Linux Games #2

Found a few master links to troll for new games.

http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php
http://freegamer.blogspot.com/
http://games.linux.sk/
http://packman.links2linux.org/category/games-fun
http://loll.sourceforge.net/linux/links/Games/index.html

See also, a game resource page

http://wiki.freegamedev.net/index.php/Main_Page

Calculating time remaining

Still looking for a solution. For background on this problem look here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1358057&SiteID=17
I did the following:

1. Disable Windows Search service

Also, disable the following services (just for the heck of it)

1. Symantec Lic NetConnect Service

Five Things Every Win32 Programmer Needs to Know

Raymond Chen refers to this several times in his blog. Finally found a link to it:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=116704

Errata is here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/09/19/471241.aspx

Can't wait to watch it!

Windows is searching for a solution

Sometimes I accidentally run a program from the wrong directory, and the dll's are not found. STUPID VISTA then pops up a dialog box which says "Windows is searching for a solution". You cannot (easily) close the dialog with the keyboard, because it is not focused.

Finally found an answer! You have to disable the "Windows Error Reporting Service".

undefined reference to `_chkstk'

This is the error you get when you try to link a msvc6 compiled library with gcc on mingw.

One possible fix is of course to recompile everything with gcc. Eventually that will be a good choice, but I need something in transition. Apparently you can crate a asm routine for this?

See also this:

http://mlblog.osdir.com/gnu.mingw.devel/2003-10/index.shtml

Current solution is to copy the CHKSTK.OBJ from MSVC6. I renamed it to chkstk.o so that CMake would let me link with it in MinGW.

Firefox - One or more files could not be updated

This seems to be a vista problem for me. In particular, it is not the firewall, nor is it cured by deleting the updates directory (as suggested here and here). Here is how I fixed it:

1. Uninstall Firefox
2. Move "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\AccessibleMarshal.dll" C:\temp
3. Install Firefox

MSVCRT.DLL with MSVC Express

I'm not sure if it's actually possible, but here is the way it would happen:

http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/VC/microsoft.public.vc.mfc/2006-02/msg01281.html

The alternative is to use mingw. Unfortunately I can't get cmake to generate the mingw makefiles properly.

Waiting for root file system...

After doing a dist-upgrade from Etch to Lenny, I got the message "Waiting for root file system..." trying to boot the new kernel (2.6.22-3-686). Booting the previous kernel (2.6.18-5-686) works perfectly fine.

The answer to this is to (1) edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and /etc/fstab, (2) run e2label to label the ext3 file systems, (3) swapoff, mkswap, swapon to label the swap partition.

http://www.debianhelp.org/node/11653
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Fedora/2005-07/2343.html

(4) For the DOS file system, I decided to go with UUID instead of LABEL. Since the disks already have UUID's, I can query them using "ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid". There is more information in the following document.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=168221

(5) Finally do the "update-initramfs -u -k all" as described in the first link.

Update (Feb 17, 2008). this happened again. I had to re-edit grub's menu.lst, then I re-ran update-initramfs (just to be sure).

Debian wireless from first install

The first problem is that I can't use netinst, because I only have a wireless card. There are a few good resources on the web for how to do this, but none of them are very comprehensive. Anyway here are the steps for Etch:

1. Download CD#1 (not netinst CD)
2. Download madwifi-source, madwifi-tools, and wireless-tools packages. You will need these to get the network up and running, also for debugging. So put them on a CD or something.
   
3. Install debian "system" and "desktop" from CD.
   
4. Use synaptic or apt-get to install "debhelper" and "module-assistant" off the CD
   
5. Install madwifi package from local directory. You nee
   
1. dpkg -i madwifi-tools_0.9.2+dfsg-1_i386.deb
2. dpkg -i madwifi-source_0.9.2+r1842.20061207-2etch1_all.deb
3. dpkg -i wireless-tools_28-1_i386.deb
   
6. m-a prepare
7. m-a a-i madwifi
8. modprobe ath_pci

OK, so far, so good. You should be able to /sbin/ifconfig and see the card. Next, you need to edit the /etc/modules/interfaces file, and add something like the following:

iface ath0 inet dhcp
pre-up wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta
post-down wlanconfig ath0 destroy
wireless-essid my-essid

I'm using dhcp instead of static here. The "sta" says go into station mode. Finally make sure you have your essid.

Ruby game development

I got a hankering for doing some ruby game development.

Ruby/SDL - "Low level" SDL bindings
RUDL - Alternative SDL wrapper (?)
RubyGame - Layer on top of SDL
Ruby-gosu - High level 2d library, requires boost & MSVC2005
Ogre.rb - Wrapper for Ogre
Shattered Ruby - Layer on top of Ogre.rb

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/ruby/2007/12/04/creating-games-in-ruby.html

Gosu looks good, except for the use of boost and strict compiler requirement on win32. Rubygame also looks good, since RUDL is not maintained.

Propad blue on linux

This is simple if you know what to do. First, check out Kevin Bayly's site:

http://www.kevinbayly.com/?p=19

My PC has an Aureal Vortex, so that means I have to enable the gameport driver as:

# modprobe pcigame

Then, you basically follow the script outlined by evilghost (repeated here in case the link goes astray.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=55173

#! /bin/sh
# /etc/init.d/joystick
#

# Carry out specific functions when asked to by the system
case "$1" in
start)
echo "Enabling Joystick"
cd /dev
rm js*
mknod input/js0 c 13 0
ln -s input/js0 js0
modprobe joydev
modprobe analog
echo "DONE!"
;;
stop)
rmmod joydev
rmmod analog
echo "DONE!"
;;
*)
echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/joystick {start|stop}"
exit 1
;;
esac

exit 0

Reflective X-Ray Optics

It is possible to perform mirror-like reflection of x-rays (to a certain degree).

http://www.rxollc.com/company_profile/index.html