[EBuild] TA Spring (a futuristic RTS in full 3D)

[Rad]

Update 31.12.06: Ebuilds for 0.74b1 released on Berlios. I already posted minimal upgrading instructions and the link to an updated, currently working 0.74-r2-post-release svn ebuild earlier.
Regarding a "proper" ebuild for 0.74b2: It is currently pending a spring developer decision regarding in what form the data files will be published.

Hi, I thought I wanted to share an ebuild and some information about TA Spring with you all.

Spring is an open source 3D RTS, modelled after Cavedog's game "Total Annihilation". It's a very ambitious project, trying to surpass the original strategy game, which, amongst other things, was ranked first in Gamespy's Top Ten RTS games of all time. And I think it's already one of the best RTS for Linux, even in it's current "beta" kind of state...

Interested? Have a look at a few screenshots and videos from the windows version:
Screenies
Videos (scroll to the bottom of this page)


Install Spring like this:
Note first that you need to have hardware 3D acceleration enabled, and that the game is not guaranteed to work even if you meet the prequisites I know of, which are listed just below the installation instructions!

Also, you should note that Spring including it's dependencies usually require more than 150MB of hard disk space to install. And it'll be even larger if you have the "debug" flag set.

1. Set up a portage overlay directory:
   

   Code:

   su

   
   

   Code:

   mkdir /usr/local/portage

   
   

   Code:

   echo 'PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"' >> /etc/make.conf

   
   
   
2. Download either the ebuild for the development version (taspring-linux-svn-ebuild), or the one for the release version (taspring-linux-release-ebuild) at the project's BerliOS file repository. Usually, only the newest version of either works.
   
   The following commands will assume you're using the newest ebuild for the development version at the time this post was edited. If you use another file, please change the file names in the first two commands below as appropriate.
   
   
3. Extract the ebuild:
   

   Code:

   tar -xvjf taspring-linux-svn-ebuild-0.72-r3.tar.bz2 -C /usr/local/portage

   
   
   
4. People who already extracted an older version of the Ebuild have to update the "Manifest" file, else Portage will complain:
   

   Code:

   ebuild /usr/local/portage/games-strategy/taspring-linux-svn/taspring-linux-svn-0.72-r3.ebuild digest

   
   
   
5. Add some dependencies from gentoo unstable to package.keywords:
   

   Code:

   echo -e "dev-libs/libaio\ndev-libs/boost\ngames-strategy/taspring-linux-svn\nmedia-video/ati-drivers\napp-admin/eselect-opengl\napp-admin/eselect" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

   
   
   
6. Enable the "threads" USE-Flag for boost:
   

   Code:

   echo "dev-libs/boost threads" >> /etc/portage/package.use

   
   
   
7. Emerge:
   

   Code:

   emerge taspring-linux-svn

   
   
   
8. Run your favourite config update tool (either of the ones listed below, or any other replacement that works with portage):
   

   Code:

   etc-update

   
   

   Code:

   dispatch-conf

   
   
   

Now you can try running the game as a normal user, just type "spring".



A few additional things to note about this Ebuild - PLEASE READ BEFORE ASKING QUESTIONS!:

• It currently can only work if you have a fairly new graphics accelerator card and hardware 3D acceleration correctly set up, else it will segfault. I think that pretty much narrows the choice down to Nvidia and ATI + their drivers, but I cannot give you real hw requirenment specifications. Comments are welcome.
  Anyways, at least have a look at the output of "glxinfo" before emerging! If it says "OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect", it won't work.
  
  
• This ebuild builds TA Spring from a live source repository, which can be BROKEN and might hence not compile, or run at any given time.
  And -although that's unlikely-, code contained there might even damage your machines hardware or software!
  You can find out which versions compiled during automated testing here: http://83.84.234.155:8010/. If it's broken there too, you can try running the emerge as follows:

  Code:

  ESVN_OPTIONS="-r <insert number from working revision here>" emerge taspring-linux-svn

  
  
  
• It does not install every single thing the TA Spring project produced, only the main game client - you might be able to get some extra functionality from the /usr/portage/distfiles/svn-src/taspring-linux-svn/, although most uninstalled things there probably will refuse to work. (I'll try to include the things that do work, of course)...
  
  
• There might be problems if multiple users on a single machine try to play the game. The directory where the game puts its temporary and calculated files is shared between all users on a system. If you run into crashes related to inaccessible files and have multiple users, try "chmod -R 0777 /usr/share/games/taspring-linux-svn".
  
  
• This is not directly related to Spring, but has been sometimes asked about on IRC. Yes, it is possible to make Spring to use ALSA -by configuring OpenAL to do so.
  An example configuration file for OpenAL can be found compressed in /usr/share/doc/openal-<version here>/openalrc.gz (this file only seems to be contained in OpenAL versions more recent than 0.0.. It should be copied to /etc, gunzipped and edited, all as root, or optionally to ~/.openalrc as user. The actual configuration is detailed here
  

You can post here, come to #taspring on freenode IRC or try the TA Spring forums on the main TA Spring page if you have any questions or game related things you want to discuss.

Finally, more links:
The main Spring page
Spring's BerliOS page, the location where you can find the development repository
The Linux port's home page (a wiki)
Spring under WINE
Configuration directive listing for use in your ~/.springrc

[-=GGW=- $ol!d $n4>|e]

hmm. some minor accerss violation erros in the ebuild aparently... \

[Rad]

[-=GGW=- $ol!d $n4>|e]

sorry, missed that tip, the game looks awesome though

[renrutal]

Rad, wait a minute.

Is TA Spring's Linux version really ready? I'm not seeing any info about its release in the yankspankers site, tauniverse, not even the dev forum in the TASpring site. I know the devs are different than the windows ones, but they still are in contact.

Last time I checked the project, some weeks ago, they still used SCons to build the binaries, I even tried to do it myself but w/o success(damn Freetype 2 libs).

[madman2003]

I think the main issues were with network games, which wasn't even present a while back. It will probably take a while to become "good" and be put back into the main tree. And there were some issues with sd7 data files. (basicly 7-zip) Going to give it a try, because i like taspring. (i do not game a lot, but when i do, i usually play taspring)

[Rad]

[gaminggeek]

* subversion update start -->
* update from: http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/taspring-linux/trunk/rts
svn: REPORT request failed on '/svnroot/repos/taspring-linux/!svn/vcc/default'
svn: REPORT of '/svnroot/repos/taspring-linux/!svn/vcc/default': 400 Bad Request (http://svn.berlios.de)

!!! ERROR: games-strategy/taspring-linux-svn-0.67-r1 failed.
!!! Function subversion_svn_fetch, Line 165, Exitcode 1
!!! subversion.eclass: can't update from http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/taspring-linux/trunk/rts.
!!! If you need support, post the topmost build error, NOT this status message.

[Rad]

@gaminggeek: Does that happen even if you repeat? I noticed the wiki more often than not displays an SQL error, so berlios is probably out of disk space or overloaded or something. I never encountered problems with subversion on any of my machines, tho. :/

[gaminggeek]

nope still fails

[bobobo]

thank you for this ebuild, posting just to let you know that it compiled and runs perfectly on my amd64 with a geforce fx 5700.
The game is just great too, can't wait for improvements. It may actually be(come) better than TA

edit: and the terrain deformation is awesome !! The joy of having you very own nuclear-missile-generated-ocean in your map.

[Rad]

[bobobo]

[gaminggeek]

There is no way I'm turning off my firewall and the other option gives me the following:

[Rad]

[-=GGW=- $ol!d $n4>|e]

yeah.. i'm still gettin access violation errors

[gaminggeek]

heh my bad

but now I get this again

[j_c_p]

It works for me with

[-=GGW=- $ol!d $n4>|e]

hmm, seems cool but i can't find out how to build or take over units :/

[tuXXX]

I just installed it without any error (just dev-libs/libaio's man pages override original manpages, so I disabled collision-protect for it).

But the "spring" executable size is 116MB, and segfault...

[Darkael]

[j_c_p]

Here are the details of my installation :

[Rad]

@gaminggeek: Hmm... sorry, then I also don't know how to work around this problem. Maybe you can find a patch to fix your firewall or allow all traffic from and to that svn server or get someone to do the checkout for you and then copy it over to /usr/portage/distfiles/svn-src/taspring-linux-svn/ or tunnel the requests through some other protocol/encrypted connection... But I can't see a strikingly simple solution that will work for sure. ''


@-=GGW=- $ol!d $n4>|e: You need to play a script where you have a commander (the humanoid robot with the yellow backpack, you can quickly select this unit using CTRL-C) or other construction bot (CTRL-B).
Try the "random units" or commanders script, there you only have the commander. Once he's selected, note you can find the buildings by "flipping pages" using the arrows on the menu on the left side of the screen. I think the "test script" has got an construction vehicle, too. Should be somewhere near the huge robot (krogoth).

About the sandbox violations - I literally spent hours trying to track that down and trying to find a good fix. Thought I had it covered, even. Well, seems like not - can you tell me what version of Scons you use?


@tuXXX and KarnEvil: My binary is even larger, 169MB. Almost all of which are debugging symbols, "strip" it and it'll be only a few MB.
But I can't seem to make a good guess about the problem, based on the info you gave here.

[tuXXX]

[Rad]