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I have many wants. Today, kobs, tomorrow, cuddles.

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[Malor]

Toady, you can experiment with Linux porting  absolutely for free, without mucking around with dual-booting or anything.  

At www.vmware.com,  download the free VMWare Server.  It is a very robust piece of software that's designed to let you run more than one OS at the same time.  Assuming you have enough RAM, you can easily run Linux in a window on your desktop, or run Windows on a Linux desktop.  

With some hacking, you can probably even get OSX working under VMWare, but Apple takes a dim view of any such activities.  The OSX86 Project is where to start looking.  

You're probably going to get some static from the Linux community for not open sourcing your game.  So you may find that part a bit unpleasant.  However, at the same time, Dwarf Fortress is one of the best-suited games to that platform I've yet seen, both in mindset and in display mode.  People that like Unix will _love_ Dwarf Fortress.  And they're going to want to play it in console mode, because it's obviously 'meant' to be played that way.  (even though you render it with OpenGL, which I find pretty damn amusing.   )  

If you can make it work in console mode (Linux terminal emulation is VERY sophisticated), that'll be preferable for most.  Having it look like a terminal program but not ACT like one will unreasonably irritate some of that crowd.

I'm sure you'll make some money from a Linux port, probably more than most.   On the Mac, I think you'll have a harder time of it.  I definitely wouldn't spend much money on a Mac... maybe the cheapest of the Mac Minis if you don't want to do the OSX86 route.

[ September 11, 2006: Message edited by: Malor ]

[foxxtrot]

quote:Originally posted by Malor:
<STRONG>You're probably going to get some static from the Linux community for not open sourcing your game.  So you may find that part a bit unpleasant.  However, at the same time, Dwarf Fortress is one of the best-suited games to that platform I've yet seen, both in mindset and in display mode.  People that like Unix will _love_ Dwarf Fortress.  And they're going to want to play it in console mode, because it's obviously 'meant' to be played that way.  (even though you render it with OpenGL, which I find pretty damn amusing.     )  
</STRONG>

Toady has already gotten guff from others for not Open Sourcing DF.  However, it was very generous of him to free the KQ source, which is based largely on the DF source.  I'm starting a port to SDL myself, and will make it available when I have something that runs.

As for the OSS issue, a large number of people in the community need to get over themselves.  I think OSS is a great thing, but I don't think it's very useful for games.  The tools to create games, yes, but not the games themselves. Besides, the people who want games on Linux will pay for them.  Particularly if they're as fun as DF.

[bremac]

quote:Originally posted by Malor:
<STRONG>If you can make it work in console mode (Linux terminal emulation is VERY sophisticated), that'll be preferable for most.  Having it look like a terminal program but not ACT like one will unreasonably irritate some of that crowd.</STRONG>

I'm playing with the idea of moving EVERYTHING, (the events which most people will be porting, plus the display code, and sound) to SDL. Even though I'm a console junkie, and do much of my work from Vim, I still prefer SDL for games. (Curses interaction with a terminal emulator for a game? Eww, feature loss, and protocol overhead. No thank you.)

[foxxtrot]

quote:Originally posted by bremac:
<STRONG>

I'm playing with the idea of moving EVERYTHING, (the events which most people will be porting, plus the display code, and sound) to SDL. Even though I'm a console junkie, and do much of my work from Vim, I still prefer SDL for games. (Curses interaction with a terminal emulator for a game? Eww, feature loss, and protocol overhead. No thank you.)</STRONG>

Why port the display code?  He already uses OpenGL for everything.  As for the sound, I don't really know FMOD, but I suspect it is capable enough, and it does support Linux and Mac.

[lachek]

Excuse my ignorance here, but for those who have studied the code so far, does there seem to be any possibility to implement an abstraction between the representation (OpenGL/SDL/windowing etc, with a keyboard-driven interface) and the events (Grimgar moves one step to the left)?
Rather than one person working on an SDL port, another massaging the Win32-centric OpenGL code into conformity and a third writing a curses-interface, it appears (to me) less wasteful to concentrate on separating events from representation with a friendly API that can then be used for making representations in any toolkit or display environment you so choose.
Or is the code already cleanly laid out that way, and no such work is needed? That would be nice.
Anyway, just a thought.

[bremac]

quote:Originally posted by foxxtrot:
<STRONG>

Why port the display code?  He already uses OpenGL for everything.  As for the sound, I don't really know FMOD, but I suspect it is capable enough, and it does support Linux and Mac.</STRONG>

Because my secondary machine has no OGL acceleration, and no plans to have such. OpenGL for 2D graphics with a tile interface is overkill for portability (SDL can handle that just fine.).

EDIT: Well, I have my first MinGW compile up on Win32, so the easy part (Makefiles, adding a missing #ifndef, etc.) seems to be done. Unfortunately, game.cpp also contains OS-specific code (ie. MessageBox), so the enabler isn't the only thing which needs porting.

[ September 11, 2006: Message edited by: bremac ]

[foxxtrot]

quote:Originally posted by bremac:
<STRONG>Unfortunately, game.cpp also contains OS-specific code (ie. MessageBox), so the enabler isn't the only thing which needs porting.</STRONG>

Yeah, I was going to wrap that around GTK+ on Linux, and supply some Cocoa code for the Mac OSX port.  Yeah, GTK+ will work on all three platforms, but it's an additional requirement to install, and I figure I'd like to avoid that where possible, since GTK+ still has compatibility issues with Windows.  No idea about MacOSX

[lachek]

quote:Yeah, I was going to wrap that around GTK+ on Linux, and supply some Cocoa code for the Mac OSX port. Yeah, GTK+ will work on all three platforms, but it's an additional requirement to install, and I figure I'd like to avoid that where possible, since GTK+ still has compatibility issues with Windows. No idea about MacOSX.

Isn't the idea that Toady should be able to take the modified enabler (+whatever else is needed) from the BSD-licensed source of Kobold Quest, integrate it into Dwarf Fortress, recompile for all three platforms, and from that point use that code in place of his original enabler?
If that is the case, then adding platform-specific code (GTK+, Cocoa, Win32 windowing system) seems a great way to introduce future incompatibilities. Would it not be better to use a fully cross-platform toolkit? GTK+ seems to be a good target (if GIMP can run on all three platforms through GTK+ it can't be that horribly hard to get DF to run), WxWidgets is another, and I'm sure there are umpteen other ones that would suit the purpose as well.
If the purpose of this is just a Kobold Quest port, and Toady won't touch the code afterwards, then go wild.

[bremac]

quote:Originally posted by lachek:
<STRONG>GTK+ seems to be a good target (if GIMP can run on all three platforms through GTK+ it can't be that horribly hard to get DF to run), WxWidgets is another, and I'm sure there are umpteen other ones that would suit the purpose as well.
If the purpose of this is just a Kobold Quest port, and Toady won't touch the code afterwards, then go wild.</STRONG>

All of which are overkill for a couple messagebox replacements. SDL/OpenGL (combination, or OGL) can handle custom display code just fine, so doing a quick DFMessageBox class would be just as effective, with a lot less bloat.

[Elshar]

I know this is a very very old thread (Almost a year old!), and likely to be a completely moot point, but I'd gladly donate a computer or two to the cause if it meant a chance at either getting a linux or OSX port of DF. I have lots of spare intel boxes lying around. I have about 20 in my garage. Of which I think I've got 10 working with FreeBSD, XP, and Linux installed on them, and the others all post, I just haven't gotten around to permanently throwing ram/drives into them and installing an OS.

So, yea. I've got anything from a P3 800 to P4 3GHz's and everything in between (Nothing newer, unfortunately) if it'd help the cause. I'm slowly trying to transform them into a giant netbooted cluster doing who the hell knows what, but hey..  

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
<STRONG>I think I might have compiled on linux once or twice, in the distant past.  It's the cross-compiling/having various OSs around that's the issue.  I'm willing to grapple with specific computer problems.  Now, I just have this laptop, and I have no idea how to set up Linux without destroying it, and I haven't heard of anything involving Mac that can be set up without buying a shiny blueish thing.  I don't have a lot of computers or computer money sitting around.  I'm also not capable of buying pieces of hardware and putting them together without breaking them.</STRONG>

[Shades]

Another year another post,

Is there any possibility of reviving interest in a Linux port? And is the sensible way for the community to help achieve this still a port of the KQ code (or did that way die with the 3d version). If so I'm happy to lend my time towards that.

I would really like a native version so I can stop using wine (which hates me). If bribes work I'm happy to donate again if a Linux version comes out, I get way more play out of this game than any of my triple-A titles.

[Capntastic]

I think the key thing here is that Toady's stated that he'd get a DF port sorted when Kobold Quest was ported by others.   It's been nearing on three years, and still no one has done it.    This is somewhat telling of the enthusiasm of the DF Linux crowd. 

[Shades]

I think the key thing here is that Toady's stated that he'd get a DF port sorted when Kobold Quest was ported by others.   It's been nearing on three years, and still no one has done it.    This is somewhat telling of the enthusiasm of the DF Linux crowd. 

We are all just lazy but I am getting tired of wine and it's problems.

[Draco18s]

They also run perfectly well under WINE, so he sees even less reason to do it for Linux than Mac.