We compile L'Abbaye des Morts for Raspberry Pi (.deb included)

Jose CerrejonAbout 3 min

We compile L'Abbaye des Morts for Raspberry Pi (.deb included)

POST UPDATED: 18/06/2020

This week is challenging.

I've tried to compile a program for the first time in the Raspi and see the steps to do it. For this mission I wanted to port a game and make tribute to its creator Locomalitoopen in new window, which has become a little more famous than he's already because the great game Maldita Castillaopen in new window for Windows.

I include the .deb package if you don't wanna compiled by yourself at the end of the post.

Here we go!

Start from the beginning

Locomalitoopen in new window is a user who develop video games just for fun or to get some goal: program, draw, and with his friend Gryzor87open in new window, which composes the soundtracks for their games, are able to create a nostalgic magic that surrounds us and traps in time, all with an retro-indie style.

In the 13th century, the Cathars, who preach about good Christian beliefs, were being expelled by the Catholic Church out of the Languedoc region in France. One of them, called Jean Raymond, found an old church in which to hide, not knowing that beneath its ruins lay buried an ancient evil.

Libraries

The first thing we found when compiling a program is knowing what libraries have been used. Generally we have a README file who indicate the libraries who has being used. Let's go to download the source code.

We visit their websiteopen in new window where we can find information about the game and several extras like posters, manuals, soundtrack among others. Click on it. In the download'sopen in new window area we see the source code file called abbaye-for-linux-src-1.11.tar.gz at the time of the article.

Well, we have downloaded in our Raspi. Now uncompress it:

tar -xzvf abbaye-for-linux-src-1.11.tar.gz

We go into the directory and take a look to the readme.txt or README in this case.

The program requires the GCC compiler and SDL libraries.

In this case, we found the necessary packages. Just install with:

sudo apt-get install gcc libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl-gfx1.2-dev

Now from the uncompress directory, execute the following:

make abbaye

The program will read the configuration file and will start the makefile's compilation.

It was made it easy. What if we unknown what dependencies need to install? The best friend you have to search dependencies is apt-file, which indicate to us, passing as parameter the name of a file, their package. Just install it with:

sudo apt-get install apt-file
sudo apt-file update

their use is simple: sudo apt-file search package_name

Installing the binaries

Ecstasy comes when you see the program compiled without errors.

Install it by running sudo make install. Now you can play it from the console by typing abbaye or from X searching in the game's menu section.

In case you want to uninstall, sudo make uninstall

Patching the code

The game may consume many CPU cycles, is playable in the X, but there is a small flaw when running on the console due to screen flicker which makes it visually unplayable. This defect will serve to teach you what means modify the source code.

If we go to the place where we extract the source code, we note that is structured into several files grouped in directories. We are interested in the /src/main.c file.

As we know that the bug corresponds to the graphic section, we seek something about SDL initialization. A few lines from starting the program, see the following code:

#ifdef _RENDER_320_240
  pantalla = SDL_SetVideoMode(320,240,8,SDL_HWSURFACE|SDL_DOUBLEBUF);
#else
  pantalla = SDL_SetVideoMode(640,480,8,SDL_HWSURFACE|SDL_DOUBLEBUF);
#endif

If we go to the SDL documentationopen in new window, we see that there are several graphics modes and that one of them will fix our mistake.

Searching in Google find that the failure is due to double buffering, so we changed those lines of code to work only with the CPU:

#ifdef _RENDER_320_240
  pantalla = SDL_SetVideoMode(320,240,8,SDL_SWSURFACE);
#else
  pantalla = SDL_SetVideoMode(640,480,8,SDL_SWSURFACE);

Notice that there are several possibilities to fix the flicker, but the case was to show you how to modify the source code.

Done. So we just have to repeat the above steps to compile and install binaries files with make.

Nothing more. The truth is that it was not difficult at all. We've hit a big game without dependency problems, the challenge to modify the code and I leave for another post the creation of .deb packages. Enjoy it!

Game screen with full colors by pressing C button

What?, missing something?. Aaaw, yes. Take the .deb package. Install it with dpkg-i abbaye-des-morts_2-0_armhf.deb

NOTE: David Laraopen in new window, one of the admins where is located the binaries for the various platforms, has upload the .deb to code.google.com.

Download: (Dropbox) abbaye-des-morts_2-0_armhf.debopen in new window

PS: If you want to contribute to the cause, hereopen in new window is the link to the donation page by their creators. You can get exclusive content and materials!

Here you have a gameplay from a user who ended this game in 11 minutes: