Moon Invaders

A Space Invaders emulator powered by LÖVE and lua-8080.

• Emulating the Space Invaders look and feel (my blog post about this emulator)
• The Quest for the Greatest: ...the greatest invaders... (testimonial/review by Alexandre Correia)

Features

• Persistent high scores that are saved between runs!
• Authentic-looking CRT shaders, customizable colored gel overlay and background
• Gamepad controller support
• Sound support (for user-provided sound files)

Controls

You can use the keyboard or gamepad controllers (up to two, for two players).

Key	Button	Action
Arrow keys	D-pad / Joystick	Move (both players)
Space	A / B / X / Y	Fire (both players)
C	Back	Insert coin
1	Start	Start 1 player mode
2	Start	Start 2 player mode
T		Tilt

How to run

Windows / macOS

Download the latest release from the Releases page.

Linux

First install LÖVE 11.4. Your Linux distribution might have it in its package repository, but there are no guarantees that this emulator works with older versions of LÖVE.

For Ubuntu, there's a third-party repository you can use to install LÖVE 11.4:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bartbes/love-stable
sudo apt install love

Then clone or download this repository, including submodules with --recursive, and run LÖVE:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/tobiasvl/moon-invaders.git
love moon-invaders/

Note that to get the menu bar at the top of the window you will need to install love-imgui, but you will need to build it yourself since the Lua rock requires an older version of LÖVE.

Setup

You will then need to supply the emulator with ROM files, and some additional optional assets, in order to play.

For all the following files, put them in the following locations:

• Windows, one of the following:
  • The assets directory inside the game's folder (containing the .exe file)
  • C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Moon Invaders\assets\
• Linux, one of the following:
  • $XDG_DATA_HOME/love/Moon\ Invaders/assets/
  • ~/.local/share/love/Moon\ Invaders/assets/
• macOS: /Users/<your username>/Library/Application Support/LOVE/Moon Invaders/assets/

ROM

You will need to supply your own Space Invaders ROM files. There are four files:

• invaders.e
• invaders.f
• invaders.g
• invaders.h

Images

These are optional:

• background.png: Background image
• overlay.png: Colored gel overlay, see the default one for the format

Sounds

This emulator doesn't emulate the sound chip (yet?), so to get sound, you'll need to download a sound pack online.

The sound files found online have different file names, so two variations per file are supported. These are optional.

• 0.wav / ufo_highpitch.wav (UFO flying)
• 1.wav / shoot.wav (player firing)
• 2.wav / explosion.wav (player death)
• 3.wav / invaderkilled.wav (alien death)
• 4.wav / fastinvader1.wav (alien fleet movement "heartbeat")
• 5.wav / fastinvader2.wav
• 6.wav / fastinvader3.wav
• 7.wav / fastinvader4.wav
• 8.wav / ufo_lowpitch.wav (UFO death)
• 9.wav / extendedplay.wav (extra life)

Note that at least one website that provides these files for download have swapped the names of shoot.wav and invaderkilled.wav.