ufoai(6)

✨ ufoai — the manual page, but make it make sense 💅

okay bestie, so this is the manual for ufoai(6) — yeah, section 6 of the games manuals, we love a niche little corner of the man pages. Sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's get you fluent in this.

---

🎀 NAME 🎀

ufoai — the UFO: Alien Invasion client. Like, the actual game window you play in. The main character. 👑

---

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

ufoai [+<internal command> option value] ...

that's it, that's the whole thing. you can pass a bunch of +<internal command> option value triples and it'll just... do them. slay.

---

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so ufoai is the client for the strategy game UFO: Alien Invasion. that's it. that's the vibe. it's the thing that renders the aliens and the bases and the sad little soldiers you're about to lose. 💀

---

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -h, --help — shows you this help. the classic. when in doubt, ask for help, no cap.
• -q, --quiet — turns off console output. not me silencing the logs 🙈 if you want it to just shut up and run, this is your girl.
• +<internal command> — okay this one is fun. anything you pass as +<internal command> gets understood exactly the same way the in-game console understands it. want the in-game console? hit SHIFT+ESC. then use the in-game cvarlist to pull up literally every option the game has available. it's giving cheat sheet. it's giving iykyk. 📜

🧚 Internal commands 🧚

• snd_init — set this to 0 to start with no sound at all. silence. peace. library mode. 🤫
• vid_fullscreen — set this to 1 to start in fullscreen mode. immersive. cinematic. the whole screen is yours. 🔥

---

💖 FILES 💖

okay so here's the tea about where the game keeps its stuff ☕

all the data files live inside a pk3 file over in /usr/share/games/ufoai/base/. and guess what — pk3 files are just zip files. not me exposing them like that 😭 you can literally extract them and drop them into the home directory of whoever's running the game. the path you want for that is:

~/.ufoai/<VERSION>/base/

and here's the important part, bestie: files that are not inside the pk3 files have a higher priority than the ones that are. so you can replace any file you want this way. any. file. you're the main character of your own install. ✨

you can also drop brand new maps and other game content into the base/ directory in your user's home directory, and boom — new game content available to you. iconic.

• ~/.ufoai/<VERSION>/base/config.cfg — the game configuration. your settings live here.
• keys.cfg — your game key bindings. all your little button mappings.

---

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

ufoai +snd_init 0 +vid_fullscreen 1

that starts ufoai with no sound and in fullscreen mode. two birds, one command line. ate. 💅

---

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• ufoai-server(6) — yeah, the server one. go look at it. 🫶

---

okay that's the whole page, you're officially fluent 💜

written by the ufoai girlies, dated August 2013, living in section 6 of the games manuals. mwah, bye bestie! 🎀✨🦋