Terminus Est

Terminus Est is John's awesome space shooter. See his Soloforge website.

Mike is hoping to help John build Terminus under linux. Here's John's "getting started" list...

There is some stuff in here on getting set up to build SDL apps with
KDeveloper: http://gpwiki.org/index.php/SDL

You will need SDL, plus the SDL_image and SDL_gfx support libs.  
Available from: http://www.libsdl.org/index.php

And the FMOD sound system from http://www.fmod.org.

Typically I'll be using either Fedora or Gentoo during my porting effort.

FEDORA

1 Install SDL and fmod:

yum install SDL-devel
yum install SDL_gfx
yum install SDL_gfx-devel
yum install SDL_image
yum install SDL_image-devel
yum install fmod
yum install fmod-devel

Mar 19 22:42:01 Installed: SDL_gfx.i386 2.0.13-2.2.fc4.rf
Mar 19 22:45:23 Installed: SDL_image.i386 1.2.4-1.2.fc4.rf
Mar 19 23:11:05 Installed: fmod.i386 3.74.1-1.2.fc4.rf
Mar 20 21:22:26 Installed: fmod-devel.i386 3.74.1-1.2.fc4.rf
Mar 20 21:24:32 Installed: alsa-lib-devel.i386 1.0.10-27.rhfc4.at
Mar 20 21:24:41 Installed: SDL-devel.i386 1.2.8-4
Mar 20 21:24:41 Installed: SDL-devel.i386 1.2.8-4 
Mar 20 21:27:59 Installed: SDL_gfx-devel.i386 2.0.13-2.2.fc4.rf

Mike's comments will occasionally be marked in orange, John's comments in green, when we're not feeling lazy.

Huh. Does that yum app go out and get the latest version too? Slick. I will get some source control up and running today.

Yep it auto-updates everything to the latest stable versions, including tracking down dependencies.

2 Grab the source - John is using subversion - very l337!

yum install subversion
  Mar 20 20:00:03 Installed: subversion.i386 1.2.3-2.1

cd development
mkdir terminus
cd terminus
svn checkout http://xxxxx/terminus/

and there it is!

3 Build it

sdl-config tells you what you need on the gcc command line:

[m@thedigitalmachine terminus]$ sdl-config --libs 
-L/usr/lib -lSDL -lpthread
[m@thedigitalmachine terminus]$ sdl-config --static-libs
-L/usr/lib -lSDL -lpthread -lm -ldl -lasound -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11 -lXext

So let's try this:

g++ main.cpp -o main `sdl-config --cflags --static-libs`

Here's what we got so far:

 In file included from system.hpp:17,
                 from startup.hpp:8,
                 from main.cpp:8:
util/audio.hpp:82: error: syntax error before `*' token
util/audio.hpp:145: error: `FMOD_SOUND' was not declared in this scope

Looks like the version of fmod that Fedora wants to pull down is old (3.74). I believe we need to go with FMOD Ex 4 (4.03.03 as of this writing). I will pull down the code from fmod.org and build a local version.

Hmmm... There are two versions of FMOD Ex, the C and the C++ version. I had to use the C version because the C++ version is not compatable with Dev-C++ and MinGW. Check and make sure that you have the C version of the lib installed too.

FYI, here is my linker options:

-lmingw32 -lSDLmain -lSDL -mwindows
../../Dev-Cpp/lib/libSDL_image.a
../../Dev-Cpp/lib/libfmodex.a
../../Dev-Cpp/lib/libSDL_gfx.a

Try this:

Download the linux tar.gz from http://www.fmod.org
Notice there is both a fmod.h and an fmod.hpp in the inc dir.
Put into the compile path, the compiler should compile in the correct one (fmod.h) since that is what is in my files.
There are two .03 files in the lib dir, is one of those the C version of the lib and the other the CPP?

OK I'm getting to the bottom of this.  :> Looks like FMOD Ex 4 is not open source. The download includes pre-built libraries but no source code. The "makefile" just copies the pre-built libraries into place. I think that will be OK but I have to make sure I know what it's doing. From the "makefile" script:

VERSION    = 4.03.03
LIBDIR     = api/lib
HDRDIR     = api/inc
DESTLIBDIR = /usr/local/lib
DESTHDRDIR = /usr/local/include/fmodex

I am going to uninstall Fedora's fmod 3.74 then try the makefile.

FMOD is the one "pay for" piece to the game. The built-in SDL sound libs were problomatic. That, and FMOD allows me to use a compressed XM file format that will save me about 5M off my downloadable size. I think that I will pay about $100 per OS license, once for Win, once for Mac, and once for Linux. To me, it was a close call, borderline, but in the end I deemed it worth it.

Sounds good to me. Removing the older (open-source?) fmod:

yum remove fmod
 Removing:
  fmod                    i386       3.74.1-1.2.fc4.rf  installed         431 k
 Removing for dependencies:
  fmod-devel              i386       3.74.1-1.2.fc4.rf  installed         1.8 M

Then, I believe I won't need to run the "Makefile", I should be able to use the libraries and includes from my local copy, with a little stupid trickery.

cd /home/m/development/terminus
ls
  fmodapi40303linux  fmodapi40303linux.tar.gz  terminus
ln -s fmodapi40303linux fmod
cd fmod/api
ln -s inc fmod
cd ../../terminus
g++ main.cpp -o main `sdl-config --cflags --static-libs` -I../fmod/api/ -L../fmod/api/lib/libfmodex.so

Getting further...

/tmp/cc4ahy85.o(.text+0x12): In function `main':
main.cpp: undefined reference to `TeSystem::Start()'
/tmp/cc4ahy85.o(.text+0x22):main.cpp: undefined reference to `TeStartUp::Execute()'

Awesome, that's in system.hpp. Sounds like time to build that makefile! And I see in the meantime, John's checked in another round of changes, we're at big fat [10] now, whoop! :>

I am excited! The changes I checked in last night include the "introduction movie" from the first campaign. Right now I am completing mission one. If you get the movie up and running on Linux that will be a HUGE milestone.

BTW, I hadn't planned on having any other developers on board, so the code is perhaps not quite up to my normal "team standards". I certainly have not taken any pains to "do the right thing" when the end results would be solely cosmetic. So keep that in mind as you start to dig through the code :)

Take a peek at os.cpp, that is where I planned on putting any OS specific code. Right now the only thing that could use implementing is a window centering routine. And that is a very non-critical piece - cosmetic only.