Thanks for posting the unstable builds! Here's some feedback from a linux user. I always just run df in wine, but it's nice to be able to contribute a quick test report.
-- edit: this part was added later
Ok, fired up the df in wine and going to give it a spin for about a week. Runs just fine (as usual), and I'll give a playability report as quickly as I can get into a game on this one.
$ uname -a
Linux ares.<no need to know that> 2.6.28-gentoo-r4 #5 SMP PREEMPT Thu Apr 2 00:15:43 EDT 2009 i686 AMD Phenom(tm) 9950 Quad-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
The first time I ran native linux df on my system I got this:
$ ./df
./dwarfort.exe: error while loading shared libraries: libtiff.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
libSDL_image-1.2.so.0 requires libtiff.so.4. My system only has libtiff.so.4. Time to go scour my package manager for updates. I'm not sure about the licensing of libtiff, but you might want to include the specific library files from your linux installation on the build server the way you provide the SDL libs. If you can do this and perhaps any of the potentially nasty and complex tree of library requirements, that would be really cool.
-- edit: Ok, messed with my package manager and tiff-3.8.2 is currently the highest version in there. I have a lot going on right now, so I'll go further down this path later.
I cloned the public bare repository you have posted at git://brage.info/bc.git and took a poke at it. I haven't worked with scons before, but I have heard of it. The scons.py and SConstruct files in the src tree clued me into what to look for, so I did successfully get the executables to build against my native system libraries.
Unfortunately, I was able to get very far with battlechamps. The keybindings for the up and down arrow keys on my system doesn't register properly with bc.exe, and I can't even navigate the startup menu. I partially suspect my recent update to Xorg 1.5 and the way it handles keyboard and mouse interfaces (bye bye keyboard and mouse X11 drivers, hello "Generic input layer -> Event Interface" driver) because it has been a little bit whacky with my keyboard at times. Plus, this is also probably a df_linux newb problem.
-- edit: Nevermind, I got this working. Somehow the top row 2 & 3 are mapped to up and down. I'll fix that in the keybindings.
I also get some diagnostic messages on the console while bc is runnning. Here you go:
$ ./runscript.linux
Using OpenGL output path with client-side arrays and off-screen framebuffer
Ideal catalog size: 368x368
Mouse reset; this should not happen
^C^\./runscript.linux: line 5: 26313 Quit ./bc.exe $*
I haven't dug very deeply into the source tree, but I'm thinking of adding some code prior to the SDL keyboard event switch statement that outputs the int and char * keycode data (if there's an API to decode the int into char *, I haven't messed with SDL in a while).
-- edit: I got all of the keybindings sorted out and I am now messing with battle champs. It's very strange and very much unlike anything df related I've messed with. The start of the interface is familiar, but I'm not sure exactly what's going on after that. Seems like something neat to mess with for now.
-- edit: Ok, played some more with this, and it's neat. Reminds me of Romance of the Seven Kingdoms style games. Still needs some more playing.