veltman/clmystery
Clmystery
The Command Line Mystery (clmystery) is an interactive terminal-based game that transforms the command line into a detective investigation engine. The entire murder mystery narrative is encoded within the file system's directory structure and plain text files, making standard shell commands the primary gameplay mechanic. Players navigate folders, inspect evidence files, and verify suspect answers through hash-based validation, with no graphical user interface involved.
The project teaches core command-line skills through a structured investigation workflow. Players practice directory navigation using both relative and absolute paths, search for patterns across multiple files with grep, combine data using pipes and redirection, and select files with wildcard patterns. Answer verification works by computing a hash of the player's input and comparing it to a stored hash, preventing plaintext solution leaks while allowing self-checking.
The mystery unfolds through file concatenation, text searching, and data combination tasks that mirror real-world command-line usage. Players interview witnesses by reading specific lines from street files, combine membership lists to cross-reference names, and use head and tail to preview file contents. The project is distributed under the MIT license, permitting free use and modification for educational purposes.
Features
- Game Engines - Transforms the terminal into a detective game engine with no graphical interface.
- Terminal-Based Mysteries - The entire repository is a terminal-based murder mystery game.
- Narrative Structures - Encodes the entire murder mystery narrative within the file system's directory structure and text files.
- Flat-File Storage - Stores all case data, witness statements, and membership lists as plain text files for direct inspection.
- Command Piping - Teaches Unix pipeline concepts by chaining commands with pipes to filter, search, and combine file contents.
- File System Navigators - Teaches Linux file system navigation using relative and absolute paths within a case folder.
- Investigation Workflows - Teaches a command-line investigation workflow using pipes and text processing tools.
- Answer Input Validation - Validates suspect answers by comparing user input against expected answers for immediate feedback.
- Command Line Tutorials - Serves as a beginner command-line tutorial wrapped in a murder mystery narrative.
- Terminal Games - The entire repository is an interactive terminal-based murder mystery game.
- Terminal-Based Mysteries - The entire repository is a terminal-based mystery game that teaches command-line skills.
- List Combination Exercises - Teaches combining multiple membership lists into one stream and searching for specific names.
- Line Extraction Exercises - Teaches reading specific lines from street files to interview witnesses about the case.
- Absolute Path Tutorials - Teaches using absolute paths to access files regardless of the current directory.
- Change Directory Exercises - Teaches changing directories using both relative and absolute paths through the investigation.
- Relative Path Tutorials - Teaches using relative paths to navigate between directories in the mystery's folder hierarchy.
- File Pattern Matching - Teaches using wildcard patterns to select multiple files for bulk operations.
- Glob Pattern Selectors - Uses glob patterns to select multiple files for operations like deleting evidence or searching across directories.
- Output Redirection - Teaches redirecting command output to files using shell redirection operators.
- Text Pattern Search - Teaches searching for patterns in files using grep with context lines during the investigation.
- File Preview Exercises - Teaches inspecting file beginnings to understand evidence file formats and layouts.
- Hash-Based Validators - Validates suspect answers by computing a hash of user input and comparing it to a stored hash.
- File Concatenation Exercises - Teaches concatenating multiple files into a single stream to merge evidence files.
- Path Navigation Tutorials - Teaches both relative and absolute path navigation through the mystery's folder hierarchy.
- CLI Directory Listings - Teaches listing directory contents to explore the case folder structure.
- Programming Games - Solve a murder mystery using command line interface tools.
