pong(6)

pong6

Pong home video game emulator

Usage

pong [--display host:display.screen] [--foreground color] [--background color] [--window] [--root] [--window-id number] [--mono] [--install] [--visual visual] [--clock float] [--noise] [--fps]

Overview

The pong program simulates an ancient Pong home video game, as well as various artifacts from displaying it on a color TV set.

Options

pong accepts the following options:

--window

Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default.

--root

Draw on the root window.

--window-id number

Draw on the specified window.

--mono

If on a color display, pretend we're on a monochrome display.

--install

Install a private colormap for the window.

--visual visual

Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual.

--clock

The score of the game will be the current time.

--noise float

How noisy the video signal should be (between 0.0 and 4.0 or so).

--fps

Display the current frame rate and CPU load.

(-p1 | --p2) mode

Set a player to either ai, mouse, tablet, kbleft (for W and S), or kbright (or just kb, for arrow keys).

Environment

DISPLAY

to get the default host and display number.

XENVIRONMENT

to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.

XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW

The window ID to use with --root.

X resources

Notable X resources supported include the following which correspond to standard TV controls: analogTVTint, analogTVColor, analogTVBrightness, and analogTVContrast. They range from 0 to 100, except for tint which is an angle between -180 and +180.

Trademarks

Pong may be a trademark.

Author

Original Pong program by Jeremy English <[email protected]>. Scoring and television emulation by Trevor Blackwell <[email protected]>.

From xscreensaver 6.15-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.