Ansible-C64Dreams

An automated setup for the C64 Dreams project on Linux.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• What it does
• What it does NOT
• How it works
• Requirements
• Installation
  • Clone repo
  • Execute playbook
• Usage
  • Start feh
  • Keyboard shortcuts
• Contributions
• License

Introduction

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. ☹️

What it does

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.

What it does NOT

• 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 🙃

How it works

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

Requirements

• 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)

Installation

Clone repo

git clone https://github.com/4ch1m/ansible-c64dreams.git

Execute playbook

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:)

Usage

Start feh

Now change to the just created output directory and finally start feh:

cd output
./run.sh

Keyboard shortcuts

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

Contributions (preferably via Pull-Request) are welcome!

License

Please read the LICENSE file.