This is my attempt to run some animation while there is no I/O on a terminal. It

runs on FreeBSD and macOS, should also work on Linux. Download it from GitLab.

Build

$ make

Install

$ make install clean

Run

$ $ ascsaver -f /usr/local/share/ascsaver.art/star_wars.vt -b -s 128000 -r 14

And don’t touch the keyboard for a minute to see the Star Wars episode IV running in your terminal!

Options

Usage: ascsaver [-b][-i n][-p n][-s n][-f ascii.art][-h] [-b] Do not attempt to restore the screen after show [-i n] Wait n minutes (default 1) before running a screensaver show [-p n] Pause between shows in seconds, default 10 [-r n] Number of rows in an animation frame, default 24 [-s n] Animation speed n in microseconds, default 64000 [-f ascii.art] A file with ASCII art animation [-h] This message

Other interesting invocations:

$ ascsaver -f /usr/local/share/ascsaver.art/globe.vt -p 0

Also, if you are an adult, dogs.vt looks very nice:

$ ascsaver -f /usr/local/share/ascsaver.art/dogs.vt -r 1 -p 5 -s 32000

Otherwise, better see the inspiring nasa.vt animation:

$ ascsaver -f /usr/local/share/ascsaver.art/nasa.vt -s 128000

The ascsaver.art directory contains several examples of good old school ASCII-art animation files from the Artscene collection, as well as a dump of Star Wars episode IV telnet session from towel.blinkenlights.nl:23