WorldForge Community

Jon

Hello everyone,

I am considering using WorldForge as part of my research into procedural content generation. This afternoon I decided to download the precompiled Ember package (0.5.6) and work out any kinks. I am unable to get the client to start.

I noticed a couple of things which hopefully can get rolled into the documentation at some point. I'd be happy to do it, but I am not the right person at this point. I have noticed that in projects like this that there are so many variables to worry about, people tend to stick with what works. I assume I have strayed outside of that comfort zone.

First, while I started working with Unix in the mid 1980's I had no idea what a "package" was. OK, I had an idea, but no idea how to install one. Google wasn't too helpful. I fairly quickly was on the track of autopackage and eventually figured out how to perform an installation. Perhaps not a correct one, I admit. My first impression was one of "what do I click on?" and "what do I do next". The README file picks up after installation, INSTALL seems to be more about building. There appears to be a gap for those who download the prebuilt binaries. This may not be the case, and I apologize if I missed something. I am just reporting my first impressions.

Running the package from the command line (ie "sh ember-0.5.6.x86.package") worked well. The installer quickly noticed that I was missing the support files (this is a clear Fedora install, done a few months back but not used). It installed them and then installed Ember.

I was happy to see that Ember was added to the Applications menu. Launching it quickly ran afoul of SeLinux. I have many gripes with SeLinux which aren't of interest to the Ember community other than my bringing up that some of us have this thing which prevents Ember from running. SeLinux's recommendations were worthless (ie followed them and it still blocked the launch). Disabling SeLinux completely (in /etc/selinux/config) got past that, at the expense of weakening my security.

Launching the Ember client now brings up the Ogre config dialog:
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/8726/14763769.png

This may be in Ogre's ballpark, but I cannot get past this dialog. Note that there is no "OK" button, just "Cancel". The video mode is an odd size, since I run with two monitors. I edited the Ogre.cfg and fixed the video mode, I also asked it to run in a 1024x768 window. The dialog keeps popping up. The blank entry at the bottom may be the problem, I have no idea. I'm just a first time user with no experience. (I do run Ogre applications under Windows however). Clicking on that last entry in an attempt to change things brings down the application:

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/7774/error1s.png

There is nothing of interest in the ember log, here is the tail:

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/3769/error2o.png

The ogre.cfg file is small enough for me to post:


Render System=OpenGL Rendering Subsystem

&#91;OpenGL Rendering Subsystem&#93;
FSAA=0
Full Screen=No
RTT Preferred Mode=FBO
Video Mode=1024 x 768

&#91;Direct3D9 Rendering Subsystem&#93;
Allow NVPerfHUD=No
Anti aliasing=None
Floating-point mode=Fastest
Full Screen=Yes
VSync=No

So I'll leave it at this. If anyone has any suggestions, I'll be happy to try them. This machine is running Fedora Core 10, has the Livna driver, and does will with multiple heads and hardware acceleration.

erik

Hi, thanks for a very informative post.
It's a real shame that most distros don't include autopackage by default. Then it would just be an issue of clicking on the .package file to install it. As it is now, you have to first run a shell command to install the autopackage intregration.

On to the issue at hand, it's true that the Ogre component in Ember has some issues with SELinux (or perhaps more components have problems; that's the first one reported anyway). I'm not sure how to tackle that; I guess one would have to look into the Ogre code itself.
The main issue is however the graphical selection screen. This is also a part of Ogre, and the issue here seems to be that the font for some reason is way to wide, resulting in the "ok" button being squeezed out to the side. I've also seen the similar issue with it crashing if you try to select something from the empty drop down box. We should perhaps in the future put some effort into providing our own selection widget instead, alternatively use the GTK based one.
For now however, if you have edited the ogre.cfg file manually you can run Ember with the command

ember --config ogre&#58;suppressconfigdialog true

to disable the config dialog.

Jon

I haven't had time to look into this for a while due to a conference, and the end of semester chaos. The previous ember installation is on campus, I would like to install ember on a machine at home. The package does not install for some reason:

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/6159/snapshot1diz.png

That's odd, I say. Lets get freetype installed then, and go to a shell:

[root@antiquity jon]# yum install freetype
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Package freetype-2.3.7-3.fc10.x86_64 already installed and latest version
Nothing to do

So autopackage isn't finding FreeType, even though it is installed. Any ideas?

erik

Hi, the issue here is that the Ember .package is 32 bit. Autopackage nowadays have support for letting us provide 64-bit packages; I've just been too busy to get one together. However, running 32 bit apps on 64 bit systems is no problem, you just have to make sure that a 32 bit version of freetype is installed. Normally you can install 32 and 64 bit versions of libraries alongside each other.

Jon

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure what the package is checking. If I build a new version of the library I get the same error message, and I don't know how to make yum pull down a second version of a library which is already installed.

I've looked into building ember from source (which I need to do at some point). Ogre is giving me fits at the moment, insisting that FreeImage isn't installed, which it is. I've disabled FreeImage and am now listening to Ogre complain because it can't find some DevIL wrappers.

alex

"Jon" said:
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure what the package is checking. If I build a new version of the library I get the same error message, and I don't know how to make yum pull down a second version of a library which is already installed.

You can use command like

yum install freetype&#46;i386

to install other architecture library.

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