You Have Died Of… — Oregon Trail death-screen meme maker

▶ Try it live: https://trtmn.github.io/oregon-trail/

A customizable, high-quality SVG recreation of the classic Oregon Trail "You have died of dysentery." death screen. The line always begins with the fixed prefix "You have died of " — you supply the cause of death. Text is set in mixed case (e.g. You have died of dysentery.) to match the game.

The scenery — the histogram mountain skyline, the ox-drawn covered wagon, the picket ground bands and the bordered text box — is a pixel-for-pixel trace of the original death screen, captured at its native grid and stored 1 bit per cell (scene-bitmap.js). Only the death-cause line is dynamic: the trace's text-box interior is blanked, and the line is set live in the embedded VT323 font. Everything is pure vector pixel-art (crisp <rect>s), so the output stays razor-sharp at any size.

Use it

Open index.html in any browser (double-click works — it's fully self-contained, no server or internet needed). Type a cause of death and:

• Download SVG — infinitely scalable vector, font embedded.
• Download PNG — 2× raster (1352×1256), crisp pixels.
• Copy PNG — puts the image straight on your clipboard to paste anywhere.
• Copy SVG code — grab the markup.

Quick-fill chips are provided for the classics.

Ready-made files

• oregon-trail-death.svg — the original "dysentery." screen.
• examples/ — a few pre-baked variations.

Each .svg is standalone: the VT323 font is embedded as a base64 data URI, so it renders identically in browsers, Inkscape, Figma, etc., with no font install.

Project layout / regenerating

Everything is generated from one source of truth: scene.js (the pure-JS pixel-art SVG generator, no DOM — runs in the browser and in Node).

File	Purpose
scene.js	buildSVG({ text }) → the full SVG string
scene-bitmap.js	the pixel-for-pixel scene trace, base64 bit-packed
font-data.js	VT323 woff2 as a base64 data URI (SIL OFL 1.1)
index.template.html	UI + CSS for the maker
build.mjs	inlines scene.js + font into index.html, emits the .svg files

node build.mjs   # rebuild index.html + all SVGs

Deploy (GitHub Pages)

index.html is fully self-contained (font + code inlined, no external requests), so no build step runs on the server — Pages just serves the file.

1. Push this repo to GitHub.
2. Settings → Pages → Source: Deploy from a branch → main / /root.
3. The site publishes at https://<user>.github.io/<repo>/.

If you change the art, run node build.mjs and commit the regenerated index.html before pushing.

Credits

VT323 by Peter Hull, licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. Oregon Trail is a trademark of its respective owner; this is a fan homage / meme tool.