Re: Tux Racer 0.10 Released

[Thomas Lund <tld@carlbro.dk>]

Hi

Steve: please don't take our mails as hostile. We are just honest I
think.

I myself did not send any reports to you about buggy/hard installation,
since there are TONS of projects out there. If I had to report things
that do not work on each and every one of them, I would not have time to
do anything else.

It is like going to the bookshop. Millions of books. You judge the book
by a cover + an teaser text. I have surely put lots of good books back
on the shelf because of that.

With the games you then also have to figure out how to "get the book
unlocked, so that you can start reading". If this is really hard, the
book goes back to the shelf. If I get in and see some nice pictures, a
good story, I will buy it and read it.

The typical way I check out a new game/application/whatever is:

* read about it on linuxgames (or one of the other ones)

* go to the webpage (if webpage is "pro" or has nice screenshots, then I
will try it. If the webpage is shitty, I will only try the software if
it sound REALLY good)

* if I can install easy (using RPM) I will try it, run it and remove if
I don't like it

* if I have to compile I give it a one shot. I will rather use a
packaged binary to not clutter up my system with obscure libs that I
have a hard way to remove again

* If either does not work more or less first time, I move on to
something else - without sending a bug report

* If I get the program running and it looks OK, then I will keep it and
send bug reports and the like, because now I am interested in getting it
running as good as possible on my machine

The reason I list this is because I think that is the typical way for a
lot of people.

Would it not be possible to create a binary with static linked plib,
SDL, whatever lib is needed? Possibly except Mesa, since that is usually
system dependant.

Hope this helps anyone.

Best regards
Thomas

Mads Bondo Dydensborg wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 19 Mar 2000, Steve Baker wrote:
> 
> > > Amen. Tux AQFH and the "lemmings like" tux whatever...
> >
> > Pingus.
> 
> Yes. I am sorry about the tone of "whatever..." - I simply could not
> remember the name.
> 
> >
> > > ...is two projects I have
> > > yet to figure out how to compile. At some points I have spend most of a
> > > day trying to get them to work, and have finally given up. And, as you
> > > state it always seems to be the support libraries that are the problem.
> >
> > GRRRRRRRR.
> >
> > But if you don't tell anyone, it'll never get any better.
> 
> I am painfully aware, but...
> 
> > I would never
> > spend as long as even an hour trying to get a game to compile.  Collect up
> > the error messages and post them to the appropriate mailing list...unless
> > it's really an obvious problem with something you've mis-installed somewhere
> > else.
> 
> Actually, part of the reason I do not tell you, is because I do not want
> to burden you with incomplete bug reports.
> 
> >
> > I take pride in the fact that every single person who has emailed
> > the Tux_AQFH list asking for help with compiling has gone away with
> > a working game (at least if their hardware can support it)...even people
> > trying to get it to work on Mac's, Alpha's, MIPS and other more obscure
> > Linux ports.
> >
> > In pretty much every case, compilation fails because of a mis-configured
> > Linux box - but when it's not, I get the chance to fix things so that life
> > gradually gets easier.
> 
> In my case I _do_ suspect a problem with my configuration. I have more
> versions of Mesa installed then I dare to count. Problem is that I have
> quake, quake2, quake3 and ut working (dual v2, glide, mesa3dfx), and I
> dare not mess to much around with mesas for fear of breaking these games.
> OTOH I do not want to give bug reports that I am not certain about.
> 
> >
> > > I have similar problems with getting "Tuxracer" going - it segfaults when
> > > glut wants to initialise. (This is 0.11.1 - no version so far has worked
> > > for me). OTOH XRacer worked out of the box from version 0.11 or something.
> > >
> > > Of course it is - for me - a matter of time and _someday_ I _am_ going to
> > > get it to work, but you loose some people in the proces, when they have to
> > > collect 13 different pieces and use days to set up support libraries to
> > > get it to work.
> >
> > Well, that's hard to fix.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> >
> > If you want 3D graphics, you pretty much have to depend on Mesa and either
> > GLUT or FLTK or something...that in turn means you may depend on GLIDE and/or
> > some Xfree version or other.  Tux_AQFH also depends on PLIB - but that's all.
> > Apart from the underlying infrastructure that I can do nothing about, I depend
> > on a single additional piece...that's not unreasonable IMHO.
> 
> I was mostly thinking of pingus here. If I am not mistaken, Pingus relies
> on clanlib, that relies on hermes and a couple of other things.
> 
> >
> > Gradually, Linux distro's are bundling PLIB with their CD's - so if (for
> > example) you install SuSE Linux and ask for Tux_AQFH to be installed, PLIB
> > gets put on your machine automagically.
> >
> 
> Maybe I should change to SuSE. Seems it is getting more and more popular
> these days, and they do have tons of RPMS.
> 
> > I don't produce RPM's and such because it's a LOT of trouble to do so - and
> > the Linux distro guys are good at that.  Since they make profit from doing
> > this, I don't feel any compunction at letting them do the work.
> >
> 
> If I ever get Tux_AQFH going, I could probably supply you with a spec file
> for rh6.x that would make rpm building trivial.
> 
> > At any rate, if your system has Mesa and GLUT correctly installed,
> 
> It does work with quake{1,2,3} and have been known to work with ut,
> xracer, etc.
> 
> > PLIB and
> > Tux install *VERY* easily with a standard set of './configure ; make install'
> > commands that are really no harder than installing an RPM.
> 
> These went fine (retried it yesterday) - it does however segfault for me.
> Which confirms my impression that I currently have a misconfigured
> system. Which makes me reluctant to make a bug report until I have figured
> out what is wrong.
> 
> >
> > If Mesa and GLUT are NOT correctly installed then you are screwed with or
> > without RPM's.
> 
> True.
> 
> >
> > One thing that's going to help a LOT is the new standard "The OpenGL ABI
> > for Linux":
> >
> >   http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/ABI/
> >
> > > And, BTW, my daytime job involves writing linux kernel drivers. Not that
> > > it qualifies me to anything, but I think I should know how to compile...
> >
> > Well, tell me what went wrong - without that information, I'm powerless
> > to help (or even know that something went wrong for that matter).  The
> > statement that "I couldn't get it to compile" contains virtually zero
> > information.
> >
> > Read this:
> >
> >   http://freshmeat.net/news/2000/02/26/951627540.html
> 
> I used to write freeware for Windows. I have not read it yet (I will) but
> I suspect I may be aware of the contents.
> 
> Summary: My posting yesterday was _not_ a bug report for neither Pingus,
> Tux_AQFH or Tuxracer. It was simply a confirmation that "compile troubles
> _do_ stop people from checking things out and reduces the number of
> potential developers". I believe this is a more common problem than one
> would think, but I have no real solution to this. One thing that could
> help was test programs - but isn't ./configure supposed to take care of
> that?
> 
> I regret beeing this unconstructive. At some point I _will_ make these
> games work on my system and maybe then I will be able to provide valuable
> feedback.
> 
> Mads
> 
> P.S. Steve: I do have a bug rapport for your website: when I checked it
> yesterday, I could not retreive the screenshots. (404 on sourceforge).
> 
> --
> Mads Bondo Dydensborg.                               madsdyd@challenge.dk
> Pretty cool, the kind of power information technology puts in our hands
> these days.
>     - Securityfocus on probing 36000000 hosts for known problems in 3 weeks
> 
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