ua571

UA 571-C Remote Sentry Weapon System — a modern Rust recreation of the Colonial Marines operator console from Aliens (1986).

Unofficial fan project. Not affiliated with 20th Century Studios, Disney, Fox, James Cameron, or any Alien franchise rights holders.

Live demo: https://ua571.danielendara.com
(static WASM build on AWS; see docs/DEPLOYMENT.md)

Three frontends share one simulation core:

Frontend	How to run	Feel
TUI (ratatui)	cargo run -p ua571-tui --release	Terminal operator console
Pixel (GRiD-faithful)	cargo run -p ua571-pixel --release	Desktop 640×240 monochrome canvas
Web (WASM)	./scripts/build-web.sh then serve web/	Same canvas in the browser

┌ UA 571-C  REMOTE SENTRY WEAPON SYSTEM ─────────────────────────┐
│ S1 S2 S3 S4 │ OPTIONS │ phosphor │ DEMO off                      │
│ SYSTEM MODE │ WEAPON │ IFF STATUS │ TEST │ TARGET │ SPECTRAL │ … │
│ AUTO-REMOTE │ SAFE   │ SEARCH     │ AUTO │ SOFT   │ BIO      │ … │
│ …                                                                │
│ log: SENTRY-1 WEAPON ARMED                                       │
│ ←→ section  ↑↓ select  f fire  1-4 sentry  d demo  q quit        │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Features

• Options panel — system mode, weapon status, IFF, test routine, target / spectral / select profiles
• Firing panel — rounds remaining, time-at-100%, temperature & R(M) gauges (bottom-up), CRITICAL alert
• Four sentries — independent ammo and configuration (film setup)
• Event log — arming, fire, critical, demo messages
• Demo mode — scripted perimeter defense auto-play
• Themes — yellow (default, film/GRiD prop), phosphor green, amber, mono
• Fire SFX — MG42-inspired high-rate mechanical pulse when a round fires (mute with m or --mute)
• Cross-platform — macOS, Linux, Windows; browser via WebAssembly

Quick start

Requirements: Rust stable (1.80+ recommended), a terminal (TUI) or windowed desktop (pixel).

git clone https://github.com/danielendara/ua571.git
cd ua571

# Terminal UI
cargo run -p ua571-tui --release

# Desktop pixel UI (closest to the GRiD display layout)
cargo run -p ua571-pixel --release -- --no-boot
cargo run -p ua571-pixel --release -- -s 3 --demo

# WebAssembly (local static server)
./scripts/build-web.sh
python3 -m http.server 8080 --directory web
# open http://localhost:8080

Requires wasm32-unknown-unknown (script installs the target) and wasm-bindgen-cli.

Production web host

https://ua571.danielendara.com — S3 + CloudFront + Route53.

Who	How
Anyone	Self-host web/ (+ pkg/) on any static HTTPS host
Maintainers	GitHub Actions OIDC deploy on main — docs/DEPLOYMENT.md
Infra as code	infra/ (AWS CDK)

Deploy is written for a public repo: forks/PRs cannot assume the AWS role. The GitHub repo may stay private until you’re ready.

CLI flags

ua571 / ua571-pixel [OPTIONS]

  -t, --theme <THEME>       yellow | phosphor | amber | mono  [default: yellow]
  -r, --rounds <N>          starting rounds per sentry  [default: 500]
      --tick-ms <MS>        UI tick interval  [default: 80]
      --no-boot             skip POST splash
      --demo                start demo after boot
      --mute                disable fire SFX
  -c, --config <PATH>       load TOML config
  -s, --scale <N>           (pixel only) integer scale 1–6  [default: 2]

Config file (optional)

~/.config/ua571/config.toml (or platform equivalent via dirs):

theme = "yellow"
tick_ms = 80
starting_rounds = 500
show_boot = true
demo_on_start = false
log_capacity = 64
sound = true

Keys

Key	Action
← → / h l	Previous / next options section
↑ ↓ / k j	Change selection in section
f	Firing panel
o / Esc	Options panel
Enter / Space	Fire (firing panel; requires ARMED) or open fire from options
1–4	Select sentry
a	Toggle SAFE / ARMED on active sentry
r	Reload active sentry drum
d	Toggle demo auto-play
m	Toggle fire SFX mute
t	Cycle theme (TUI)
q	Quit
any (on boot)	Skip POST

Architecture

crates/
  ua571-core/     pure domain + simulation (no UI)
  ua571-render/   shared GRiD monochrome framebuffer + scene draw
  ua571-tui/      ratatui → binary `ua571`
  ua571-pixel/    minifb window → binary `ua571-pixel`
  ua571-web/      wasm-bindgen + canvas → web/pkg (build artifact)
web/              static HTML/CSS/JS host page
infra/            AWS CDK (S3, CloudFront, ACM, Route53, OIDC role)
scripts/          build-web.sh
docs/             DEPLOYMENT.md

Pixel and Web share ua571-render. The TUI is a separate character-cell view of the same ua571-core state.

Deploy web/ including web/pkg/ (produced by build-web.sh) to any static host (GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, S3, …).

Inspiration & attribution

This project was informed by tschak909/UA571C (GPL-3.0) by Thom Cherryhomes — a GRiD-OS Pascal recreation of the film displays, written while restoring GRiD development tools.

ua571 is a clean-room modernization in Rust: new source and architecture. It does not ship GRiD-OS binaries, compilers, or disk images.

See NOTICE for the full film disclaimer and upstream credit.

Development

cargo test --workspace
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo fmt --all

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

GPL-3.0 — same family as Thom’s UA571C, at his preference.

Copyright (c) 2026 Daniel Endara. See NOTICE for film disclaimer and upstream credit.