Breakoutfor Samsung TV

What's in the game

Three levels of bricks, three lives and a score to beat. It plays like the arcade original, sized for a sofa.

• Paddle and ball

  Hold a key and the paddle glides. Let go and it stops. Where the ball hits the paddle decides which way it flies next.

• Coloured bricks

  Rows of red, orange, yellow, green and blue, plus silver bricks that take two hits. The higher the row, the more it scores.

• Three levels

  A solid wall, a checkerboard, then a silver-topped funnel. Clear all three and they come round again, faster.

• Lives and score

  You get three lives. Miss the ball and one goes. Your best score is saved on the TV.

• Arcade beeps

  A short tone for every bounce, break and miss. Press M to mute.

• Keyboard or remote

  Both work at once. Nothing to pair and no phone app.

• Made for the sofa

  The screen is a fixed 1920×1080 and no text is smaller than 28 pixels.

• Fully offline

  No account, no ads, no network access. The app holds only its own files.

Controls

Plug any USB keyboard into the TV, or just use the remote.

Install it on your TV

Breakout isn't in the Samsung app store, so you sideload it from a computer on the same network as the TV.

1. 1

   Turn on developer mode

   On the TV, open Apps, press 1 2 3 4 5 on the remote and switch Developer mode on. Type in your computer's IP address, then restart the TV.

2. 2

   Make a signing certificate

   Samsung TVs install only signed apps. Create a certificate profile with the Tizen command-line tools. If the TV turns it down later, make a Samsung certificate that lists your TV's DUID.

3. 3

   Package the app

   Clone the repository, stage the app and package it with your profile.

   git clone https://github.com/cocodedk/breakout-tv.git
   cd breakout-tv
   npm run stage
   tizen package -t wgt -s MyProfile -- dist/app

4. 4

   Install and launch

   Use your TV's address and the device name that sdb devices prints. Some TVs also want "Permit to install applications" from Tizen Studio's Device Manager before the first install.

   sdb connect 192.168.1.50:26101
   tizen install -n Breakout.wgt -t MyTV -- dist/app
   tizen run -p BreakoutTV.Breakout -t MyTV

The releases page has the app as an unsigned zip, breakout-tv-app.zip. Unzip it and package its app folder with your own profile, as in step 3.

Under the hood

A Tizen TV app is a website in a zip file with a config.xml. Breakout is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript running in the TV's built-in browser.

A browser that never updates

A 2021 TV runs Chromium 76 and stays there. The code avoids newer syntax such as ?. and ??, and a lint step rejects it.

No build step

Classic script tags share one window.BO namespace. No modules, no bundler, no framework, no runtime packages.

One handler for both inputs

A USB keyboard and the remote both send key events. The game reads keyCode, which the TV's browser fills in reliably. Back is 10009 on the remote and Esc on a keyboard.

Fixed physics steps

The ball moves in steps of 1/240 second, so a fast ball never slips through a brick.

Tested without a TV

npm run check runs the compatibility lint, unit tests for physics and scoring, and Playwright drives that play the game at 1920×1080 with synthetic keys.

Read the code on GitHub