[Helper] Maz, C/C++ code, languages FI and EN

Want to participate in game development? Need help in your game project? Open a new thread where you introduce yourself in here.

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Maz
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[Helper] Maz, C/C++ code, languages FI and EN

Post by Maz »

Okay. I do C programming for my work. 8 hours/day, even though my studies are physics... (studies for Masters of science are going on... Or actually currently they are halted due to my work :| )
I have also been doing C++ and some php for my work.
I have mostly programmed for Linux.

I have no experience about game developing tools, or creating graphics. Actually all my work related programs have been console proggies... Closest to 'graphical' thing I have done has been a program using ncurses ^_^;

Finnish is my native language, but I do understand english quite well, and I am even able to produce it in literal form... But I am far from good writer... Grammar rules have been forgotten long since, and typos are really common...

The worst part however is my schedule, as I mentioned, I do work 8 hrs/day, I have young kiddo (soon 2 years old son), and I should also develop these sites... So I have only really little time...

So what can I be used for?

I can take small non high priority coding tasks with C/C++. Those should not involve usage of windows specific things, (I do not even have windows installed at the moment, so developing would be quite impossible under windows :| ) So I am not assuming there is much of you who could use my 'services', but hey, at least I have offered what I have :)
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Maz
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Post by Maz »

Okay, an update. My son is 2 and a half year :D

I forgot to mention that I do have some experience about debugging... ... ........ Actually a whole lot of experience. I have used eclipse IDE with GDB for mostly and searched for various things with valgrind. I have also been planning and implementing various tests and various platform services...

And now, I have peeked inside of openGL (via usage of GLUT), and although I really cannot say I have experience about graphics, I can say I do understand some basic princibles :)
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Maz
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Post by Maz »

I'll try to write a small story about my struggles and wins in this help project :)

Okay. A few days (week?) ago I decided to see if I can find a project where I could help the devs. I wrote a post about that in wesnoth forums.

I did receive some replies, and browsed through some of the suggested projects. Then I stumbled upon the Free Orion project - and fell in love. I simply love master of orion 1, and freeware game in the same spirit just sounded too good. I browsed their web pages, and was pleased to see they had really well planned project. The roadmap and requirements all was there.

I just missed the interface specifications. I also told them how much I liked the way the project was lead, and asked if they could find use of me.

A few days had passed while I was doing that ground work, since my time was pretty limited. I however did not forget the project, and a thought about the project was constantly nagging in the back of my mind. I started to be a little worried - was I a bit obsessed? Well, I knew there was only one way out. I had to try how it would go with the project.

I grapped the sources and read through the compilation guide. I was getting a bit worried... I had a nasty feeling about the some of the libraries...

I issued the the scons command, which should check that my system has all necessary libraries, and then compile the project. And as I thought, I did not have new enough libraries. I managed to find most of the required versions for my outdated FedoraCore 5 operating system, but then... Boost library which allows C/C++ code to interact with python scripts failed me. I had too old version. I managed to find an update for Fedora 5, but that was still one number too old. Dammit.

I pondered a second. Then I tried to see if I can find newer version for some newer Fedora release. And yes, there it was. Boost for Fedora Core 8 (which is the most recent fedora atm) was new enough. But I knew this would be a problem.

Boost is quite a lot used library, amongst other 'lesser' applications, the KDE desktop does use it too. This means that if I update boost, then those other applications should not use any features that older boost offered but was not included in newer. Or any features that had changed in newer version... Besides it is always possible that the newer boost requires some other components only present in newer Fedoras. Welcome to the world of Linux dependencies...

Anyways, I decided to test it. And no. It failed. The new boost needed some things the new FC8 offered, but my old FC5 did not.

So I asked for help.

I got the results I expected. The lone replier told me, that there were nothing much to do. I could try to compile new boost myself, but.. Well, I simply decided not to walk in that swamp. I know what pain it would be. I should browse all around the web, searching for things that I needed for boost compilation, possibly ending up with compiling some other package, and finding things it would need... Finally I would perhaps have updated my whole system manually :/ And what will I do when the project switches to newer version again?

So what the heck I said. I'll install the new FC8 then.

And that was what I did. Only thing I was a bit worried about, was the drivers for my USB WLAN stick. I had some major problems finding suitable linux drivers when I bought it. I wandered into the serialmonkey's
web site. That is the group which had done the previous version of the drivers for my USB WLAN. (version which I used with the kernel coming with FC5).

I was pleased to see they said their new driver was included in Linux kernel. I was cautiously hopefull the new FC8 would come with that kernel.

So I let it go. I installed the FC8.
.
.
.
After installation I started to look at the drivers, and yes, there seemed to be the rt2x00 driver included! However, for some odd reason I could not get my network up. It seemed to me that the driver was recognizing the chipset in my USB stick, and it even accepted some of the commands I issued. I was a bit puzzled. I disabled encryption from my WLAN router, as I thought the driver might not fully support it. No Avail. I tried to issue iwlist wlan0 scan command, and it did find the network, but for some reason the connection with dhclient failed. I looked at the kernel log, and saw some alarming messages in there.

Heck. I was getting frustrated. However the sunny place amongst freeware developers shined in my eyes, and I decided not to give up. I browsed the web with my GF's laptop, and found out that the driver included in kernel was a bit buggy. Oh Yeah. Just my luck. I also noticed that serialmonkeys were not going to release fixed package anytime soon, due to some issues.

I was ready to tear the last 3 of my grey hairs.

Then I accidentally saw a mention about IRQ problems with the driver in ubuntu forums. (ubuntu is yet another flavour of Linux). I saw they had managed to somehow fix the issue by enabling the irq polling in their kernel.

Hell, I decided to do the same. I edited the boot loader's configuration file, so it would pass parameter IRQpolling to kernel at startup....

And Voila! I had my network back! Well, it still occasionally drops the connection, but at least it works somehow :)

Now I updated all packages I had installed with my new fedora. And decided to try compilation of GiGi (which was required in order to compile free orion) to see what else was missing.

scons told me that I was still missing DevIL image manipulation library. And naturally I could not find it from any Fedora repository...
I found source rpms for DevIL, and debuginfo rpm by browsing with the google. DevIL sources compiled and libraries installed without any problems though... It was this morning when I ran the ldconfig for installed DevIL library, and now I wait for the next peacefull moment, so I can try compiling the GiGi again :) But at least I am cautiously hopefull now :D

...To Be Continued?
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