Cue introduction

Welcome.

This is my thread, where I first introduced myself and now continue to babble and share links. Page 1 chronicles my first appearance and some attempts at getting Thrive to build, Page 2 my second appearance and some more attempts, and Page 3 the beginnings of my transformation of this thread into my personal soapbox.

Have a nice stay!

Original OP kept for historical reasons:

Welcome to the Thrive team moopli!

I'm very happy to see you so well experienced in programming and likewise eager to join the project!

I and the other mods try and keep the forum as easy as possible for new users to slide into, so if you have any suggestions on how to improve please do tell. I would recommend the two first threads you read, if you have not already, be:
https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t692-important-read-before-posting
https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t1296-new-programmers-start-here

The second one there is in the process of being made into an introductory thread for all new programmers, such as yourself, but already contains some useful info.

The place to track the progress of the game is at our GitHub Repo here:
https://github.com/Revolutionary-Games/Thrive

Have you used GitHub before?

Working backwards:

I've used subversion for most of my projects, but I certainly have enough experience with Git to manage.

I've already forked myself the repo, reading through all the code now, so I figure I'll set up Ogre3D and get it to compile after midterms, then start fiddling and see how i can start contributing

I think I've gone through those threads already, will repeat to refresh my memory.

And finally, experienced? Me? Well, I guess i sound it, but if there's one thing I'm good at it's starting projects I never finish

I can tell that thrive is going to be a reality by our goal time. We just got a new coder yesterday, and before that a few days ago. Which is especially good now, considering it's getting close to the deadline.

@moopli:

Good to hear you have used GitHub before. Is there anything else you couldn't find the progress/files for?

PortalFan1000 wrote:

I can tell that thrive is going to be a reality by our goal time. We just got a new coder yesterday, and before that a few days ago. Which is especially good now, considering it's getting close to the deadline.

Goal, not deadline, remember the distinction. No publishing company is paying/pressing us to meet this date. Rather, it's something we set to try and strive towards to speed our progress.

@NicktheOneandOnlyNick I think more or less you've pointed me in the right direction, but if I remember anything else to complain about (:P) I'll let you know.

PortalFan1000 wrote:

I can tell that thrive is going to be a reality by our goal time. We just got a new coder yesterday, and before that a few days ago. Which is especially good now, considering it's getting close to the deadline.

As per Brook's Law, and i quote, adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Thus I'm not sure how founded your claim is.

Nonetheless, the current goal /is/ attainable enough, and as far as i can tell we aren't behind schedule.

Quote :

I figure I'll set up Ogre3D and get it to compile after midterms

If you want to use Windows for development, be sure to check out the mingw_setup subdirectory, specifically the readme.txt, if you haven't already. That should get you up and running relatively hassle-free. If you want to develop under Linux, however, you'll have to do the setup mostly manually. But for people sensible enough to use Linux as a development environment, I guess that's not too daunting anyway.

Nimbal wrote:

If you want to develop under Linux, however, you'll have to do the setup mostly manually. But for people sensible enough to use Linux as a development environment, I guess that's not too daunting anyway.

Why yes, I am sensible, thank you

But anyway -- i've installed the most current Ogre3D debs (I'm running ubuntu), and I've downloaded what amounts to a working copy of the main branch of the code, but I've gotten stuck with CMake, since it appears to be asking for environment variables that the Ogre3D installation should've set. So, until I get a build working, I'm just going to read code.

Welcome!

I've gotten some great help in the development troubleshooting thread so if you are stuck you can post there with more details!

I'm not sure why CMake didn't find your Ogre installation, but I'm using Kubuntu 13.04 and the latest Ogre package that the package manager offers is 1.7.4. The Ogre version that's used in our mingw environment is 1.8.1, so to be safe, I'd recommed compiling Ogre from source.

Here are the dependencies our mingw setup script installs at the time of this writing:

• Boost 1.53 (later versions would probably also work)
  
• Ogre dependencies from this repository
  
• Ogre 1.8.1
  
• Bullet 2.81
  
• OpenAL 1.15.1 (not actually in use yet)
  

I'll add that list to the documentation at the next opportunity, so please let me know if you find any more dependencies (or other problems).

I actually had the same problem with ogre not being found (on windows mind you) mine was caused by using the wrong toolchain file in a wrong mingGW directory ( i had installed it on two drives, but not properly on one of them). Probably unlikely you are having the same problem though

Alrighty so, I've installed the ogre deps, and installed ogre 1.8.1 from source all well and good, and then I installed Bullet 2.81, same procedure, everything going smoothly, but now when i get to OpenAL, i have an odd error:

Code:

me@ubuntu:~/Desktop/openal-soft-1.15.1/build$ make install
[  3%] Built target makehrtf
[ 96%] Built target openal
[100%] Built target openal-info
Install the project...
-- Install configuration: "RelWithDebInfo"
-- Installing: /usr/local/lib/libopenal.so.1.15.1
CMake Error at cmake_install.cmake:48 (FILE):
  file INSTALL cannot copy file
  "/home/me/Desktop/openal-soft-1.15.1/build/libopenal.so.1.15.1" to
  "/usr/local/lib/libopenal.so.1.15.1".


make: *** [install] Error 1

I would normally hack up a quick and dirty fix but i'm tired so I'd screw up, so I'm gonna sleep and if anybody would like to help out I'd really appreciate it

Do you have write privileges for the /usr/local/lib directory? Try "sudo make install".

Nice catch Nimbal, I didn't. Just ran make under root and everything went swimmingly. So, as far as I can tell, It's time to do a test build of the thrive master branch (a recent version of which is sitting on my computer), fiddle with getting the project set up in Code::Blocks, and then at last, fork whichever branch is seeing current development and get in gear. Yay!

That's right, Moopli the one and only has returned! (and there was much rejoicing)

It seems that during my unannounced extended leave of absence (oopsie),  an application process has arisen. So without further ado, an update:

I've just finished my first year of software engineering at Waterloo, and now I'm on coop doing some cool stuff. School is pretty intense, so I'll almost certainly have to lay low every school term so I can avoid failing. However, when I'm on co-op (read: now) I'll be able to contribute. Contribute what though? Code.

Why accept me?  Since I disappeared, I've only gotten more experience. Most pertinent would be the project I created at the Facebook Hackathon -- a soft-body physics engine written in 24h in C++. Sadly the lua scripting isn't functional, as I didn't accept any offers of coffee and thus fell asleep writing it.

-Note: git is, as usual, taking its time pushing my project to github so if you read this too soon you'll find nothing

Welcome back moopli! 

If you aren't already a developer, don't worry I'll add you now, because we need any coders we can get. Of course, give your first priorities to what work you have at university, but in any free time you can spare we would appreciate your help with the project. 

Crovea is currently doing the coding on GitHub, so make sure to contact him to get started. 

Also, we've made some progress since you were last here, so you might need to take some time to catch up to see where we are now in development.

Welcome back!

I haven't been running builds on Linux for a while now, but I don't imagine why any compatibility should have broken, so getting that running might be a place to get started! I deprecated the cross-compiling scripts (Linux->windows) as well, but we may want them working again for a build-server eventually.

Your work in soft-bodies could become very useful! This will hopefully work together with the microbe stages dynamic membrane that patowen has just started experimenting with: https://github.com/Revolutionary-Games/Thrive/issues/115

You can naturally take a look at the github issues and see if there is anything you are interested in working on. There should be a couple of easy-to-get-started with issues if you want.

If you have questions etc. just ask here, on github or hit me up on skype (below).

crovea wrote:

... but we may want them working again for a build-server eventually.

For a more permanent build server setup we could look to Travis. I wouldn't mind fiddling around with setting that up, as it would certainly be really useful.

Anyway I should get to building Thrive.

moopli wrote:

crovea wrote:

... but we may want them working again for a build-server eventually.

Fr a more permanent build server setup we could look to  Travis. I wouldn't mind fiddling around with setting that up, as it would certainly be really useful.

Anyway I should get to building Thrive.

Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party. But welcome! Its nice to see someone who can really help us.

Scottnov wrote:

Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party. But welcome!

Uh? Um. Thanks. Have I really been gone so long? Wow, you're a pretty prolific welcome wagon.

Anyway. It seems CEGUI can't find Ogre, at least from the linker errors I'm getting. Either that or version issues 'cuz 1) I'm still running Precise, and 2) CEGUI 0.8.3 might want Ogre 1.9.

moopli wrote:

Scottnov wrote:

Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party. But welcome!

Uh? Um. Thanks. Have I really been gone so long? Wow, you're a pretty prolific welcome wagon.

Anyway. It seems CEGUI can't find Ogre, at least from the linker errors I'm getting. Either that or version issues 'cuz 1)  I'm still running Precise, and 2) CEGUI 0.8.3 might want Ogre 1.9.

Oh, I was just saying welcome. More like re-welcome.

moopli wrote:

CEGUI 0.8.3 might want Ogre 1.9.

 

I'm certainly running ogre 1.8 (1.8.1 specifically) and CEGUI 0.8.3. I can try building on my mint VM to see if I get any issues, altough I probably will with my limited Linux exposure. If I succeed and you are still having issues, I can try on my 12.04 ubuntu server which should somewhat correlate to what I can gather that 'Precise' is.

How did you obtain CEGUI?

Scottnov wrote:

Oh, I was just saying welcome. More like re-welcome.

Heh yeah I was just confused by the apparent time warp.

Anyway, had a chat with crovea, CEGUI built successfully, but now I'm getting some cmake errors. So, progress, yay!

Cmake couldn't find a few boost libraries, so i installed libboost-all-dev, but now boost_chrono is still missing. CEGUI.h, Renderer.h, CEGUIBase-0_d and CEGUIOgreRenderer-0_d are also missing, so it seems it can't find CEGUI either.

Maybe the problem is that I'm running cmake without parameters (well, apart from . ), but not having much experience with cmake I can't be sure.

Quote :

but now boost_chrono is still missing

Try libboost-chrono-dev package

Quote :

so it seems it can't find CEGUI either

The findCEGUI.cmake script looks for CEGUI headers in the following places:

Code:

      ${CEGUI_ROOT}/include
      ${CEGUIDIR}/include
      ${CEGUIDIR}/cegui/include
      ~/Library/Frameworks
      /Library/Frameworks
      /usr/local/include
      /usr/include
      /sw/include # Fink
      /opt/local/include # DarwinPorts
      /opt/csw/include # Blastwave
      /opt/include
      /usr/freeware/include

And similarly for libraries. Do you have it in any of those places?

Okay now Boost is good, thanks. After I created a little precompilation script to set my environment variables, I was able to cut the issue down to missing CEGUIBase-0_d and CEGUIOgreRenderer-0_d. I'm pretty sure _d means debug, yes? So it seems I don't have a debug build of CEGUI. When I tried compiling Ogre in debug for CEGUI, i noticed boost wasn't getting linked in, and then some digging revealed that the version of my boost packages was 1.48. So now I'm rebuilding Boost. Yay.

One good thing comes out of this though -- I'm learning more and more about how to install libraries on linux, which'll be useful until the end of time. So. Bright side.

Edit: One faulty power bar later, the power to my computer cut out,cutting short the boost rebuild. I'll tackle this tomorrow. (gives you a chance to weigh in too -- again, there's a bright side)