An automated setup for the C64 Dreams project on Linux.
- Introduction
- What it does
- What it does NOT
- How it works
- Requirements
- Installation
- Usage
- Contributions
- License
C64 Dreams is a curated collection of Commodore 64 games 🕹️ (and other related stuff).
(Check "YouTube - C64 Dreams - Project Overview" for a more indepth explanation.)
However, C64 Dreams aims to be run on Windows systems; utilizing the LaunchBox GUI as frontend/launcher.
To date, no official Linux build is available.
This project will use feh as viewer/frontend/launcher; so the huge C64 Dreams collection can be enjoyed natively on Linux 🐧.
Basic functionality like ...
- viewing game artwork (covers, screenshots, etc.)
- sending the game binary to the VICE emulator
- directly viewing game manuals (with a native application)
... should work.
- look as fancy as LaunchBox
- provide all the features of LaunchBox (scrollable gallery, sorting, filtering, etc.)
- re-implement all the extra features that come with the customized Windows tools of C64 Dreams
- work for everyone 🙃
The Ansible script will automatically ...
- install all necessary packages on your system (p7zip, feh, vice, ...)
- download and unpack the original C64 Dreams archive (including hotfixes)
- call scripts to ...
- scan the archive and create a metadata file (containing the location of game binaries, manuals, artwork images, etc.)
- create the actual feh filelist
- create a run-script that lets you start feh with all necessary parameters
- create a (GNOME) desktop launcher
- a Linux distribution with a decent package manager/repository
- sudo rights on your machine
- a working Ansible installation
- (Python3; which should be a dependency of Ansible anyway)
git clone https://github.com/4ch1m/ansible-c64dreams.git
cd ansible-c64dreams
./c64dreams-playbook.sh
(You'll be prompted to enter your sudo-password here; which is necessary to install feh, vice, etc. via your system's package manager. -> BECOME password:
)
Now change to the just created output
directory and finally start feh
:
cd output
./run.sh
While viewing the game images in feh
you can use these keyboard shortcuts to trigger certain "actions":
Key | Action | Description |
---|---|---|
ENTER | RUN | sends the associated game binary to VICE ; if there are multiple binaries (e.g. disk images) the first one gets chosen automatically |
0 | RUN | same as ENTER |
1 | MANUAL | opens existing manual files (PDF, CBZ, etc.) using the system's registered viewer application |
2 | FOLDER | opens the game's folder with the native file browser |
3 | WIKIPEDIA | runs a Wikipedia search for this game using the system's web browser |
All actions are handled by this Python script: feh_action.py
Contributions (preferably via Pull-Request) are welcome!
Please read the LICENSE file.