Alien Floyds tab
In one line: the easter egg — a playable arcade game, and an animated backdrop for the whole app.
"Alien Floyd's" is a Pink Floyd homage rendered with pygame-ce: Sir Clive
promenading in his C5, flying saucers, morphing pigs and a squadron of green
aliens. It has nothing to do with Spectrum Next file transfer and is entirely
optional, but it is the most fun part of the app.
The attract screen, with the controls spelled out along the bottom. Press Space to start.
Both switches are in Settings, both off by default, and both
need the optional pygame-ce package:
python -m pip install pygame-ce| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Alien Floyd's — animated background on all tabs | Replaces the static background image everywhere with the live animation. |
| Alien Floyd's — show the full-window 'Alien Floyd's' tab | Adds the 🌈 Alien Floyd's tab, just before Settings. This one is playable. |
The checkboxes are greyed out with an install hint when pygame-ce is missing.
Click into the tab to give it focus, then:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ← / → (or A / D) | Steer the C5. It accelerates rather than stepping, so the longer you hold, the faster you go — and it coasts when you let go. |
| Space | Fire |
| ↑ (or W) | Make the alien swarm dive faster — riskier, but quicker |
You collect letters to spell out a word; complete it and the next one starts, with the Floyds a little faster each time. Your high score is saved to the configuration file, and the leaderboard appears periodically while the animation is idling in attract mode. After a game over you type your name by pressing the letter keys directly.
Launch the app with --anim to force a particular animation to play at startup
and switch the mode on for that run, without touching Settings:
python zx-next-unite.py --anim aliens| Choice | What plays |
|---|---|
walk |
Sir Clive's promenade |
c5 |
The C5 |
ufo |
The flying saucer |
aliens |
Clive's saucer plus the attacking green alien squadron |
- The background animation and the game are separate. With only the background switched on, the animation autoplays behind every tab and ignores your keyboard; the dedicated tab is what makes it playable.
- It costs CPU. If the app feels sluggish on an older machine, turning the animated background off is the first thing to try.
- The 🎮 Retro buttons are a different feature. Those restyle individual panes as 8-bit consoles — see the User Manual. Alien Floyd's is the full animation.
See also: Settings tab · User Manual