Installation instructions are lacking
Posted: 16 Jul 2014, 22:01
Hello,
My room-mate found Evolution RTS on Steam. Knowing I do not like running proprietary software, they suggested I try this because it is released under a liberal license, does not require steam, and (was) flagged as being Linux compatible.
The download page has very terse instructions.
It is not explained why I am downloading something called weblobby-1.4-linux32.zip, rather than Evolution-RTS.
The launcher did not work, failing with: "Illegal instruction"
obvously, the launcher was not compiled for my CPU. I do meet the minimum system requirements:
CPU: 1.8Ghz AMD with SSE
RAM: 1GB
GPU: GeForce 6200, 512MB with nouveau drivers
But, since the source-code is available, that is no big deal: I can just compîle it for my machine:
The problem was that there were no build instructions in the resulting directory. Then it dawned on me that it is not Evolution-RTS that I have to build, but the spring engine instead. Instead of building, I used the pre-compiled package for my distribution: spring 96.0+dfsg-2 i386 modern full-3D RTS game engine. Edit: I got a warning my version of Spring was a couple of revisions behind (0.194 vs 0.196); not sure how important that is. Debian has a long-standing policy of doing "bug fixes only" for the stable distribution (I am currently using the more up-to date testing distribution). Edit2: Spring is uptodate, springlobby 0.194-2 i386 single/multiplayer lobby for the Sp.. is a couple of versions behind.
However, I could not find clear documentation on how to actually let spring launcher know I downloaded all of the files already. The Spring Readme page explains I need at least 1 game and map installed, but the game and map links, just link back to the terse download page. If would be helpful if the git repository had a readme.txt file explaining how to install the game files.
I have also refused to agree to the Terms of Service for the IRC server as-written. This mean that I do not have permission to join the #evolution channel. I am not sure where to report the problem with the Terms of Service.
My room-mate found Evolution RTS on Steam. Knowing I do not like running proprietary software, they suggested I try this because it is released under a liberal license, does not require steam, and (was) flagged as being Linux compatible.
The download page has very terse instructions.
It is not explained why I am downloading something called weblobby-1.4-linux32.zip, rather than Evolution-RTS.
The launcher did not work, failing with: "Illegal instruction"
obvously, the launcher was not compiled for my CPU. I do meet the minimum system requirements:
CPU: 1.8Ghz AMD with SSE
RAM: 1GB
GPU: GeForce 6200, 512MB with nouveau drivers
Code: Select all
james@torchlight:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 8
model name : AMD Sempron(tm) 2600+
stepping : 1
cpu MHz : 1826.074
cache size : 256 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 1
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fdiv_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mp mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 3652.14
clflush size : 32
cache_alignment : 32
address sizes : 34 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management: ts
james@torchlight:~$ uname -a
Linux torchlight 3.14-1-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.14.7-1 (2014-06-16) i686 GNU/Linux
Code: Select all
james@torchlight:~$ git clone https://github.com/EvolutionRTS/Evolution-RTS
Cloning into 'Evolution-RTS'...
remote: Reusing existing pack: 19992, done.
remote: Counting objects: 19, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (18/18), done.
remote: Total 20011 (delta 10), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (20011/20011), 802.90 MiB | 637.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (12109/12109), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Checking out files: 100% (5416/5416), done.
However, I could not find clear documentation on how to actually let spring launcher know I downloaded all of the files already. The Spring Readme page explains I need at least 1 game and map installed, but the game and map links, just link back to the terse download page. If would be helpful if the git repository had a readme.txt file explaining how to install the game files.
I have also refused to agree to the Terms of Service for the IRC server as-written. This mean that I do not have permission to join the #evolution channel. I am not sure where to report the problem with the Terms of Service.