The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Now, I have not a great deal of computing knowledge so it's taken me a while to get this far, but I've loaded all the dlls into lib and ogg and vorbis into include. I think I did everything right, but knowing me I've missed an important step or something. Any help?
Here's the message I get:

It seems you don't have GCC installed. Based on your reference to DLLs, I'm assuming you're working with MinGW and MSYS and that the output you quoted is from MSYS. There are several possible causes, such as not installing MinGW before MSYS or specifying the wrong path for MinGW in the MSYS installation program. Either way, the library setup (Ogg, Vorbis, SDL...) is probably irrelevant until you fix the compiler.

Damn, so I have to completely reinstall both Mingw and MSYS?

Not necessarily, although that's probably the easiest way. If MinGW is already in place (including GCC and so on) and the only thing that's wrong is that MSYS can't find it, you can manually edit the file that tells MSYS where MinGW is as described here (http://mingw.org/faq/How_do_I_install_MSYS).

I reinstalled. Then, when installing I typed in the MinGW file, but it said it was wrong.
I went to the fstab.sample file and it has:
So, I thought this fixed it. This is where it is.
But going back and redoing the build came up with the same error.
Could it be that I missed a header file? or I missed a dll? or that I put in an extra dll or header I wasn't meant to, or something like that?

Are you using mingw-get-inst or doing a manual installation? What versions are you installing? What exactly was the error message about something being wrong and how did you get it? What happens if you try to run "gcc" from the MSYS prompt? Do you have a gcc.exe in c:\mingw\bin?

The current version of mingw-get-inst (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/Installer/mingw-get-inst/mingw-get-inst-20120426/mingw-get-inst-20120426.exe) seems to set everything up correctly if you just make sure to ask it for a C compiler and MSYS.

So, I fixed that problem. Thanks for all the help with that. But now I have another error.
(http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv354/chenjesuwizard/Problem.png)
Now, I downloaded SDL from the link given in the INSTALL.mingw file. I have copied all .dll files from it to lib.
I'm pretty sure that I copied the header file to include. I wasn't sure what this was (me being stupid, again), but I thought it must be everything inside the include file. So I copied the SDL's include file contents into the include file in Mingw.
What have I done wrong?

The SDL installation is not quite a matter of copying the include and library files to the right directories. The easy way is to run "make native" within the unpacked SDL directory. This will copy those files to the right place and set up a few other minor things (such as the script used to detect compilation settings for SDL programs).

Cheers for that. It worked. But then I got yet another error.
(http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv354/chenjesuwizard/Problem2.png)

Put this (http://sc2.sourceforge.net/misc/_G_config.h) in your MinGW include directory.

This is ridiculous. I swear I must have done something wrong earlier. It's done it again:
(http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv354/chenjesuwizard/Problem3.png)

Almost there. You still need this include file (http://www.koders.com/c/fid275FEAF57FA3E640A9425FB3A46D988E1F72B61D.aspx). Just put it with the other ones.

It says

Now, I don't know if this will be a problem.
It's finished building, I think. Just need to find it. Will it be installed in the same directory as the source... or what?

EDIT: Just noticed something about an error:
(http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv354/chenjesuwizard/ProblemError1.png)

You should end up with an uqm-debug.exe (since you're doing a debug build) in the main source directory (the one you've been running the build script from).

Your error messages suggest that Ogg Vorbis support is being at least partially compiled, but if speech and 3DO music doesn't work we can try to look into that.

It's not there.
I had this error:
(http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv354/chenjesuwizard/ProblemError1.png)

Looks like you have the include files set up for Ogg Vorbis, but something's wrong with the libraries. How did you install libogg and libvorbis?

I followed the install.mingw instructions. First, I copied all the dlls across, then the two include files (ogg and vorbis).

There may be a slight mistake in the INSTALL.mingw file. I think you also need the files from the lib directory in the Ogg Vorbis SDK in your MinGW lib directory.

Copied all. No Ogg or Vorbis Support. Here's what it says:
(http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv354/chenjesuwizard/Problem4Oggvorbis.png)

Try putting pkg-config.exe (http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/dependencies/pkg-config_0.26-1_win32.zip) in the MinGW bin directory.

This glib (http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/glib/2.24/glib_2.24.0-2_win32.zip) should do the trick.

So, it compiled but when clicking on the .exe, I get this:

"The Program can't start because vorbisfile.dll is missing on your computer..."


It says I have to copy across the dll files. Which ones are they and where do they go?

The least problematic solution (least likely to create problems with other software) is probably to keep all the DLLs in the same directory as the .exe. You need all the DLL files you linked into UQM: SDL, SDL_image, as well as Ogg Vorbis and/or zlib depending on which you used. If they were not included in the developer downloads you used, use the DLLs from the corresponding runtime downloads.

Final problem (at least, I hope so):
(http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv354/chenjesuwizard/Problem6.png)

Use the --contentdir option (or -n) to specify where the content is. For example, if you are running from the source tree:

So,  I ran that, and a new (but similar) error occured:
(http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv354/chenjesuwizard/Problem7.png)
I'm assuming this means I have to compress the content files to create the .uqm file. Should I compress the entire source code (All the files except content), or just some of them. If so, which ones?

Just dropping this here in case you haven't figured this yet: The content packages must be in the dir uqmdir/content/packages/, not uqmdir/content.

Yeh, I figured that out. Just got to work out what should be compressed and what shouldn't.

You don't need to compress any of the content; in fact, you can't use compressed content unless you enabled that option when compiling.

Damn, so I have to start again?

Not at all. What content are you using, anyway? SVN? The standard 0.7 packages?

Just the standard source code off of the website.

I'm assuming you're using the official UQM 0.7.0 downloads (http://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php). uqm-0.7.0-source.tgz does not contain any content; you need at least the base content package uqm-0.7.0-content.uqm. If you've already installed UQM 0.7.0 using e.g. uqm-0.7.0-installer.exe, you can find this content package there.

If you haven't compiled UQM with support for compressed files, you will need to unpack the content packages into the content directory. You should end up with a content directory containing:

• A small file called version
• Default key setting files uqm.key and menu.key
• Content description file uqm.rmp
• A directory called base containing all the actual UQM base content

Alternatively, you could try installing the zlib development files for MinGW and recompiling UQM with support for compressed files.

Oh yes!! It worked. Thanks for all your help.
So, in the future, if I want to recompile, I should just delete the current uqm-debug.exe and replace it with the new one?

I'm glad that worked out for you. I should try to put together some new instructions for compiling UQM with MinGW some time. This thread should make a nice troubleshooting section.

gcc will happily overwrite files while compiling without any warning. If you recompile, uqm-debug.exe will be overwritten by the final (linking) step.

Why not just create a mingw with all the necessary things, and then an UQM file with all the necessary things and create instructions similair to these:
How to compile UQM on Windows:
1. Download the version of Mingw and Msys which is specific to UQM (including all dlls and linked files)
2. Download this file: UQM (to place the exe in later)
3. Go to Msys, in the file Mingw, then load it.
4. Load the source code file into the Msys prompt:
Cd /c/path to file
5. Type "./build.sh uqm config" press ENTER.
6. Type "./build.sh uqm depend" press ENTER.
7. Type "./build.sh uqm" press ENTER.
8. Once that has finished, go into the source code and take "UQM-Debug.exe" and place it in the UQM
that you downloaded earlier.
9. Play "Uqm-debug.exe".

That way, an inexperienced user, like me, can compile easily, with a lot less hassle.

This is what I set up for myself, so that I can remember how to do it (plus the first two steps added now)

The main argument against doing this, if I remember correctly, is that there may be newer versions of the libraries used by UQM with desirable changes such as bug or compatibility fixes, and having to wait for a third party to update the UQM build environment and redistribute it is often not worth the trouble. There's also the matter of trust and reliability: by downloading from the original developers or port maintainers, the risks of something being wrong with the code you download is smaller. That said, your solution would almost certainly work well enough for personal use or experimentation. In fact, many of us are already relying on our Linux distributions to package all the libraries for us. Also, many bug fixes to e.g. SDL can be done after compilation by replacing the DLL.

It appears you're not the only one to suggest making a MinGW distribution (http://nuwen.net/mingw.html) like this.

Are you volunteering to maintain an UQM-specific MinGW distribution? :D

I wish, but I don't have the know-how to be able to do something like that. I'd end up messing it up for everyone. Perhaps, when I get more familiar with everything. I mean, I could update the DLLs and such, but I'm never sure what else needs updating. Or how to update them.

I'm with chenjesuwizard on this one.
Having a premade zip would save so much headache for us few who don't do linux/simular.
I'm still using my folder of mingw that I finally got working about 4 months ago. I'm afraid that if I try to update it, I will break something. Which is another side effect of not having a premade zip to download and go.
Once I started compiling uqm I was having so much fun tweaking things. But the road to get there was filled with pitfalls, frustration and disappointment.

If you want my most recent version, you can have my Mingw and UQM file.

sure... ;D

Who does the Windows release builds for UQM? Michael Martin? At least that's whom Bugzilla sends bug reports about the Windows build to. In any case, it would probably be useful to have the "official" UQM build environment.

Then there's the snapshots. I suspect those are actually cross-compiled on Linux, aren't they? Meep-eep?

Alright. Well, I'm on a different computer at the moment but when I get home, I'll upload my build. You want a file to put the uqm-debug.exe and the Mingw, right?

I was thinking more along the lines of just mingw (recent) folder. I can compile uqm myself but thank you.

Alright, just the Mingw :).

McMartin and fossil have made the Windows release builds.
The snapshots are indeed cross-compiled, but from FreeBSD.

I have made a new tutorial which uses my self-made development package. It pretty much has all the folders set up and the instructions are quite easy to follow. I had a lot of difficulties setting up my latest development environment, and had to do quite a few mingw reinstalls. My current instructions apply for a new Windows 7 system using the latest MinGW release.

Instructions (http://plantmonster.homeip.net/uqm/building_windows/instructions_mingw)

Now make one for Visual Studio Express 2012  ;D

One could wish right?