pokemonsay : New Generations

pokemonsay is like cowsay but for pokemon only. Internally, pokemonsay still uses cowsay, so you need it installed too. This repo is a revamp of the original pokemonsay, which looks abandoned now, I'm a big fan of pokemon, so I took the mantle to update it. This version includes all pokemon sprites found in the PokeSprite Project, including alternate forms (like Shinies, Megas, Alolan, Female Alternates,Galarian and Gigantamax).

Dependencies

If you simply want to use pokemonsay, the only thing you need installed is cowsay. But you are probably interested in fortune as well, to provide random sayings to your pokemon.

Arch Linux

If you use Arch Linux, or other Arch-based distros like me, you can install the dependencies for pokemonsay as follows:

sudo pacman -S fortune-mod cowsay

Ubuntu

To install them in Ubuntu, simply run :

sudo apt-get install fortune cowsay

Installation

Keep in mind that pokemonsay will only work if you have cowsay installed and available in your $PATH. To install pokemonsay run these commands in a terminal window:

git clone https://github.com/HRKings/pokemonsay-newgenerations
cd pokemonsay-newgenerations
./install.sh

After the last command, you will have pokemonsay installed in you home folder in ~/.bin/pokemonsay/. And an symbolic link will be created in ~/bin/pokemonsay, so that you can have pokemonsay in your $PATH too.

Arch Linux

Again, if you use Arch Linux or any other Arch-based distro, you can get pokemonsay from the AUR (using yay for example):

yay -S pokemonsay-newgenerations-git

Debian and Ubuntu

On any distro based on these two, you can use MPR to install pokemonsay. Use tap or makedeb, the choice is yours.

Makedeb:

git clone https://mpr.hunterwittenborn.com/pokemonsay-newgenerations-git.git
cd pokemonsay-newgenerations-git
makedeb -si

Or, using tap:

tap install pokemonsay-newgenerations-git

Usage

Now that you've installed pokemonsay, you can make it work like so:

pokemonsay Hello World

To have a random pokemon saying some random thing to you, use fortune:

fortune | pokemonsay

And if you really like it, you can add the command above to the end of your ~/.bashrc file (or equivalent). So you will have a random pokemon speaking to you whenever you open a new terminal window! :D

You get a cowthink-like version too. Try it:

pokemonthink --pokemon Charmander "Should I wear some clothes?"

Listing all pokemon

You can list all pokemon by passing the -l or --list flag, like this:

pokemonsay -l

This will print all pokemon and National Dex numbers;

Selecting specific pokemon

You can select specific pokemon using two flags:

-p or --pokemon

Then you pass the pokemon name, like so:

pokemonsay -p Pikachu
# Or
pokemonsay --pokemon Pikachu "Pika pika!"

Tip: use pokemon -l to see a list of available pokemon

Using this method you can also specify which form of the pokemon to use.

Forms

Some pokemon have alternate forms, such as Mega, Alolan, Galarian, Shiny, Gigantamax, Outfits and Female Forms, to use theses forms you can provide a the full pokemon name and form while using the -p or --pokemon flag.

• S stands for Shiny
• F stands for Female
• FS stands for Female Shiny

All other forms comes after the pokemon name.

To see a full list of forms, use the flag -L or --listForms:

pokemonsay -L | less

(Yes.. that's a lot of forms, over 2600 of them !)

-d or --nationalDex

You can also pass the National Dex number to get the pokemon, like so:

# To specify Pikachu
pokemonsay -d 025 "Pika pika!"

Obs.: For this to work, you have to zero-pad the number to 3 places (001 for example)

Using this, you can select a specific generation using RNG, like so:

# This will select randomly one of the original 151
pokemonsay -d $(printf "%03d\n" $(shuf -i 1-151 -n 1))

Obs.: This way will always select the base form of the pokemon

-D or --nationalDexForms

This is like the method above, but it will select a random form each time the command is run

# To specify Rotom and select a random form
pokemonsay -D 479 "I have multiple forms!"

Uninstall

Just in case you hate Pokemon and you've installed pokemonsay "by mistake"... Humpf! You can uninstall it by running:

sh $HOME/.bin/pokemonsay/uninstall.sh

Building the whole thing

If you want to rebuild everything in the repository, To install it you will need to build from source. The instructions are provided on their repository. And if you know an easier way, please tell me!

In order to use pokemonsay you don't need to build anything because everything is built already within the repository. But if you want to download the whole images again or make some change in the process, you will also need img2xterm which is used to generate cowfiles from the pokemon images. Here is how it's done:

# Clone PokeSprite Project and rename them to have the NationalDex number... Thanks PokeSprite maintainers!
sh ./tools/get_pokesprite.sh

# Manipulate the downloaded sprites to trim the useless space around them.
sh ./tools/fix_images.sh

# Use 'img2xterm' to generate .cow files (for 'cowsay').
sh ./tools/make_cowfiles.sh

And there it is. Now install it with install.sh and you are done.

NOTICE

Please notice I don't own Pokemon or anything related to it. Pokemon is property of The Pokemon Company.