frobtads?
Forum: Games
Topic: frobtads?
started by: pbnj
Posted by pbnj on Oct. 24 2006,01:57
Anyone know if you can run frobTADS 0.6 in dsl? For development and/or compiled games, but especially development.
Posted by clacker on Oct. 24 2006,17:04
pbnj, I was able to get dsl to compile the sources for < frobtads-0.6.tar.gz > and < t3comp.tar.gz > using the gcc1-with-libs extension, but I was only able to play TADS2 files, TADS3 files gave me a segmentation fault when I tried to run them.
Posted by pbnj on Oct. 24 2006,18:28
Thanks, clacker!BTW, here's some info on the segfault, from the frobtads developer. Haven't gotten far enough to know if this is helpful for dsl and the problems you had...
> I was able to compile the entire kit and kaboodle on Windows through
> Cygwin, using gcc 3.4.4. frob.exe works great - but t3make dies with a
> segmentation fault whenever I try to use it to compile the sample (or
> Eric Eve's Heidi version, for the record). It appears to get to the
> end, but then conks out:
>
> link -> sample.t3p
> preinit -> sample.t3
> /bin/sh: line 1: 1408 Segmentation fault (core dumped)
That's the (by now) infamous "Strict Aliasing Bug™". It's not
Cygwin's fault; same thing happens with MinGW, and in general any other
GCC compiler (even under Linux). This is mentioned in the INSTALL file.
In general, when using GCC to compile, one should configure like this:
configure CXXFLAGS="[other flags] -fno-strict-aliasing"
The problem is not FrobTADS-specific. It seems G++ produces buggy
machine code with compiling the T3VM. I don't think that this will get
"fixed" in the basecode, as no one is actually sure what's causing the
problem. If some part of the T3VM violates C++ aliasing rules, then the
problem is with the T3VM, not GCC. No one can tell if this is the case
though.
Posted by clacker on Oct. 24 2006,22:50
pbnj, that was the problem! After following your suggestion, I was able to get it to compile and run correctly. I have created a frobtads.uci file that I am submitting as an extension. That -fno-strict-aliasing is great to know about. I read the README but I didn't look at the INSTALL file in the docs folder.
Posted by clacker on Oct. 25 2006,14:07
I forgot to mention that the frobtads.uci contains the compilers for TADS 2 and 3 files.I also submitted a package with the inform compiler, library, ztools, and the xfrotz player. So now people will be able to compile and play inform 6 files as well as TADS 2 & 3 files in DSL.
Now if they only made inform 7 for linux. That is the best interactive fiction system ever. I'm a huge fan of prolog and rule based languages, and that's how inform 7 is structured. Unfortunately, Inform 7 requires Internet Explorer so it doesn't work natively in Linux.
Posted by pbnj on Oct. 26 2006,00:06
Glad it helped! And I am bummed about I7, too; I know it runs ok under WINE, but who wants to do that? It doesn't look like there's going to be a port anytime soon. I'm continually amazed that the IF community has so completely embraced windows, which seems antithetical to everything IF is about.
Have you heard about esclinux? I've been having a bit of a dialog with the developer; it is a small linux distro created specifically for the purpose of text adventures. It's based on debian, and apparently runs well with about 300megs of ram. I6 is integrated into the distro.
Sounds interesting enough that I think I'll play with it a bit when I get the time. But I would still prefer a linux distro that is more general-purpose, so I don't think I'd go over to it completely.
Posted by clacker on Oct. 26 2006,01:55
I tried running inform 7 in Wine but it didn't work for me. I had read about ies4linux but inform couldn't find it.I looked at that esclinux. 600 megs for the current distro, and 200 for the old one. It looks like it's based on Knoppix with KDE and xfce included. I don't know that you really need them for text based games. I see that they include Zag for playing glulx files. That runs in DSL if you load the jre_1_5_0.uci extension for java. The jif editor looked nice too. It was also a java app but I haven't tried it in dsl yet.
Posted by pbnj on Oct. 26 2006,02:11
600?
Well...wow...yeah, no text adventure needs that. It was a neat idea, and if it were smaller than dsl, I'd be *really* interested (since you could, conceivably, distribute it with the game and all, have your own environment for interactions outside the game...yeah, megalomaniac...gotta work on that).
There do seem to be some wine tweaks--if you google rec.arts.int-fiction, there's a long thread on this. But I am always suspicious of emulation, and generally avoid it.
Ok, dsl onward!!!
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Oct. 26 2006,04:10
Just fyi: WINE Is Not an Emulator :P
Posted by clacker on Oct. 26 2006,18:53
I was wrong before, esclinux is based on Slax (not Knoppix). It includes not only KDE but also enlightenment, fluxbox, window maker, the gimp, and Wine. It had some errors in the bootup screen and it was really slow, but it includes a version of Inform 7 working in linux inside Wine as part of the 600 meg iso. Not all of the window managers had complete menus, I couldn't get my wireless to work, and there were lots of little nit things I saw, but using inform 7 on that old machine was nice (even if it was dog slow compared to dsl).