cabin-fever-x86-core 0.0.1a3

A shared game night with an AI companion over a simulated radio: play old text adventures together. Runs the game natively; Linux only.

cabin-fever-x86-core

The native, Linux-only runtime for Cabin Fever x86: the game server, AI companion, Z-machine interpreter, web radio, and text client.

This package is intended for Linux users who want to run the services directly, expose the web client to a LAN, customize the configuration, or develop Cabin Fever itself. It builds jericho and its frotz fork from source, so a C toolchain is required and other operating systems are not supported.

For a self-contained installation on Linux, macOS, or Windows, use the sandboxed cabin-fever-x86 launcher instead. It runs this package inside a QEMU VM, keeping the memory-unsafe interpreter and downloaded game files off the host.

Native installation

Cabin Fever x86 Core requires Linux, Python 3.12 or newer, and standard C build tools. On Debian or Ubuntu, for example:

sudo apt-get install build-essential python3-dev
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install cabin-fever-x86-core

Set the API keys used by the default configuration:

export OPENAI_API_KEY=...
export ELEVENLABS_API_KEY=...

An ElevenLabs key is optional if you only need text interaction. For full configuration options, start from config.example.yaml and save it as config.yaml in the directory where you run the commands, or pass its location with --config.

Running the services

Start the game server:

cf86-server

Then start one of the clients in another terminal:

cf86-web   # browser-based radio at http://127.0.0.1:8000
# or
cf86-text  # terminal-based text client

Each command accepts --help. The server and clients can be run on different Linux machines by setting their interfaces, hosts, and ports in config.yaml or with command-line options. For example, to expose only the web frontend on the local network:

cf86-web --web-host 0.0.0.0

Review your firewall and network trust before binding a service beyond localhost.

Z-machine games

When cf86-server runs directly, it looks for .z3–.z8 game files in data/games/ relative to its working directory. If that directory contains nothing playable, the server downloads the z-machine-games archive and unpacks only the 57 games in its jericho-game-suite folder.

Add other games by copying them into data/games/ before starting the server. Only use game files you have the right to run.

Development

The repository is a uv-managed workspace. On Linux or WSL:

git clone https://github.com/afourney/cabin-fever-x86.git
cd cabin-fever-x86
uv venv --python 3.12
uv sync --all-packages
cp config.example.yaml config.yaml

Then run the native entry points from the repository root:

uv run cf86-server
uv run cf86-web
# or: uv run cf86-text

See the repository README for the complete project setup.