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Linux port[message #101508] Sun, 11 July 2004 10:47 Go to next message
actmodern is currently offline actmodern

 
Messages:9
Registered:July 2004
Hi,

I started porting JA2 to Linux yesterday. I only recently found the sourcecode here.

Has anyone else attempted this? Is there a project going on anywhere?

I'm in the middle of porting the filemanager. I did some work in autoconfing it etc. I'm interested in hearing of any on-going Linux port so as not to duplicate effort.

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Private
Re: Linux port[message #101509] Sun, 11 July 2004 20:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
JayDee is currently offline JayDee

 
Messages:34
Registered:February 2001
Location: Toronto, Canuckistan
there is a linux version of JA2

Smile

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Re: Linux port[message #101510] Mon, 12 July 2004 02:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
actmodern is currently offline actmodern

 
Messages:9
Registered:July 2004
There's no need to be smart. The Tribsoft version stopped working a while ago from bitrot. There's no source for the Linux version from them. If you know where I can find the Linux source from tribsoft then let me know.

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Re: Linux port[message #101511] Mon, 12 July 2004 05:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
JayDee is currently offline JayDee

 
Messages:34
Registered:February 2001
Location: Toronto, Canuckistan
dude, i'm just saying. when you make a post (your first no less) like that and DON'T mention that you are aware of the linux version, i can assure you that 9 out of 10 dentists will assume that you are not aware of it.

and btw, you DO need to be smart to make a linux port Wink

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Re: Linux port[message #101512] Tue, 13 July 2004 06:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
actmodern is currently offline actmodern

 
Messages:9
Registered:July 2004
Well I'm about 70% of the way done with the platform code, so I guess I'm stuck with the job.

All that's left in "Standard Gaming Platform" is the mutex code, audio, input and video. The timer, file management, randomizer etc are ported.

It's not very difficult to do this. The bad parts are when the windowisms leak into the actual JA2 level code. That and the file management used a lot of windowisms which had to be emulated over UNIX in software.

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Re: Linux port[message #101513] Tue, 13 July 2004 20:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
defrog is currently offline defrog

 
Messages:235
Registered:March 2004
Location: Austria
When your done, I'd be very interested in seeing your changes to port it....

Unfortunately, I don't think I can help much since I don't code for linux.

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Sergeant 1st Class
Re: Linux port[message #101514] Wed, 11 August 2004 14:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dougster is currently offline Dougster

 
Messages:27
Registered:August 2004
Location: Chatting with Hans
Hey actmodern, I just snagged the source myself (and ordered ja2 wildfire) and gave it the once over. Have you made any new progress? I'd like a copy of your source tree to mess around with myself. I think the best route would be to convert standard gaming platform to run as a SDL wrapper.

I don't suppose any of you VC guys could export the project as some kind of primitive makefile? It would be nice to know what the includes and link libraries are supposed to be.

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Re: Linux port[message #101515] Wed, 11 August 2004 22:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Jujigatame is currently offline Jujigatame

 
Messages:38
Registered:March 2004
Location: Oxford, UK
From the pull-down menu:
Project->Export Makefile

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Re: Linux port[message #101516] Thu, 12 August 2004 10:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dougster is currently offline Dougster

 
Messages:27
Registered:August 2004
Location: Chatting with Hans
Excellent, its just that since I do my compiling in Linux with gcc, therefore I do not have VC installed in Windows. If you or anybody else would be so kind as to export some makefiles and email them to me, it would be a big help.

"Unlock" my email to send me something:

mailto:lock.bdhilton@atlanticbb.net

Zipfiles, tarballs, Rar files, whatever you want will be fine.

My linux version of JA2 has suffered bit-rot like everybody else's has. I've upgraded way past its ancient link libraries. I think effort is better served getting it to build on a reasonably modern unix box rather than fooling around making old compatibility libs, nevermind that the Tribsoft linux version did have its share of bugs.

I wish that actmodern would pop back in and share some of his code, it looks like he had gotten quite a bit accomplished already.

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Re: Linux port[message #101517] Thu, 02 September 2004 15:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ebuck is currently offline ebuck

 
Messages:123
Registered:August 2004
Location: Houston, TX
Can these makefiles be posted somewhere? I'd like to grab a copy too.

Also, if there's to be a true Linux port, all the media will have to be converted to more Linux friendly formats. I mean, yes, the smacker files will play on Linux, but to develop / distribute with them... Well, it's kind of expensive.

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Sergeant
Re: Linux port[message #101518] Fri, 10 September 2004 02:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ebuck is currently offline ebuck

 
Messages:123
Registered:August 2004
Location: Houston, TX
I've had success at translating the smacker files to avi files.

There's an avi player for linux, but it's not really finished, and I don't know if it really suits our needs. I know the mpeg plays on both linux and windows nicely, so that's what I've been concentrating my efforts on. Should you have a better idea for the movie file formats, please speak up.

I know that avi files are not exactly mpegs but it's a step in the right direction. I've been experimenting with translating the resulting avi files into mpegs, but not with a lot of success.

Seems that the avi files have a very low color depth which tends to make things fall apart when trying to reassemble them into mpegs. So now I'm looking into pulling each frame out of the avi files and saving it to a separate file, creating a new frame from the base file with a deeper color depth per pixel, and packing those back together into a mpeg movie.

Haven't looked into the picture file formats, but I imagine we will encounter similar issues.

Cheers

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Sergeant
Re: Linux port[message #101519] Sat, 11 September 2004 06:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dougster is currently offline Dougster

 
Messages:27
Registered:August 2004
Location: Chatting with Hans
I haven't been doing a whole lot with the linux port, but rather I've been shooting it out in Danubia playing through the Urban Chaos mod which I never could get to run in linux.

I know how to write makefiles from scratch, they don't really have to be all that complex actually. Anyways,

I just got an email from actmodern and he said he's busy with a new job but he is going to send me/us his code:

Quote:

I started a new job about a month ago and lack of interest made me stop porting. I have to work this weekend but I can probably clean up what I have and make it available to you after that.

I ported the SGP and got JA2 to mostly work without any sound or movies.
Coolies!

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Re: Linux port[message #101520] Sat, 11 September 2004 12:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dougster is currently offline Dougster

 
Messages:27
Registered:August 2004
Location: Chatting with Hans
Quote:
Originally posted by Edwin Buck:
I've had success at translating the smacker files to avi files.

There's an avi player for linux, but it's not really finished, and I don't know if it really suits our needs. I know the mpeg plays on both linux and windows nicely, so that's what I've been concentrating my efforts on. Should you have a better idea for the movie file formats, please speak up.

I know that avi files are not exactly mpegs but it's a step in the right direction. I've been experimenting with translating the resulting avi files into mpegs, but not with a lot of success.

Seems that the avi files have a very low color depth which tends to make things fall apart when trying to reassemble them into mpegs. So now I'm looking into pulling each frame out of the avi files and saving it to a separate file, creating a new frame from the base file with a deeper color depth per pixel, and packing those back together into a mpeg movie.

Haven't looked into the picture file formats, but I imagine we will encounter similar issues.

Cheers
The commercial linux version of JA2 already has mpeg movies. I just played "movies.dat" in mplayer and it worked perfectly. It appears that all the movies are combined into one big file and the game engine plays specific portions of the file at various times.

Actmodern expressed some concern that the smac movies are still property of Strategy First and are not covered under the source code license.

However, if any of you want to work on the coding of the movies, we can "presume" that linux people have access to the linux version of movies.dat and provide a stub file in case they don't have it. *Maybe* we can eventually get permission to make that file available for linux people to download.

I have the linux "movies.dat" file here, if any of you want it to work on the code. I will make it available for download temporarily if you send me a private email. Its 35M bzip2'ed.

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Re: Linux port[message #101521] Thu, 30 September 2004 22:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dougster is currently offline Dougster

 
Messages:27
Registered:August 2004
Location: Chatting with Hans
I haven't heard back from Actmodern yet, but it's probably about time to send him an email ping to see whats up. He's pretty busy with a new job from what I can gather so thats cool.

I kind of had an idea for us Linuxer's, let me propose it and see what you think. Since most of the work on the JA2 source is being done in VC6, what if we linked against Winelib?

From my experience, Wine apps run really damn fast, especially with Gentoo or other source compiled distros. Linking against Winelib.dll would be a great intermediate measure to make a windows+linux compatible binary until such time as the Linux port takes over and replaces the VC6 version.

Note: developers -- really you want the gcc version eventually, lot of reasons, but mainly because its the world standard for c++ code. Setting up for Winelib linkage should be pretty easy and its a good step in that direction.

I just finally horked a copy of VC6 so I'm going to toy with the Winelib option until I hear back from Actmodern again.

BTW, I'm also an avid Fallout fan!

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Re: Linux port[message #101522] Sat, 02 October 2004 14:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ebuck is currently offline ebuck

 
Messages:123
Registered:August 2004
Location: Houston, TX
Dougster,

I've been looking around for a linux copy so I don't have to do file conversions. Also, it would be nice to play on my linux boxes Smile

Winelib is an intriguing option, but it's fixing the environment to make the code run "as is". I've a bit of experience in solving problems this way, and personal opinion tends to make me believe that it's a possible "work around" but not a good idea in the long run.

I agree about the "defacto" standard of gcc, in fact I'm trying to get the C++ version to compile with gcc (albeit in a cygwin / windows environment) If that can be done cleanly, it's just another little step towards linux (I hope).

Cheers,
Edwin

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Sergeant
Re: Linux port[message #101523] Fri, 12 November 2004 09:16 Go to previous messageGo to next message
bob is currently offline bob
Messages:1
Registered:November 2004
Hi everybody,

I'm interested on developping JA2 for linux but I wasn't able to find the source codes for linux. Does averybody work alone from the windows source code or someone post somewhere the source codes for linux.
I can help in C/C++ developpment for linux only because I don't have windows and wine isn't configured.

Cheers
Bob

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Civilian
Re: Linux port[message #101524] Sun, 14 November 2004 21:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
defrog is currently offline defrog

 
Messages:235
Registered:March 2004
Location: Austria
there is no source for linux released by Strategy first. There have been attempts to convert the windows source.. but they always run off before then finish...

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Sergeant 1st Class
Re: Linux port[message #101525] Fri, 10 December 2004 09:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ptruog is currently offline ptruog
Messages:4
Registered:December 2004
Location: Seattle
Is there a public repository for code already worked on? Or is everyone working on the linux code simply starting from scratch? I can't even seem to get to a working cvs server for the windows code... so I've no idea how current the code i have actually is.

Thanks

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Civilian
Re: Linux port[message #101526] Thu, 16 December 2004 14:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ebuck is currently offline ebuck

 
Messages:123
Registered:August 2004
Location: Houston, TX
George,

There's a svn repository. Look in the other threads for it's URL.

Also, there's a lot to be done before we can think about a linux version, only some of which includes:

1. Make ja2 compile on something other than VC++.
2. Rewrite the blitting enginge to not use DirectX.
3. Rework the sound system.
4. Port the graphics / movies to formats that naturally exist on linux.
5. Wrap all the MS specific calls with portable calls.

And that's just assuming that we port to an x86 linux. To really port to linux (all platforms) we need to go a few steps further.

1. Reverse engineer the x86 assembly routines to C code (Defrog is working on this right now).
2. Make the code POSIX, or at least a portable subset of C++.

As you can see, we have a long way to go.

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Sergeant
Re: Linux port[message #101527] Sat, 18 December 2004 05:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ptruog is currently offline ptruog
Messages:4
Registered:December 2004
Location: Seattle
Edwin,
Thanks for the response. I've seen the svn link, but the connection always fails.. so I naturally was curious if the server was still available at all.. And as I could not find a working svn/cvs server I asked this community so as to not duplicate efforts. And as I see there are many questions that sound a lot like mine.. I can't be the only one who wondered about the state of a port.

I agree, there is a lot to be discussed and worked on.

I have read on other posts that someone was at least attempted, and I believe had some success at porting the movies formats to something else... I only hope that this work was updated to the svn server...

Anyway, thanks for the response.

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Civilian
Re: Linux port[message #101528] Sat, 18 December 2004 15:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ebuck is currently offline ebuck

 
Messages:123
Registered:August 2004
Location: Houston, TX
George,

Try the https:// version of the svn link. I've never had that fail on me yet. It's

https://www.hobby-software.com/svn/ja2test/

for some reason the http:// URL doesn't work nearly as well. Also, if you had a failed http:// attempt, svn will cache who you tried to pull from in the newly created ja2test directory. Remove it and retry with https and all should be good.

I was the one that experimented with "porting" one of the movie files from smacker to mpeg. I got the file from smacker to avi using free tools available from the web. I tried to convert the avi to a mpeg, but most mpeg libraries don't like the particular colormap / bit depth of the movie files, so I guess it could be done (worst case, exporting all the frames into files, coverting the frames one by one to a more digestable colordepth, and then building a movie from all the frames), just not easily.

The SVN server has none of the media files. Space is limited, and media files are strategically omitted from the tree to conserve server space.

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Sergeant
Re: Linux port[message #101529] Tue, 04 January 2005 01:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
blane is currently offline blane

 
Messages:18
Registered:December 2004
oh i don't know if this is still current, but i got JA2/linux running with linux 2.6.7 (debian unstable).

But it sure wasn't easy. chrooted an old debian ext2-image, resized it to install xlibs and then ja2 would work.

stupid thing just is that they dynamically linked the libs and not static. well.. tough. anyhow, if anyone still cares i'll look up the howto.

cheers,

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Private
Re: Linux port[message #101530] Sun, 27 February 2005 04:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ibizib is currently offline ibizib
Messages:1
Registered:February 2005
Hi,

i want to get involved in Porting Jagged Alliance, but currently I'm trying to figure out what the sourcecode is doing Wink I'd like to know if there's a web page where I can see what has been ported, and whats the overall status of the Project...

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Civilian
Re: Linux port[message #176342] Sat, 23 February 2008 07:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lightkey
Messages:1
Registered:February 2008
Location: Germany, W
To bump this for everyone interested, nothing came out of this thread but luckily others completed the task already a while ago with the project Jagged Alliance 2: Stracciatella. They (mostly one developer) released version 0.8 recently. Videos are not working but a bunch of bugs and translations from the original have been fixed. Work has been focused to clean up the source code, only mouse scrolling in the menu has been added, the gameplay has not been altered otherwise.

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Civilian
Re: Linux port[message #186149] Sat, 24 May 2008 20:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Gincan is currently offline Gincan

 
Messages:15
Registered:August 2005
Lightkey
To bump this for everyone interested, nothing came out of this thread but luckily others completed the task already a while ago with the project Jagged Alliance 2: Stracciatella. They (mostly one developer) released version 0.8 recently. Videos are not working but a bunch of bugs and translations from the original have been fixed. Work has been focused to clean up the source code, only mouse scrolling in the menu has been added, the gameplay has not been altered otherwise.


I've now tried the 0.9 and it is very stable, just a few bugs (San Mona boxing comp is broke). I also ran into some AI bugs but I guess you have to rewrite the AI code to get rid of them. Not a single savegame went CTD (more than 30 hours worth of gameplay) so that is great. Hopefully you can add the 1.13 multiplayer and some of the AI functions to give the player a little more challenge.

[Updated on: Sat, 24 May 2008 20:45] by Moderator

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Private
Re: Linux port[message #186205] Sun, 25 May 2008 01:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Tron

 
Messages:225
Registered:August 2007
Location: Germany
If you want these problems resolved, you have to report them to me. Preferably include a savegame, which demonstrates the problem, describe in detail, what the problem is, and, if possible, how to reproduce it.

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Sergeant 1st Class
Re: Linux port[message #186301] Mon, 26 May 2008 00:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mgl is currently offline mgl

 
Messages:255
Registered:December 2007
Location: France
For the San Mona fighting competition, the only bug I have seen is that ater a won match (fair fight with no death), the guy says "A remarkable performance" but not "Here are your winnings" and he doesn't pay me. I reload and sooner or later it works. It happens often enough to make me save between fights.

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Master Sergeant
Re: Linux port[message #186304] Mon, 26 May 2008 00:46 Go to previous message
Tron

 
Messages:225
Registered:August 2007
Location: Germany
Well, as I said before: If you want the problem resolved, report it to me and preferably include a savegame, so I can reproduce the problem. Otherwise there is little I can do.

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Sergeant 1st Class
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