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Show HN: Play Pokémon to unlock your Wayland session

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Show HN: Play Pokémon to unlock your Wayland session

#1

Post by anajimi »

Hello everyone!

I've created a gameboy emulator to unlock my Wayland session and wanted to share this project to everyone here!

I've been a Linux enthusiast since I was a kid. What always captivated me was the freedom to customize my system exactly the way I wanted. With Wayland, we've reached an incredible level of performance. It's like turning your operating system into a video game! I've always been fascinated by the blend of fun and the serious, technical nature of an OS. That’s what inspired me to create this project.

I started by studying Wayland, its protocol and how to build a compositor. Then I became particularly intrigued by the concept of a locker, which reminded me a bit of an escape game. That’s when I thought: how cool would it be to solve a puzzle to unlock your session, instead of just typing a password? Since I’ve worked with emulators in the past and I’m a huge Pokémon fan, the idea of building the puzzle around that game came to me instantly!

Technically, the locker code and the wayland protocol have been implemented from scratch ( using EGL and wl_keyboard_listeners ). My locker runs a version of the gbcc emulator modded by myself. This emulator waits for one precise value to be set in a given memory address.

I have modded the Pokémon game to my needs: when the password is good, I put the good value in the good memory address so the emulator knows it needs to unlock the session.

Hope you will appreciate this project!

Show HN: Play Pokémon to unlock your Wayland session
github.com

Re: Show HN: Play Pokémon to unlock your Wayland session

#6

Post by jchw »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #2

Ah, goody. Looks like I found the only other Wayland user on HN. ;) You should also post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44837981

On the KDE side, Wayland has been going pretty well. Wayland sessions make up 82% of all sessions with telemetry enabled.

https://blogs.kde.org/2025/03/15/this-week-in-plasma-file-tr...

For me the real conundrum was SwayWM vs KDE Wayland rather than any X.org session; I really felt like SwayWM was a good upgrade from i3wm and gave me a better desktop session with much less hacks. Hope to see wlroots push forward and support some of the newer Wayland protocols, it has started to fall behind a little bit, but I think it's good for alternative desktops.

Re: Show HN: Play Pokémon to unlock your Wayland session

#7

Post by anajimi »

skerit wrote: post #4

Incredible that we're getting something like this before a plain good old screensaver

Thanks for your idea! I think it is totally possible to implement a screensaver with the ext-session-lock protocol. I will try to explore this idea when I have time in the next few months :)

Re: Show HN: Play Pokémon to unlock your Wayland session

#9

Post by DrewRWx »

anajimi wrote: post #7
skerit wrote: post #4

Incredible that we're getting something like this before a plain good old screensaver

Thanks for your idea! I think it is totally possible to implement a screensaver with the ext-session-lock protocol. I will try to explore this idea when I have time in the next few months :)

Do you have a Ko-fi? 'cause I would really enjoy that screensaver.

I adore this project on its own merits too because using the memory values in an emulated game is something that has fascinated me since Twitch Plays Pokémon integrated their Twitch display!

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