I haven't checked this old school FPS since 2021, but I see a new release of this from 2 months ago version 7.71.6

I'll start out by saying it looks nice, I just played a few practice bot matches and I think there are graphical improvements. Everything seems to have a nice sheen to it, and nice bumpmapping etc. The wacky weapon models are improved, with more moving parts too.

That's how I use the game, I don't play multiplayer games. In practice mode, the maps rotate sequentially but you can change maps from the command line if you bring up the console with ~

I see new advanced graphics settings (I think) since the last time I played this. I just launched the new one out of the box (old configs still there) and it crashed once on me after a bit of movement, so I went in and applied the "High Quality" preset and it's been fine since.

Configuration is in ~/.local/share/cor-games/

This is the main site:

https://alienarena.org/

There are lots of ways to get this game. It's available on Steam, as "Alien Arena: Warriors Of Mars" listed as "Free to Play"

https://store.steampowered.com/app/629540/Alien_Arena_Warriors_Of_Mars/

It's available on Flathub

It's on itch.io (though just the windows version I think)

Some distributors may provide it (but things like that in "extra" type repos tend to be older versions)

-------------------------------------------------

But... that's not the way I do things when given source code and tools and I like to help and encourage others who may be like minded. You also get the latest bits when you grab their git repo.

So...

git clone https://github.com/alienarena/alienarena alienarena

First of all, it looks ready to roll. I don't have to run autoconf to generate configure and friends. I haven't built this in some time, and it's changed, so just a basic ./configure first to make sure I have usable versions of the shit I need.

This is what they say you need:

Quoteapt install sharutils libglu1-mesa-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libxxf86vm-dev libxxf86dga-dev libxext-dev libx11-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libopenal-dev libvorbis-dev libfreetype6-dev pkg-config

In non-deb language,

sharutils
glu
mesa
libjpeg
libpng
libXxf86vm (X11 libraries and includes installed)
libXxf86dga (looks optional, disabled by default, depreciated method)
libXext (X11 libraries and includes)
libcurl
libvorbis
ogg
openal
libfreetype2
pkgconfig

The output of ./configure

-------------------------------------------
Package: alienarena Version: 7.71.6
 OS: .................... linux-gnu
 CPU: ................... x86_64
 Dedicated Only: ........ no
 XF86 DGA support: ...... no
 XF86 VidMode support: .. yes
 Zlib support: .......... yes
 prefix ................ /usr/local
 doc-install ........... yes
 icons-install: ........ yes
 with data1: ........... yes
 assertions enabled: ... yes

Advanced Build Information:
 See README for information and recommendations.
 Run ./configure --help for configure options.
 Compiler options:
  CFLAGS:.... -g -O2 -ffast-math -fno-strict-aliasing -fcommon

X11:
  cflags: -I/usr/X11R7/include -I/usr/X11R7/include 
  libs:   -L/usr/X11R7/lib -lX11 -L/usr/X11R7/lib -lXxf86vm 
FREETYPE2:
  cflags: -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/libpng16 -I/usr/include/harfbuzz -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include
  libs: -lfreetype
LIBCURL:
  cflags: 
  libs: -lcurl
OGG:
  cflags: 
  libs: -logg
VORBIS:
  cflags: 
  libs: -lvorbis -lvorbisfile
ZLIB:
  cflags: 
  libs: -lz

Yes I do, that looks good. (This is my from-scratch system where I decide where things go. You may see funny paths in my pastes... yours would be /usr/include and /usr/lib for X11 etc. since distributors got lazy and started dumping everything in /usr with symlinks to expected paths. I still have a symlink for X11R6 too for old stuff that may have it hard coded in Makefiles. I like some old stuff)

Alright, I can do better than that.

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=nehalem -fcommon" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=nehalem" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --datarootdir=/usr/local/share --datadir=/usr/local/share --disable-assert

make -j10

(it will still get -ffast-math -fno-strict-aliasing appended to CFLAGS from the build)

It probably won't take a whole 30 seconds to build.

I used to get a build failure without --enable-maintainer-mode for dependency rules, but that's not necessary anymore with the autoconf files pre-generated (but I'm mentioning it just in case)

Yes, it still needs -fcommon with gcc 10+ for C (default is -fno-common to throw a linker error if the same headers are included in multiple files and it results in the same variables being redefined)

Assertions have no place in my software if I can help it. so --disable-assert (passes -DNDEBUG). Essentially deliberate failure points in the code if certain conditions are met or not met. (I don't mind clever use of non-fatal assertions, e.g. the way GTK+ uses assertions to fall back to older methods for compatibility)

I don't trust "make installs" or their equivalents anymore, so I'm going to send it to DESTDIR and see what it's going to do. I'll manually yank out my old one and cp -a this to /usr/local

make install-strip DESTDIR=/path/to/some/emptydir

Good old GNU autoconf system (make install-strip works).

Going to my DESTDIR, I see it's going to do the right thing. Binaries in DESTDIR/usr/local/bin, data in share, docs in share/doc, icons in share/icons

I have an existing install in /usr/local so I'm cleaning it up first (at least /usr/local/share/alienarena... the rest would probably safely overwrite)

After that I'm just going to install the contents of my DESTDIR with "cp -a" though at this point if you trust what it's going to do you could simply run "make install-strip" again to install it to PREFIX (/usr/local).

cd /path/to/my/destdir/usr
su
chown -R root:root local
cd local
cp -a bin share /usr/local

(use sudo instead of su if you prefer, but /usr/local is, and should be owned by root)

cp will write through the directories, no worries. Personally I'd even do "cp -a local /usr" instead of individually but I'll show it as above.

This likely does not even need to go to /usr/local (or any system location), it's just so simple that I can't be arsed to give it a prefix of its own.

That's it, just run alienarea by the method of your choosing (create a panel/desktop/menu shortcut, wrapper script, type it manually, whatever)

Last edited by Grogan on 9 November 2023 at 10:32 pm UTC