Suggestions for ports

mitu

@quicksilver Don't mix compilation of the .deb package with the install instructions given on the project's page. You either use the Debian packaging tools or compile from source directly. If you installed the needed build dependencies via apt-source, then clone the repository via git and follow the installation instructions.

quicksilver

@mitu Thank you for your patience! I will start over completely. Is there a proper way to remove what I have so far or can I just delete the files using winscp?

mitu

Just delete the files, it should be enough.

quicksilver

@mitu its building now. Thank you for sticking with me here. After its finished, the last part on the build guide is about package building (see below). Do I follow the instructions for RPM package and debian? Or just the debian part?

Package building
RPM package
The first step is to prepare a RPM build environment. On Fedora systems you can follow this guide: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_an_RPM_package#SPEC_file_overview

Download the file rpm/vcmi.spec from any tagged VCMI release for which you wish to build a RPM package via the SVN Browser trac at this URL for example(which is for VCMI 0.9): http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/vcmi/browser/tags/0.9/rpm/vcmi.spec
Copy the file to ~/rpmbuild/SPECS
Follow instructions in the vcmi.spec. You have to export the corresponding SVN tag, compress it to a g-zipped archive and copy it to ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES. Instructions are written as comments and you can copy/paste commands into terminal.
Go to ~/rpmbuild/SPECS and open terminal in this folder and type:
rpmbuild -ba vcmi.spec (this will build rpm and source rpm)
Generated RPM is in folder ~/rpmbuild/RPMS

If you want to package the generated RPM above for different processor architectures and operating systems you can use the tool mock. Moreover, it is necessary to install mock-rpmfusion_free due to the packages ffmpeg-devel and ffmpeg-libs which aren't available in the standard RPM repositories(at least for Fedora). Go to ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS in terminal and type:

mock -r fedora-17-i386-rpmfusion_free path_to_source_RPM
mock -r fedora-17-x86_64-rpmfusion_free path_to_source_RPM
Available root environments and their names are listed in /etc/mock.

Debian/Ubuntu

Install debhelper and devscripts packages
Run dpkg-buildpackage command from vcmi source directory

sudo apt-get install debhelper devscripts
cd /path/to/source
dpkg-buildpackage
To generate packages for different architectures see "-a" flag of dpkg-buildpackage command

Documentation
To compile using Doxygen, the UseDoxygen CMake module must be installed. It can be fetched from: http://tobias.rautenkranz.ch/cmake/doxygen/

Once UseDoxygen is installed, run:

cmake .
make doc
The built documentation will be available from ./doc

quicksilver

And it ran out of memory :( I guess thats what I get for buying the pi 4 2gb version.

virtual memory exhausted: Cannot allocate memory
make[2]: *** [lib/CMakeFiles/vcmi.dir/build.make:918: lib/CMakeFiles/vcmi.dir/registerTypes/RegisterTypes.cpp.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:163: lib/CMakeFiles/vcmi.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [Makefile:163: all] Error 2

Edit: Im looking into increasing the swap file size. Im going to do some googling and will report back.

mitu

@quicksilver If you installed from source, there's no need for the packaging step.

quicksilver

Success! It works!

Performance is actually pretty good. I do have an issue that the sound isnt working but Ill see what I can do about that. @mitu I feel a bit like a kid jumping in the deep end of the pool but I learned a lot from this. So thank you!

Edit: sound is working now, just had to reboot apparently

shavecat

@quicksilver
Can i got info how to install VCMI on my pi too ? plz :)
or its a crazy install ...

quicksilver

@shavecat For someone who doesn't know quite what they are doing (like myself) it was a little difficult and I needed lots of help from mitu. Hopefully now that we know it works properly, maybe I can figure out how to make a script module for building vcmi without all the manual steps and a launching script so that it can be launched using runcommand through retropie. The biggest issue is that building from source maxed out the 2gb of memory that my pi 4 has, so I was forced to increase my file swap size to compensate. Pi 4 4gb models shouldn't have this issue.

quicksilver

So I think I'll hold off on anything further with vcmi. The performance is great, the game runs fullspeed. However I have already encountered a few issues. The AI is rather dumb, it will hire new heroes at a ridiculous rate but rarely gives them a decent army. Many AI castles were left completely undefended even though they had the ability to hire more units. There was also a weird visual glitch that occured on some of the battlefields like some of the background textures were missing. It looks like vcmi is still being developed but has been stuck on version 0.99x for about two years now. Hopefully if/when they release version 1.0 it will be indistinguishable from the original HMM3.

retropi19

tpo1990 what about to make a script for this game doom2D

quicksilver

I'm curious to try building openmw (morrowind) or xash3d (halflife one). Before I attempt, has anyone already tried?

ExarKunIv

@quicksilver xash3d works fine for what the Pi3 can push. so i think youll be able to get it going, somehow

tpo1990

@retropi19 Thank you for reminding me of this alternative doom experience. From what I found, is that Doom 2D is a fan based DOS port. So you should be able to run the game with dosbox emulator in RetroPie.

retropi19

@tpo1990 i know that i just give it to you so you can make it a script for the ports

tpo1990

@retropi19 Thank you but it does not make sense building a script for a DOS based game when you just have to follow the PC/DOS instructions found on the official RetroPie wiki page to get it working.

Why would you want a script for it?

retropi19

i dont really use dosbox i prefer the one time install of a port,if you can make a script would be great

quicksilver

@retropi19 said in Suggestions for ports:

i prefer the one time install of a port

Why is that? If performance is good through dosbox, that saves a lot of unnecessary work. Dosbox has a built in mapper to map keyboard keys to controller as well. Unless the port has significant performance improvements over dosbox or has extra features I have to agree with @tpo1990.

quicksilver

@tpo1990 have you heard of lilium-voyager? It's a fork of ioquake3 that allows running Star trek voyager elite force holomatch games. https://github.com/zturtleman/lilium-voyager/blob/master/README.md. since you have had luck with compiling other forks of ioquake3, I think I might try this one out. I had elite force back in the day it was probably the first good (only?) Star trek game that I played.

tpo1990

@quicksilver Seems interesting. I haven't heard of it. If it uses ioquake3's base code it should be able to run on Raspberry Pi. Star Trek Voyager Elite Force is one of those games that I never got the chance to try out when I was younger. I had the other Star Trek PC game back in my younger days that used the unreal engine (Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard).