First: I think it is too early to declare the 1024x768 screens dead. So making the GUI work even on those displays would not necessarily be a bad idea. (But going lower probably is, 800x600 is very, very dead for spring I suppose...)
Second (and here my post becomes long, my apologizes)... RC3 on Linux:
Regarding getting RC3 running on Linux, I think I can handle the pieces of the puzzle that are related to Linux (or if I fail, I go to the Linux part of this forum :)). But there are a few puzzle pieces which have nothing to do with Linux (at least as far as I can tell) and those would still be most helpful for me if someone could provide some input on.
Note, these questions are not specifically asked to Argh. I can imagine thas some of them can be answered by other fellow P.U.R.E Springers as well.
1.) I've understood that I should build spring myself and combine that with the game content provided in the LINUX_BUILD_RC3.7z file. What version of Spring is required? I got version 0.76b1 (the latest AFAIK), would that suffice?
2.) What kind of file/format/archive (from a Spring context) is the .7z file? It's contents are listable using the "unzip" utility in Linux, so I assume it is a ZIP archive with a special suffix to indicate what content it is expected to contain. Is it similar to .sdz? The latter is the archive format (which also is a ZIP file with a special suffix) used by P.U.R.E 0.55 (which by itself is a very fun and enjoyable release of P.U.R.E as noted by another person in this thread).
3.) I did a very rough compare between the PURE.sdz file (the one used for version 0.55) and LINUX_BUILD_RC3.7z and note that the latter is over 10 times as big as the former (so I assume there is quite a lot of additional content) but when I inspect both files using the "unzip -l" command line utility in Linux, their contents don't seem to match. The archive file for 0.55 contains quite some files under the Weapons directory in the archive, whilst the archive file for RC3 have only one single file in the Weapons directory. Also, the 0.55 archive does have a lot of cursor animation files under Anims whilst the RC3 file have nothing under the Anim directory. Is there some stuff missing in the RC3 archive file or am I doing a mistake comparing apples with pears by trying to compare the contents of these files? Are perhaps the contents of these files supposed to be combined somehow?
(I preferred not to include the output of the "unzip -l" command for both these files, as I wanted to keep this post within decent length limits. However, I post that output if ppl think that is acceptable or perhaps even preferable.).
4.) If we don't think that much about the fact that I'm trying to bulid this RC3 on a Linux system but tries to look at it from a more general standpoint, how is the content of the LINUX_BUILD_RC3.7z files supposed to be combined with the Spring source. I assume that the .exe install files for RC3 on Windows are generated using more or less the same content as in the LINUX_BUILD_RC3.7z file together with the Spring source and I suppose that on Linux, I should more or less follow the same approach, except for some small Linux specific details (like what commands I use for actually starting compiling etc) so it would be helpful to understand how the RC3 content is used when building the Windows RC3 install package. I've understand that you, Argh, mainly want to provide the game in a prepackaged distribution including both game content as well as the Spring engine and perhaps don't want to ppl to build it from source instead but I think I still need to know about some steps in that process in Windows, in order to carry it out on Linux.
5.) (And this is a question for "everybody"...) Am I the first person trying to get RC3 running on Linux? Not asked as some sarcastic form of rhetorics but to objectively understand if I'm about to take on some sort of "pioneering task" here. Not that I mind to do that and provide feedback to the thread on how I managed to get RC3 running, but being the first one getting RC3 on Linux means the task will require more time and effort for me (perhaps quite a lot more of it compared to a "normal" install of software on Linux) which unfortunately might lead to me failing to accomplish it. Real Life is, well, a reality for me and my wife (and our 4 kids etc) so I got some limits on how much time I can put on Spring and it's mods (or on how much time I can... ahem... divert into it
).
6.) If I got Spring 0.76b1 installed and working on my system, is it possible to coerce the .7z file to become something that is suitable to put under the mods directory for my Spring install and thus make P.U.R.E RC3 available as a mod to select in Springlobby? (Yes, this Q is somewhat related to the Qs above).
All clues on this, or hints on where I can find clues, are most welcome. I got a few clues myself but they don't suffice here... (or rather, I cannot use them to get RC3 working without using up excessive amounts of time so yes, I decided to instead parasite on the time of more knowledgeable Spring community members...)
