brenns10 / alien-console

A ncurses based clone of the Alien: Isolation console interfaces.

alien-console

This is a ncurses-based application which emulates the terminal application shown in Alien: Isolation. When you combine this with a terminal emulator that focuses on a retro look (like Cool Retro Term), it doesn't look that far off!

The entries in the "Personal Terminal" screen are completely customizable, using a configuration file located in:

• the first command line argument, OR
• /etc/alien-console/alien-console.conf, OR
• /usr/share/alien-console/alien-console.conf

See etc/alien-console.conf for a sample configuration file (which should be installed at /usr/share/alien-console).

Screenshots

These use Cool Retro Term with a theme I came up with to match the Alien computers.

• Splash screen:

  

  Compare to:

  

• Personal Terminal

  

  Compare to:

  

Sound

This program can play sound effects at startup. If you were to find the sound files inside Alien: Isolation which contained the startup sequence sound effects, you could place a wav file at /var/local/console.wav and listen for the magic. I don't want to distribute that because copyright.

Install & Run

See [INSTALL.md][INSTALL.md] for install instructions. If you have installed it to your system (with sudo make install), you can invoke it like this:

alien-console
# searches for /usr/share/alien-console/alien-console.conf
# then /etc/alien-console/alien-console.conf

If you have just compiled it, you'll need to specify a config file (as the default one will not be installed to your system):

./alien-console etc/alien-console.conf

Etc

The license is Revised BSD. See LICENSE for more details. See the Changelog for changes and version info.

alien-console's Issues

Fix parsing of containing directory of config file.

Currently I need to get the containing directory of a configuration file, and I do that by trimming to the first slash. EG:

./path/to/config.conf  -> ./path/to/
./config.conf -> ./
/config.conf -> /

However, if a config file is specified in the current directory, without a ./, the code will choke and fail with "Bad filename". It's stupid. It should be an easy catch to just assume (if there's no slash in the filename) that the file is in the cwd, and return open("/").

https://github.com/brenns10/alien-console/blob/master/src/config.c#L27

will this build on a raspberry pi?

Not showing lines with ncurses

I tried adding locale.h and recompiling but when in the main screen it shows letters instead of lines.

Is there a way to recompile and tell ncurses to use utf-8 instead of whatever so it looks nice? No colors either. what is the .json used for?

Add more

Would like to see some Alien archives added to this.

Personal Terminal requires exactly 4 folder entries

I need to make it so that you can have 1-3 without any problems.

Fix typo in if-statement

I believe this line:

https://github.com/brenns10/alien-console/blob/master/src/pt.c#L108

should be:

if (last_space == -1) {

Allow configuring audio player

Right now I use aplay which doesn't seem to want to work nicely with pulse. There are plenty of great console audio players out there (see for yourself). Would be nice to simply make it a configuration option.

How do I install it?

I am on Ubuntu can someone create a manual for the uninitiated?