tuipet 0.1.8

A terminal virtual pet (Digimon V-Pet style) rendered with halfblock sprites, built on data extracted from DVPet.

tuipet

A terminal virtual pet — Digimon V-Pet style — rendered with halfblock Unicode sprites and animated in the terminal. Built on data mined from the free DVPet fan game.

What's inside

• 1511 creatures, 11 animation frames each, extracted from the game's sprite atlases as 1-bit bitmaps (src/tuipet/data/sprites.json.gz, ~330 KB).
• Real evolution graph and food tables parsed from the game CSVs.
• A rich/textual UI: an LCD screen with an animated pet, stat bars, and care actions (feed, train, play, clean, heal, sleep), plus time-based evolution.

Install

One command:

pip install tuipet && tuipet

Or with pipx / uv (isolated):

pipx install tuipet      # then: tuipet
uvx tuipet               # run without installing

Every sprite, sound, and CSV is bundled in the package — nothing else to download.

On Termux (Android): first pkg install python, then pip install tuipet. To actually hear the LCD beeps you also need the termux-api package (pkg install termux-api) and the Termux:API app from F-Droid/Play — the package alone isn't enough. Over SSH, sound stays silent on purpose. The curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joeltco/tuipet/main/install.sh | bash script does all of that in one shot.

Run from source

python -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .
tuipet           # or: PYTHONPATH=src python -m tuipet.app

Start from an egg — one of 11 real DVPet egg designs (from armorEggs.png) — it wobbles, cracks, and hatches into a random Fresh baby.

Keys: f feed · t train (minigame) · p play · c clean · h heal · s sleep · n new egg · q quit.

Training is a timing minigame: strike SPACE when the marker hits the green target zone. Three reps raise effort and the pet's attribute power (Vaccine/Data/Virus).

Asset pipeline

Raw game files live under _extract/ (gitignored). Re-extract with:

python tools/extract_sprites.py     # rebuilds data/sprites.json.gz
python tools/preview.py Agumon      # preview a creature as halfblocks
python tools/allframes.py Agumon    # see all 11 frames

The atlases are 672×672, an 11×11 grid: each column is one creature, each of the 11 rows is an animation frame. Creatures are authored at 3× scale on a cyan LCD background; the extractor box-downsamples 3× (recovering native ~20px sprites and dropping the dev-build column labels) and thresholds to 1-bit.

Sprite frame convention

Each creature's 11-frame strip uses a fixed pose order, reverse-engineered from the game's own View/SpriteAnim.class (cfr-decompiled). Animations in src/tuipet/data.py::ROLES mirror the game's cheer/jeer/eat/idleSleep/etc.

idx	pose	used by
0	idle / walk A	idle bob (0,1), walk
1	idle / walk B	idle bob, play, tantrum
2	sleep / rest A	idleSleep (2,3), wake stretch
3	sleep / rest B	idleSleep
4	angry / refuse / attack	jeer, refuse head-shake, battle
5	happy / cheer-up	cheer (good), play
6	sad / unhappy	jeer (bad), tantrum, attack
7	eat-closed (chew) / cheer-down	eat (8↔7), heal, cheer
8	eat-open (mouth) / neutral	eat, heal, default expression
9	tired / sick / disliked / old	fatigue idle, geriatric, dislike
10	exhausted (very tired)	deep-fatigue idle

refuse is drawn as a left/right mirror flip on alternating frames (head-shake).

Evolution (care-quality based)

Evolution is a faithful port of DVPet's Model/Evolution.checkEvolReq + selection. Each form's row in digimon.csv defines gates (comparison Key + Value): care mistakes, overfeed, sleep disturbances, sickness, injuries, weight class (Over/Healthy/Under, ±50% of base), mood, attribute power (Vaccine/Data/Virus), battles/wins, plus a probability roll.

When a stage's minimum time elapses, the engine gathers the current form's evolution targets, keeps those whose every gate passes, then picks the one with the highest fulfilledReq score (priority + per-gate rates), breaking ties by the smallest deviation (closest stat match) — exactly as the game does.

Per-stage counters (mistakes, overfeed, disturbances, sickness, injuries) reset on evolution; attribute power, battles and wins carry over for life — matching DVPet's resetEvolVar.

Verified against the game data and online guides:

Care during Koromon (In-Training)	Evolves to
good care + Vaccine training	Agumon
good care + Data training	Gabumon
good care + Virus training	Goburimon
neglect (many care mistakes)	Chuumon

Note: most Champion+ forms in DVPet's data are battle-gated (e.g. Greymon needs 10+ battles), so without the battle system a well-raised pet reaches the classic "default" Champions (Numemon / Bakemon / Sukamon) — authentic V-Pet behaviour. Battles are the next system to unlock the full tree.

Battles

Press b to battle a stage-appropriate enemy (from enemies.csv, 462 foes). Combat uses the canonical Digimon attribute triangle — Vaccine > Virus > Data > Vaccine. Each round you pick an attack type (1 Vaccine / 2 Data / 3 Virus); effective power is your trained power in that attribute, boosted when it beats the foe's shown type and dampened when it loses to it. Higher effective power lands a hit; first to 0 HP loses. ESC flees.

Both training and strategy matter — vs a typical foe a well-trained pet that counters the enemy's type wins ~85%, naive play far less. Wins grant bits and mood; battles/wins are tracked and feed evolution: most Champion+ forms (Greymon, etc.) require battle experience plus multi-attribute training, so battling unlocks the rest of the evolution tree that care alone cannot reach.

Sprite extraction

All DVPet sprite sheets are RGBA with transparent backgrounds. The extractor masks on "opaque AND not the cyan LCD colour", recovering every creature (~1525), the eggs, and the food/item icons (from the food/item sheets' alpha channel). A few genuinely-unfinished cells are detected and shown as a generic blob.

Adventure

Press a to travel the Digital World — 5 maps, 26 zones parsed from zones.csv + enemies.csv (faithful to DVPet's WorldMap). Your pet walks a zone's progress bar; wild encounters launch battles, a town midway restores adventure life, and a zone boss gates the way to the next zone. Clear every zone in a map to unlock the next region. Bosses are the canonical villains (Devimon, Etemon, the Dark Masters…). Travel tires the pet (energy + weight, like exercise), wins grant bits, and every fight counts toward the battle/win requirements that drive evolution. Progress persists on the pet.

Keys in adventure: SPACE go/stop · ESC leave.

Shop

Press o to open the shop and spend the bits you earn from battles and adventures. Inventory comes from shopConsumable.csv (21 foods/items resolved from foods.csv + items.csv), each with its real DVPet effects: food (hunger, weight, mood), medicine that cures sickness, items that heal injuries, discipline books (obedience), and attribute chips that add Vaccine/Data/Virus power. Browse with ↑↓, ENTER to buy, TAB to switch to your bag and use what you own, ESC to leave. Items you buy persist in the pet's inventory.

Saving

Your pet persists automatically — there's nothing to do. tuipet writes to ~/.local/share/tuipet/save.json every 10 seconds and on quit, and loads it on startup, so your Digimon (stats, evolution, bits, inventory, adventure progress) survives between runs. While the game is closed the pet ages gently: reopening applies a bounded "while you were away" decay to hunger/energy/mood (capped at 12h, and never evolves or dies offline), with a "Welcome back!" greeting. Press n to abandon the current pet and start a fresh egg (this overwrites the save).

Jogress (DNA fusion)

Press j at Champion or above to fuse your pet with a partner and DNA-evolve into a special Ultimate. The partner's attribute decides the result via DVPet's attributeJogress matrix (e.g. a Data pet + Virus partner → Virus fusion), and the fusion targets come from the pet's evolution graph (SpecialEvolution=Jogress, 112 of them). Jogress bypasses the normal care requirements — the partner supplies the "DNA" — so it's a deliberate fusion you trigger. Pick a partner with ↑↓, ENTER to fuse, ESC to cancel. Normal (non-special) evolution is unchanged; jogress/fusion forms no longer appear in ordinary evolution.

Tournaments

Press u at Champion or above to enter a single-elimination cup — three matches (Quarterfinal → Semifinal → Final, the final a boss-tier opponent), faithful to DVPet's 8-entrant bracket. Each match reuses the battle engine, so cup fights count toward your battle/win record too. Win all three to be crowned Champion: a trophy (tracked and shown in your stats) plus bits scaled by stage (Rookie 60 → Mega 400). Lose a match and you're eliminated. SPACE to fight, ESC to leave.

Setup (game data not included)

tuipet's code is here, but the game data is not distributed — the sprites and CSVs are derived from DVPet (a Digimon fan game, © Bandai for the franchise) and belong to their creators. To play, regenerate them from your own free copy of DVPet:

# 1. download DVPet from itch.io and locate DVPet.jar inside the extracted zip
# 2. regenerate assets:
tools/setup_assets.sh /path/to/DVPet.jar
# 3. install + run:
python -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .
tuipet

setup_assets.sh unpacks the jar, copies the needed CSVs, and runs the sprite extractor (tools/extract_sprites.py) to build src/tuipet/data/sprites.json.gz.