Ninvaders is an ncurses version of the Invaders video game. The native installation packages are customized for integration with Asciiville.

The ninvaders package gets installed as part of the Asciiville initialization process. See the Asciiville README for more information.

Many of the Doctorfree projects are designed to integrate with each other including Asciiville, MirrorCommand, MusicPlayerPlus, and RoonCommandLine.

1. Requirements
2. Installation
3. Removal
4. Quick start
5. Asking for help
6. Building ninvaders from source
7. Contributing

Ninvaders is compiled and packaged for installation on:

• Arch Linux (x86_64)
• Fedora Linux (x86_64)
• Raspberry Pi OS (armhf)
• Ubuntu Linux (amd64)

Ninvaders v1.0.0 and later can be installed on Linux systems using the Arch packaging format, the Debian packaging format, or the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM).

Ninvaders has been tested successfully on the following platforms:

• Arch Linux 2022.07.01
  • ninvaders_<version>-<release>-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
• Ubuntu Linux 20.04
  • ninvaders_<version>-<release>.amd64.deb
• Fedora Linux 36
  • ninvaders_<version>-<release>.x86_64.rpm
• Raspberry Pi OS
  • ninvaders_<version>-<release>.armhf.deb

Many Linux distributions, most notably Ubuntu and its derivatives, use the Debian packaging system.

To tell if a Linux system is Debian based it is usually sufficient to check for the existence of the file /etc/debian_version and/or examine the contents of the file /etc/os-release.

To install on a Debian based Linux system, download the latest Debian format package from the ninvaders Releases.

Install the ninvaders package by executing the command

sudo apt install ./ninvaders_<version>-<release>.amd64.deb

or

sudo dpkg -i ./ninvaders_<version>-<release>.amd64.deb

NOTE: In some cases you may see a warning message when installing the Debian package. The message:

Repository is broken: ninvaders:amd64 (= <version-) has no Size information can safely be ignored. This is an issue with the Debian packaging system and has no effect on the installation.

Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, and their derivatives use the RPM packaging format. RPM based Linux distributions include Fedora, AlmaLinux, CentOS, openSUSE, OpenMandriva, Mandrake Linux, Red Hat Linux, and Oracle Linux.

To install on an RPM based Linux system, download the latest RPM format package from the ninvaders Releases.

Install the ninvaders package by executing the command

sudo yum localinstall ./ninvaders_<version>-<release>.x86_64.rpm

or

sudo rpm -i ./ninvaders_<version>-<release>.x86_64.rpm

Arch Linux, Manjaro, and other Arch Linux derivatives use the Pacman packaging format. In addition to Arch Linux, Arch based Linux distributions include ArchBang, Arch Linux, Artix Linux, ArchLabs, Asahi Linux, BlackArch, Chakra Linux, EndeavourOS, Frugalware Linux, Garuda Linux, Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre, LinHES, Manjaro, Parabola GNU/Linux-libre, SteamOS, and SystemRescue.

To install on an Arch based Linux system, download the latest Pacman format package from the ninvaders Releases.

Install the ninvaders package by executing the command

sudo pacman -U ./ninvaders_<version>-<release>-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

On Debian based Linux systems where the ninvaders package was installed using the ninvaders Debian format package, remove the ninvaders package by executing the command:

    sudo apt remove ninvaders

or

    sudo dpkg -r ninvaders

On RPM based Linux systems where the ninvaders package was installed using the ninvaders RPM format package, remove the ninvaders package by executing the command:

    sudo yum remove ninvaders

or

    sudo rpm -e ninvaders

On Arch based Linux systems where the ninvaders package was installed using the ninvaders Pacman format package, remove the ninvaders package by executing the command:

    sudo pacman -Rs ninvaders

The ninvaders package can be removed by executing the "Uninstall" script in the ninvaders source directory:

    git clone https://github.com/doctorfree/ninvaders.git
    cd ninvaders
    ./Uninstall

Ninvaders can be compiled, packaged, and installed from the source code repository. This should be done as a normal user with sudo privileges:

# Retrieve the source code from the repository
git clone https://github.com/doctorfree/ninvaders.git
# Enter the ninvaders source directory
cd ninvaders
# Compile the ninvaders components and create an installation package
./mkpkg
# Install ninvaders and its dependencies
./Install

These steps are detailed below.

git clone https://github.com/doctorfree/ninvaders.git
cd ninvaders

[Note:] The mkpkg script in the top level of the ninvaders repository can be used to build an installation package on all supported platforms. After cloning, cd ninvaders and ./mkpkg. The resulting installation package(s) will be found in ./releases/<version>/.

ninvaders components have packaging dependencies on the following:

On Debian based systems like Ubuntu Linux, install packaging dependencies via:

sudo apt install dpkg

On RPM based systems like Fedora Linux, install packaging dependencies via:

sudo dnf install rpm-build rpm-devel rpmlint rpmdevtools

To build and package ninvaders, execute the command:

./mkpkg

On Debian based systems like Ubuntu Linux, the mkpkg scripts executes scripts/mkdeb.sh.

On RPM based systems like Fedora Linux, the mkpkg scripts executes scripts/mkrpm.sh.

On PKGBUILD based systems like Arch Linux, the mkpkg scripts executes scripts/mkaur.sh.

After successfully building and packaging ninvaders with either ./mkpkg, install the ninvaders package with the command:

./Install

There are a variety of ways to contribute to the ninvaders project. All forms of contribution are appreciated and valuable. Also, it's fun to collaborate. Here are a few ways to contribute to the further improvement and evolution of ninvaders:

ninvaders is fairly complex with many components, features, options, configurations, and use cases. Although currently only supported on Linux platforms, there are a plethora of Linux platforms on which ninvaders can be deployed. Testing all of the above is time consuming and tedious. If you have a Linux platform on which you can install ninvaders and you have the time and will to put it through its paces, then issue reports on problems you encounter would greatly help improve the robustness and quality of ninvaders. Open issue reports at https://github.com/doctorfree/ninvaders/issues

ninvaders is completely free and open source software. All of the ninvaders components are freely licensed and may be copied, modified, and redistributed freely. Nobody gets paid, nobody is making any money, it's a project fully motivated by curiousity and love of music. However, it does take some money to procure development and testing resources. Right now ninvaders needs a multi-boot test platform to extend support to a wider variety of Linux platforms and potentially Mac OS X.

If you have the means and you would like to sponsor ninvaders development, testing, platform support, and continued improvement then your monetary support could play a very critical role. A little bit goes a long way in ninvaders. For example, a bootable USB SSD device could serve as a means of porting and testing support for additional platforms. Or, a decent cup of coffee could be the difference between a bug filled release and a glorious musical adventure.

Sponsor the ninvaders project at https://github.com/sponsors/doctorfree

If you have programming skills and find the management and ease-of-use of digital music libraries to be an interesting area, you can contribute to ninvaders development through the standard Github "fork, clone, pull request" process. There are many guides to contributing to Github hosted open source projects on the Internet. A good one is available at https://www.dataschool.io/how-to-contribute-on-github/. Another short succinct guide is at https://gist.github.com/MarcDiethelm/7303312.

Once you have forked and cloned the ninvaders repository, it's time to setup a development environment. Although many of the ninvaders commands are Bash shell scripts, there are also applicatons written in C and C++ along with documentation in Markdown format, configuration files in a variety of formats, examples, screenshots, video demos, build scripts, packaging, and more.

To compile ninvaders from source, run the command:

./build

On Debian (e.g. Ubuntu), PKGBUILD (e.g. Arch) and RPM (e.g. Fedora) based systems the ninvaders installation package can be created with the mkpkg scripts. The mkpkg script determines which platform it is on and executes the appropriate build and packaging script in the scripts/ directory. These scripts invoke the build scripts for each of the projects included with ninvaders, populate a distribution tree, and call the respective packaging utilities. Packages are saved in the ./releases/<version>/ folder. Once a package has been created it can be installed with the Install script.

It's not necessary to have C/C++ expertise to contribute to ninvaders development. Many of the ninvaders commands are Bash scripts and require no compilaton. Script commands reside in the bin and share/scripts directories. To modify a shell script, install ninvaders and edit the bin/<script> or share/scripts/<script.sh> you wish to improve. After making your changes simply copy the revised script to /usr/bin or /usr/share/ninvaders/scripts and test your changes.

Feel free to email me at github@ronrecord.com with questions or comments.

Install dependencies (here Ubuntu example):

apt-get install cmake libncurses-dev

Now you ready to build:

cmake -B cmake_build
cmake --build cmake_build -j2

Compiled binary ninvaders will be in cmake_build directory.

Controlling nInvaders is really simple. Just press the cursor left/right keys to move it left or right, and press space to fire. The esc-key lets you quit at any time you want.

nInvaders accepts the following command line options -l x where x is your skill as a number between 0 (nightmare) and 9 (may i play daddy) -gpl prints out the license information.

Any other option gives you a help screen.

nInvaders is protected under the laws of the GPL and other countries. Any re- distribution, reselling or copying is strictly allowed. You should have received a copy of it with this package, if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Or just start nInvaders with the -gpl option to learn more.