Oolite-Linux
============

This repository contains the files required to build Oolite for Linux,
GNUstep and OpenGL. It should be easily portable to FreeBSD.

0. Pre-requisites

- Objective-C. On Fedora Core, 'up2date -i gcc-objc' installs.

- SDL Development libraries. (Currently used only for sound). Most
distros have this pre-installed or as an easy-to-install package.
Also, SDL_Mixer and SDL_Image are required (they are standard SDL
libraries, but most Linux distros don't install them by default)

- GNUstep Development libraries. I advise you build GNUstep from source
since some prepackaged versions don't have a new enough NSOpenGLView.
It builds easily from source so don't panic.

Tip: Get the GNUstep Startup Version. Everything you need in one
package. Make sure you do:

PATH=$PATH:.

before running make when you build GNUstep Startup, because it depends
on running a shell script in the current directory.

I'm not sure what the minimum hardware is, however decent OpenGL
support is a must. I've only been able to personally test it on
two machines - a 2GHz P4 with a GeForce 4ti and an old Compaq
733MHz P3 with ATi Radeon Mobility. It ran fine on both machines.
I have heard reports of bad things happening with ATi graphics
cards, but only off one person (textures didn't display), and another
person with a Matrox graphics card had problems with the text.

Building
========
Type:
make

If this fails and you're certain you have GNUstep's development
stuff installed, make sure you have this in your .bashrc or
equivalent:

. /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh

GNUstep tells you this if you build it but you won't have been told
if you've installed your distro's GNUstep binaries :-)

Running
=======
Type:
openapp oolite

or
openapp oolite.debug
if you built with 'make debug=yes'.

Troubleshooting
===============
I suggest you go through some of the GNUstep tutorials and make sure these
build and run successfully to ensure your build and runtime environment
is sane. Also, there's a little (and rather nasty) environment tester
on ftp.alioth.net/oolite/gl-gnustep.tar.gz. If you're having problems
I recommend you get this running first; it's relatively simple and should
expose any problems your installation has without possible Oolite problems
clouding your view.

Is it borked for you?
=====================
If you find it's borked, please post a message on the oolite-linux
forum (see http://aegidian.org/bb). Please provide a backtrace if you
have one, screenshots, and describe weirdness with sound. Also provide
log messages from the console. Better still, if you have a fix, send
us the patch!

Modifications from Stock OSX Oolite
===================================

Makefiles:
GNUmakefile and GNUmakefile.postamble.
The former controls compilation and linking, and the latter copies
data files (PNG images, plists, dat files) into oolite.app/Contents/Resources.
PlayerEntity_Additions.m, PlayerEntity_contracts.m, ShipEntity_AI.m -
   These just #include "PlayerEntity (contracts).m" etc. because
   spaces and brackets really suck in the Makefile and shell.
#ifdefs -
   All over the code you'll see #ifdef GNUSTEP ... #else .... #endif
   If you grep for these, you can see where work has to be done.
   I've usually put a TODO: comment line in these (many of them are not
   filled in). I've not #ifdef'd out any methods - I've left at least
   a stub if there's nothing to put in there (for example, speech).

Addition of Comparison.m/h from ObjectiveLib 
(see http://objectivelib.sourceforge.net). ObjectiveLib is an LGPL'd 
set of libraries to add functionality to GNUstep. Comparison.h/m 
implements a category of NSObject that adds isEqualTo:, isGreaterThan:,
isGreaterThanOrEqualTo:, isLessThan:, isLessThanOrEqualTo:, isNotEqualTo:
methods. It looked like a relatively simple category, so rather
than creating a dependency on the whole of ObjectiveLib, I decided
to just add these two files.

Sound uses SDL instead of the AppKit's sound (the sound daemon crashes).
Graphics use SDL instead of NSOpenGLView.

Major tasks left
================
- Get rid of AppKit dependencies (in progress; moving to SDL). This
  will make the game portable to more platforms - in particular,
  GNUstep AppKit's OpenGL source is non-existent on Redmondware.
  Much of this work has been done.
- Speech. This is a more 'who cares?' requirement. I don't know of
  a *nix open source speech synth.

Notes for the terminally insane
===============================
See PORTING.TXT - it's useful to read this if you're tinkering on Linux
and not porting. It may save you grief.
