Kickstart for Linux Doomsday

[directhex]

Been messing about with Perl::Gtk2, trying to come up with a user-friendly GUI for Linux users. so far i have:



The GUI is all but constructed now, and some of the skeleton code is in place. the biggest problem, however, is I'm not fully certain how the Linux version of Doomsday handles command line parameters - for example, it seems that whilst you have to pass many parameters with -file, you can't pass multiple -file entries. There are other problems with trying to do this, at a code level, mostly to do with case sensitivity - for example, -doom2 searches for "Doom2.wad", but won't detect "doom2.wad" or "DOOM2.WAD". Textures don't seem to load from /usr/local/share/deng/Data/jDoom/Textures, but all the textures from the d2 retexturing project have random case, and either way i'm not sure they're getting loaded. Similarly, -file jDRP.pk3 loads the file successfully (whole load of output about successfully loaded things to stdout) but none of the actual pk3 contents seem to be USED. Conversely, -file d2music.pk3 works fully & properly

Is there any documentation yet on how EXACTLY the Linux version of doomsday behaves, especially when it comes to command line parameters?

[directhex]

oh, and I've been loitering in #doomsday on irc.freenode.net if anyone about wants to discuss

[Chilvence]

Hmm, I dont really know about this, but wouldnt you be able to find out more about case sensitivity from the Doomsday source itself? Also, is there a simple explanation anywhere about why things are case sensitive?

As for the JDRP.pk3, my first thought is that you might not be loading the ded file that comes with it, that would explain why the files are loaded and not used anyway.

[directhex]

it's case sensitive because (for example) it tries to load (for example) the file named "Doom2.wad" - quite simply. POSIX (i.e. Linux et al) are case sensitive, Windows is not. Unless you install Windows Services for Unix, in which case GOD knows how it behaves. See line 140ish of Src/jDoom/d_main.c, for example.

the big problem is i can't see a single simple place that the command line arguments are read. perhaps i'm just not poking deeply enough into the source though.

[Chilvence]

you could try forcing an alternate texture directory just to test if it works, eg -texdir data/jdoom/alt

Also, I'm guessing that the textures would have to be uppercase since thats how they are in the wad. Theres also a flats issue been resolved recently, where doomsday expects the prefix to be Flat-XXXXXXXX.XXX (let me know if thats correct BTW, since then I can rename all the textures to suit linux users)

[directhex]

i'll have a poke about on sunday, i'm out tomorrow & saturday.

[Chilvence]

Good luck then.

Hey, is that program cross platform by any chance? If you could make it compile in Windows, its likely that it could replace the current kicks (no need to maintain two programs then, right?)

[directhex]

it's perl with gtk2 bindings. running it would probably require both gtk2 for windows and activestate perl installed. that said, i think there are perl -> c compilers, and some apps (e.g. xchat for windows) have all gtk2 libraries statically compiled in, so it _MIGHT_ be possible to do

though i suspect hand-written perl might be more of a chore to anyone who isn't a massochist to maintain compared to visual basic...

[directhex]

incase anyone's still interested, 0.04 is the first version with setting load/save behaviour. i need to add a bucket of extra settings (i.e. any checkboxes against a white background are missing at the moment), which includes passing extra pk3's and wad's and def's - but it saves my resolution & color depth, which dll to use, and i can pick game by the (saved) command line append bit (i.e. -doom2)

[directhex]

hm, things have stalled slightly, as i can't see how to pass multiple pk3's at load. if i can crack that, then there's about a fortnight's worth of light coding left to make this functionally equivalent to the windows version.

help on this problem more than welcome!

[DaniJ]

On the windows platform when you press PLAY Kickstart outputs a text file which is then read by Doomsday. Kickstart doesn't pass the whole command line to Doomsday, it just tells it which file to read the command line options from.

Maybe having a look at KickStart.out will help.

[directhex]

interesting.

[directhex]

hmph, lo and behold, it's as simple as -file pak1 pak2 pak3 pakn. i presume defs will be the same. easy peasy.

anyone have any guesses as to which menu options i can just bin? e.g. does "use windows gdi fonts", i.e. -gdifonts, actually do anything under linux?

good to hear

[skyjake]

does "use windows gdi fonts", i.e. -gdifonts, actually do anything under linux?

No, -gdifonts does absolutely nothing on Linux. The fonts are always loaded from the Data/Fonts directory.

[directhex]

-noswk?

-csd?

-eaxignore?

-nopsf?

-noeax?

-nomixer?

the rest look pretty platform-independant to me.

you got anywhere to upload it?

if not i might be able to get it hosted

[directhex]

well in theory i can just port a big [code] block on here for people to copy & paste

[directhex]

here's a taster:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use warnings;
use strict;
use Gtk2 '-init';
use Gtk2::SimpleList;
use Gnome2::GConf;
use Glib;

use constant TRUE  => 1;
use constant FALSE => 0;

my @AboutBox = (

consider that a warning to install gtk2-perl and gnome2-gconf perl libraries. debian linux users, that's "apt-get install libgtk2-perl libgnome2-gconf-perl". users of other downloady distros, such as gentoo, should find similar packages with "emerge". deadrat users may want to check http://gtk2-perl.sourceforge.net/ for RPM's. my mighty dependancy information suggests the following dependancy information, which is automatically handled with real distributions but may be helpful for those who use RPMs:

Depends: perl
Depends: <perlapi-5.8.4>
perl-base
Depends: libc6
Depends: libgconf2-4
Depends: libglib2.0-0
Depends: liborbit2
Depends: libglib-perl


i'll get a public alpha out when all GLOBAL settings are hooked up to something - i.e. the misc, graphics, and sound tabs. game selection is via command-line entries in the Misc tab, until i get the Game tab fully hooked up (which is just long-winded more than anything). the only Game settings that are connected right now are the about box text, and it will pick the right DLL based on which game you picked.

[GuntherDW]

to load defenitions via the command-line u have to use

-def [file.ded]