Readme last updated for version 0.14.0. Quickie install: *Please see _Warnings and disclaimers_ below before running in full screen mode* See below for a more in-depth description of how to install ffleet. tar xvfj ffleet_.tar.bz2 cd ffeet- ./configure --prefix=`pwd` make make fakeinstall bin/ffleet Notes about installation: ------------------- Dependencies The following packages must be installed to compile ffleet: sdl1.2-dev sdl_mixer1.2-dev tcl8.0-dev (or newer) It also requires the GNU c++ compiler (g++) 3.1 or newer. -------------------- Unpacking the Package First step to installing, unpack the archive: tar xvfj ffleet_*.tar.bz2 Older versions of tar have different syntax for extracting bz2 files. If the above line complained about 'j' being an invalid option, do: tar xvfI ffleet_*.tar.bz2 ------------------- Configure and make You can either install ffleet in a permanent location, or install it into the package directory (the directory created by when you untarred the package). Unless you happen to really like the game, I recommend you install it in the package directory. Configure to run from the package directory: cd ffleet- ./configure --prefix=`pwd` Note: pwd is surrounded by back-ticks, not regular single quotes! (use the key with the '~' on it). If all goes well, it should print out some info and say it's making some Makefiles and stuff. Now do a 'make': make The first time you run make, it will complain about a bunch of '.d' files not existing. This is ok. They are automatically generated by the make program. Now do make fakeinstall: make fakeinstall If everything goes all right, you should have a binary in the directory 'src', and a symlink to it in directory 'bin'. Run it with bin/ffleet ------------------- Installing under a different prefix If, after trying out ffleet, you would like to install it under a more permanent location, you can change the --prefix value in the configure step. --prefix defaults to /opt/ffleet. To install into /some/where/else: ./configure --prefix=/some/where/else make make install The difference between 'make install' and 'make fakeinstall' is that, 'make install' copies all the binaries to the final destination, whereas 'make fakeinstall' makes symlinks. If you do make install, you can remove the source tree and the program will still run. If you do make fakeinstall, you can keep the source tree while minimizing disk usage. After remaking the source you don't need to do a 'make fakeinstall' again. (Since the files are just symlinks to files in the source tree, they are 'automaticly' updated when the program is recompiled.) If you use 'make install', you *will* have to run 'make install' after recompiling the program. ------------------- The configure script is broken! Sorry, this is my first attempt at using autoconf :) I make no guarantees that it will work. Feel free to mess around with it. Notes about sound: SDL seems to use /dev/sequencer instead of timidity now. My soundcard driver doesn't support midi directly, so I can't get any music. Any suggestions? :-( old sound notes: In order for the MIDI music to play, you must have both the timidity and timidity-patches installed. If you can run the command 'timidity somefile.mid' and get sound, then music should work in ffleet. If you enable sound and it crashes the program, such that you can't get back into the options menu, you can temporarily disable sound by passing the '--nosound' option on the command line: ./ffleet --nosound It seems that some recent versions of SDL_mixer want the file /etc/timidity.conf in the current directory. If you get an error about 'timidity.conf: no such file or directory' or anything, just do: cp /etc/timidity.conf . bin/ffleet Notes about the implementation: Two player mode is not implemented and probably never will be. Warnings and disclaimers: Careful about running in fullscreen mode. If ffleet crashes in fullscreen mode, it will bring down the X server too. If this happens, do Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the X server. If that doesn't work, you can try SysRq-k, but this will only work if you have the Magic SysRq key enabled. All else fails, try Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to a plain virtual terminal, and then Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot. Fortunately, ffleet seems pretty stable, at least on my machine. (Or rather, it was when I originaly wrote this README. Things may or may not have changed.) *Warning about APM* On my machine, it will crash if you are running X windows and you have previously gone into apm sleep or suspend mode, then try and run in fullscreen mode. If this happens to you, log out of X and log back in before running ffleet, and everything should be fine. On a side note, after an APM sleep/suspend I found the graphics refresh rate to be extremely slow (when running in non-fullscreen mode). If this happens to you, just log out/back in to X and see if it gets better. One last note: You may not have any trouble with APM at all, I've only worked with the program on my own machine. Feel free to experiment (but be ready for a potential X crash!)