered by proximity (any non-owner player within 1 cell)
• The blast radius is 4 cells and damages everyone caught in it, including the owner (friendly fire)
• You cannot trigger your own mines by flying over them

Boost

• Double-tap your current direction to activate a speed boost (3x speed)
• Boost consumes fuel that recharges over time
• The HUD shows your current fuel level

Spawn Protection

You get 2 seconds of invulnerability after spawning, shown by a blinking effect. During this time you cannot be damaged by bullets, mines, collisions, or airships.

World

• The world is 1200 cells wide and wraps horizontally
• 30-45 floating airships drift across the sky as obstacles and cover
• A wrap seam marker shows where the world loops
• Ground and ceiling boundaries constrain vertical movement

HUD

The top bar shows:

• Score — your current kill count
• Ammo — regenerates over time (max 10)
• Boost fuel — shows remaining boost capacity
• Active weapon — if you have a power-up weapon, with time remaining
• Shield timer — if shielded
• Mine count — available mine charges
• Player count — number of connected players

The sidebar shows a live scoreboard of all players.

Running Locally

Requires Go 1.26+.

go run .

The server starts on port 2222 by default. Connect with:

ssh localhost -p 2222

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
ACES_HOST	0.0.0.0	Listen address
ACES_PORT	2222	Listen port
ACES_HOST_KEY	.ssh/id_ed25519	Path to SSH host key

Deployment

Docker

docker build -t aces .
docker run -d --name aces --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 22:22 \
  -v aces-data:/data \
  aces

The container runs on port 22 by default so players can connect with just ssh your-server.com.

The /data volume persists:

• SSH host key (.ssh/id_ed25519) — generated on first run; keeps the key stable across redeployments so players don't get host key warnings
• Highscore database (aces.db) — SQLite file tracking top scores

VM Considerations

• If your VM's own sshd runs on port 22, move it to another port in /etc/ssh/sshd_config before starting the container
• Ensure port 22 is open in your firewall / security group
• The game accepts all SSH connections without authentication — this is by design for a public game

Architecture

Built with:

• Wish — SSH server framework
• Bubble Tea — terminal UI framework
• Lip Gloss — terminal styling
• modernc.org/sqlite — pure-Go SQLite for highscores

Each SSH connection gets its own Bubble Tea program. A shared world singleton runs the game loop at 20 FPS (50ms ticks), broadcasting state to all connected players via channels. Input from each player is forwarded to the world under a write lock, and rendering reads state under a read lock.

AI bots (Maverick, Goose) join automatically to keep the game interesting when few players are online.

Benchmarks

Performance is tracked across commits for the hot-path functions (Render and Tick). See benchmarks/BENCHMARKS.md for trend charts.

just bench              # run benchmarks, print results
just bench-save         # run (count=6), save median to CSV, update charts
just bench-compare REF  # compare current against a saved commit via benchstat
just bench-history      # list saved benchmark commits

License

MIT