--- title: snakes.run: rendering 100M pixels a second over ssh ·... description: A developer built a massively multiplayer snake game playable over SSH, detailing three core engineering challenges: terminal display using Unicode block... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/snakes-run-rendering-100m-pixels-a-second-over-ssh-eieio-games-wcmuy5nco twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: snakes.run: rendering 100M pixels a second over ssh · eieio.games | daily.dev og:description: A developer built a massively multiplayer snake game playable over SSH, detailing three core engineering challenges: terminal display using Unicode block... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/snakes-run-rendering-100m-pixels-a-second-over-ssh-eieio-games-wcmuy5nco og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/WcmUY5ncO.png og:image:alt: snakes.run: rendering 100M pixels a second over ssh · eieio.games og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # snakes.run: rendering 100M pixels a second over ssh · eieio.games **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 11 min read · 3 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer built a massively multiplayer snake game playable over SSH, detailing three core engineering challenges: terminal display using Unicode block elements to achieve two pixels per character, bandwidth optimization from ~35 KB/s down to ~2.5 KB/s through stateful cell-diffing rendering and 4-bit color tracking, and CPU performance improvements achieving a 25x speedup. Key wins included replacing lipgloss with hand-rolled string functions, pre-allocating all string caches to reduce GC pressure from 15% to 0.5%, and forking Go's crypto library to strip OpenSSH keystroke timing obfuscation packets that were flooding the server. The result supports ~2,500 concurrent users rendering over 100 million pixels per second. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Why does SSH send 100 packets per keystroke? · eieio.games](https://daily.dev/posts/why-does-ssh-send-100-packets-per-keystroke-eieio-games-39cja7qnp) · Hacker News · 3 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#performance](https://daily.dev/tags/performance), [#golang](https://daily.dev/tags/golang), [#ssh](https://daily.dev/tags/ssh) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/snakes-run-rendering-100m-pixels-a-second-over-ssh-eieio-games-wcmuy5nco) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"snakes.run: rendering 100M pixels a second over ssh · eieio.games","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/snakes-run-rendering-100m-pixels-a-second-over-ssh-eieio-games-wcmuy5nco","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/snakes-run-rendering-100m-pixels-a-second-over-ssh-eieio-games-wcmuy5nco"},"datePublished":"2026-02-26T21:26:36.894Z","dateModified":"2026-02-26T21:26:57.099Z","description":"A developer built a massively multiplayer snake game playable over SSH, detailing three core engineering challenges: terminal display using Unicode block...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7a1ec8d96b108ee9673478f12cf360a6?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7a1ec8d96b108ee9673478f12cf360a6?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/snakes-run-rendering-100m-pixels-a-second-over-ssh-eieio-games-wcmuy5nco","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"performance,golang,ssh","timeRequired":"PT11M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"snakes.run: rendering 100M pixels a second over ssh · eieio.games"}]} ```