Bambam

Bambam is a simple baby keyboard (and gamepad) masher application that locks the keyboard and mouse and instead displays bright colors, pictures, and sounds. While OSX has great programs like AlphaBaby, the original author couldn't find anything for Linux and having wanted to learn Python for a while, Bambam was his excuse.

Installation

From a distribution package

First, see if your distribution has a bambam package already. This way takes care of dependencies, translated program messages, .desktop files and manual pages.

For example:

sudo apt install bambam
man bambam

Manual installation

If not, you can install it manually as follows.

Before installing this application, ensure you have the following installed:

Python - versions 3.9, 3.10 and 3.11 are supported
Pygame - version 2.x is supported, but version 1.9 might work too. See install instructions.
PyYAML - only required for using extensions; any reasonably recent version should work

Then:

Download the bambam-1.3.0.zip or bambam-1.3.0.tar.gz file.
Unzip bambam-1.3.0.zip or tar zxvf bambam-1.3.0.tar.gz to create the bambam-1.3.0 directory.
Change into the bambam-1.3.0 directory

cd bambam-1.3.0

Then you can read the documentation with:

man ./bambam.6

If you would like to take advantage of the recommended way to start the game (see the next section) do the following:

sed -i -e "s,/usr/games/bambam,`pwd`/bambam.py," bambam-session.desktop
sudo mkdir -p /etc/X11/sessions
sudo cp bambam-session.desktop /etc/X11/sessions/

For an alternative way to start the game from your applications menu, do the following:

sed -i -e "s,/usr/games/bambam,`pwd`/bambam.py," bambam.desktop
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications
cp bambam.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

Usage

Once installed, there are two ways to run the game:

Recommended: as a dedicated graphical session.

When logging into your system, look for a gear icon, which opens a drop-down menu of available session types. Select BamBam and log in.

This way only the game is launched, and the user is logged out as soon as the game quits. Thanks to this, a child is not able to cause any damage even if he or she somehow manages to quit the game.

This way is safer, but more cumbersome.
Alternative: Directly from a terminal, or applications menu.

Select the game from your applications menu, or to run the game from a terminal window, type bambam if you installed from a distribution package, or ./bambam.py if you installed manually.

Why this way is not recommended:

This way the program runs as part of a regular session. The game tries to grab the keyboard and mouse pointer focus in order to prevent a child from exiting the game or switching away from it. However it is not 100% bulletproof, depending on the exact environment.

This way is easier, but potentially more risky. Take care when leaving your child unattended with the game.

Exiting

To exit, just directly type the command mentioned in the upper left-hand corner of the window. In the English locales, this is:

quit

Extensions

Extensions are a way to change how Bambam behaves. They are supported since version 1.3.0, currently as an experimental feature.

Extensions are directories containing media files as well as a file describing how the game should behave when a certain event happens. Anyone can create an extension, it does not require programming skills.

Currently there is only a single extension bundled with the game:

alphanumeric-en_US - this extension makes the program play recordings of American English pronounciation of letters and digits when the corresponding keys are pressed.

To use an extension:

Make sure the extension directory is located in one of the extension base directories, that is:
- extensions/ in the same directory as the bambam program,
- $HOME/.local/share/bambam/extensions/,
- /usr/share/bambam/extensions/ - if the program is installed from your distribution's package.
Pass the --extension option followed by the name of the extension on program invocation.

For example ./bambam.py --extension alphanumeric-en_US.

See separate documentation on creating extensions if you would like to create your own extension or change an existing one.

More information

More information is in the manual page. To view it, type:

man ./bambam.6

Comments or suggestions? Any feedback is appreciated, please send it to the bambam-users forum.

Translations for this game are done on Weblate. Please help translating for your mother tongue!

History

This project was moved from its code.google.com location in April 2015, since that site was about to be shut down.

Note that changes (as of 2010-08-17) from the launchpad bambam fork had been merged back to this project in February 2014.

The sounds for the alphanumeric-en_US extension were copied from https://github.com/porridge/bambam-media and are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.