endless-sky(6)

💫 endless-sky(6) 💫

okay bestie, gather round 🫶 we're doing the manual page for Endless Sky — that's endless-sky, section 6 of the manual, so yes it's a game page and yes it's iconic 👑

---

🎀 NAME 🎀

endless-sky — a space exploration and combat game. literally that's the whole vibe 💖

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

endless-sky [-h] [--help] [-v] [--version] [-s] [--ships] [-w]
[--weapons] [-t] [--talk] [-r] [--resources] [-c] [--config] [-p]
[--parse-save] [--test]

heads up bestie, the synopsis is not the whole story — there's a lot more down in OPTIONS. keep scrolling. 💅

---

🚀 DESCRIPTION 🚀

Endless Sky is a space exploration and combat game that mixes action with role playing elements. both. at once. the range 😭✨

You go explore other star systems 🌌. You make money by trading, by carrying passengers, or by completing missions. Then you take those earnings and either buy yourself a better ship, or upgrade the weapons and engines on the one you already have. You blow up pirates 💥. You take sides in a civil war. Or — and this is the main character choice honestly — you leave human space behind and hope you stumble on some friendly aliens whose culture is more civilized than your own 🙈🦋

For the keyboard controls, click the "Preferences" button on the title screen. And you can pause and bounce back to the title screen at literally any point in the game by pressing <escape>.

Most of the controls should be self-explanatory, but here's the one that gets everyone: your ship has no reverse thrusters. so, exactly like a real spacecraft, the only way to slow down is to turn your ship around and accelerate in the opposite direction from your current heading 🛰️

To help with some tricky maneuvers, your ship has an autopilot that engages when you press 'L' to land or 'J' to enter hyperspace. The autopilot disengages if you press any of the movement keys. And it will also automatically aim your ship if you are firing a weapon and have a target selected 🎯

For a manual and other information, visit https://endless-sky.github.io 🌈

When you run it from the command line, if a resource directory is not specified, the program checks whether the current directory contains directories named "data" and "images" and files named "keys.txt" and "credits.txt". If so, it reads resources from the current directory 💖 Otherwise it uses /usr/local/share/games/endless-sky if that exists, or /usr/share/games/endless-sky/ otherwise. periodt.

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -h, --help — prints a short help message. short king behavior, we respect it 👑
• -v, --version — prints the software version.
• -t, --talk — reads a data file from STDIN and looks for a "conversation" node at the root level (i.e. not indentated). If it finds one, that conversation gets displayed in a pop-up dialog. This is for testing conversations in a new mission you're developing 🧚 super useful if you're out here writing missions, fr fr.
• -r, --resources <directory> — sets the directory that game resources (images, etc.) will be loaded from.
• -c, --config <directory> — sets the directory where preferences and saved games will be stored.
• -p, --parse-save — prints any content or whitespace-formatting errors found while loading data files and the most recent saved game. This option prevents the game from launching.
• --parse-assets — prints any content, whitespace-formatting, image, or sound errors found while loading data, image, and sound files and the most recent saved game. This option prevents the game from launching.
• --test <name> — execute the test case with the given name. By default, the game will be muted while running tests 🔇
• --tests — prints (to STDOUT) a list of available tests, usable for automatic test runs. This option prevents the game from launching.
• --nomute — prevents muting the game when running tests 🔊
• -c, --rngseed <seed> — every time the pseudo-random number generator is seeded, it will be given this value. 🎲
• -c, --tq-threads <number> — sets the number of threads used for the internal queue of tasks. Not specifying this will use a default depending on your system. Has to be at least 1.

bestie, yes, -c shows up three whole times on this page. that's what the page says. I don't make the rules, I just report them 💀

• -s, --ships — prints (to STDOUT) a table of ship stats (just the base stats, not considering any stored outfits). This option prevents the game from launching.
  • --sales — prints (to STDOUT) a table of ships with every 'shipyard' each appears in.
  • --loaded — prints (to STDOUT) a table of ship stats accounting for installed outfits. Does not include variants.
  • --list — prints (to STDOUT) a list of all ship names.
  • --variants — consider ship variants as well.
• -w, --weapons — prints (to STDOUT) a table of characteristics of all the available weapons. This option prevents the game from launching.
• -e, --engines — prints (to STDOUT) a table of characteristics of all the available engines. This option prevents the game from launching.
• --power — prints (to STDOUT) a table of power outfit stats. ⚡
• -o, --outfits — prints (to STDOUT) a table of characteristics of all the available outfits. This option prevents the game from launching.
  • --sales — prints (to STDOUT) a list of outfits and every 'outfitter' each appears in.
  • -a, --all — prints a table of outfits and all attributes used by any outfits present.
• --sales — prints (to STDOUT) a list of all shipyards and outfitters and the ships and outfits they each contain.
  • -s, --ships — prints a list of shipyards and the ships they each contain.
  • -o, --outfits — prints a list of outfitters and the outfits they each contain.
• --planets — prints (to STDOUT) a list of all planets. 🪐
  • --descriptions — prints (to STDOUT) a table of all planets and their descriptions.
  • --attributes — prints (to STDOUT) a table of all planets and their attributes.
    • --reverse — prints (to STDOUT) a table of all planet attributes and which planets have them.
• --systems — prints (to STDOUT) a list of all systems. 🌌
  • --attributes — prints (to STDOUT) a list of all systems and their attributes.
    • --reverse — prints (to STDOUT) a table of all system attributes and which systems have them.
• --matches — reads a data file from STDIN and looks for a "location" node at the root level (i.e. not indentated). If it finds one, prints a list of all systems and planets which match the location filter in that node.
• --changes — prints a list of changes from the "recent" save file. Includes data changes from events referred to only by name as children of the "event" node.

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Michael Zahniser — mzahniser@gmail.com 💌

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GPL. 🫶

---

and that's the page bestie, we ate and left no crumbs ✨ this was ver. 0.11.3, dated 26 Sep 2026, from the endless-sky(6) manual page. go explore some star systems for me 💖🦋🌸