There are two general ways to proceed: either use CMake or install and build everything yourself using Makefiles provided in the Engine's directory.
Engine code demands at least partial C++11 support (uses std::shared_ptr, std::unique_ptr, etc). Known minimal versions of compilers that should work with AGS:
- GCC 4.4
The following packages are required to build AGS. The versions in parentheses are known to work, but other versions will also probably work.
- libsdl2 (2.0.12 or higher)
- libsdl2_sound (2.0.0 or higher)
- libogg (1.2.2-1.3.0)
- libtheora (1.1.1-1.2.0)
- libvorbis (1.3.2)
If you are building using CMake, you have the option to let the CMake build system fetch and build the dependencies, or use locally installed libraries. This can be configured, and is explained in CMake own readme.
yum -y install git sdl2-devel libogg-devel libtheora-devel libvorbis-devel
sudo apt-get install git debhelper build-essential pkg-config libsdl2-dev libogg-dev libtheora-dev libvorbis-dev
Other Linux systems use their respective package managers.
At the time of writing SDL_Sound 2.*
has just been released, but almost no linux distro provides it.
Until that is resolved, we recommend to clone their repository from https://github.com/icculus/SDL_sound.
Or download particular revision archive using following url:
https://github.com/icculus/SDL_sound/archive/c5639414c1bb24fb4eef5861c13adb42a4aab950.tar.gz
then build and install using CMake (see instructions in the SDL_Sound's docs).
Download the source with git and change into the ags directory:
git clone git://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags.git
cd ags
Compile the engine:
make --directory=Engine
The ags executable can now be found in the Engine folder and can be installed with
sudo make --directory=Engine install
In case you are using CMake there are different ways you can do, and it's better to read in CMake README, following is an example of the default cmake release build.
mkdir build-release
cd build-release
cmake -S .. -B . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build .
The CMake way to install would be
cmake --install .
Building a package is the preferred way to install software on Debian/Ubuntu. This is how it's done.
Download the sources with git and change into the ags directory:
git clone git://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags.git
cd ags
Build the package and install it with gdebi:
fakeroot debian/rules binary
sudo gdebi ../ags_3~git-1_*.deb
To start an AGS game, just run ags with the game directory or the game file as parameter, e.g.
ags /path/to/game/
or
ags game.exe
To view available command line options, use
ags --help
The configuration file acsetup.cfg in the game directory will be used if present. For more information on configuration and command line arguments see OPTIONS.md.
Since 3.6.0 engine is using SDL_Sound library to load MIDI files, which internally utilizes Timidity.
For MIDI playback you have to install GUS compatible patches, and have timidity.cfg
present.
For more information on this please refer to a dedicated article in the AGS manual.
For games that require plugins to run, one of the following requirements must be met for each plugin:
- Game should come with linux versions of this plugun.
- Game dir should contain a plugin "stub", that is - a dummy plugin that does nothing and only exports required functions.
- Engine should have this plugin built-in (statically linked).
- Engine should have this plugin's "stubs" embedded.
If none of the above is true, game will only run if the plugin is optional. This may be a case with plugins that do something behind the scenes but do not export any functions to the game script. Because if the game script uses plugin functions, and plugin is missing, then the script will fail to load (error on script linking stage).
Another thing to consider is plugin's dependencies. If a plugin depends on particular libraries, then these libraries should be installed on your system. This may be learnt if you run the engine with the verbose log (e.g. ags --log-stdout=main:all <game path>
) and inspect "dlopen" error messages.
If a plugin loads another custom library, present in the game dir, then normally the system may fail to find such dependency. The solution is to setup a LD_LIBRARY_PATH
enviroment variable right before running the engine. This may be done either by writing a launch script for this game, or right in a command-line, for example:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=path_to_game_dir/ ags path_to_game_dir
When using the Debian/Ubuntu package, the package ags-dbg_*.deb
containing debugging
symbols is created alongside ags_*.deb
. The build date and the name of the
last git commit at the time of building are stored in the package description,
which can be viewed with
apt-cache show ags
This information should be included in bug reports.
If you want to build AGS for inclusion in a game release, you want an engine that runs on most 32 and 64 bit Linux systems regardless of the library versions that are installed on that system. You can get such a built by using the script debian/make_ags+libraries.sh. The script itself can be used on Debian or Ubuntu. See the comments in the script for instructions.
In the past AGS worked only on 32 bit architectures, so it was necessary to compile a 32 bit version on 64 bit systems. This is not necessary anymore, but these instructions are kept for reference and may be helpful for debugging etc.
The development versions of Debian and Ubuntu support parallel installation of both 32 and 64 bit versions of all required libraries (multiarch), so you can build a 32 bit AGS to use on your 64 bit system. This part works only on Debian sid and wheezy and Ubuntu quantal.
Download the sources with git and change into the ags directory:
git clone git://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags.git
cd ags
To build the package, it is required that there is an "orig tarball" that has the same content as the working directory. This tarball is generated from the git content with
debian/rules get-orig-source
The working directory must have the same content as git, i.e. be "clean". To ensure this, check if the working directory is clean with
git status
If there are changes, run
debian/rules clean
and/or
git reset --hard HEAD
If there are still untracked files, delete them manually.
Run debian/rules get-orig-source
every time the sources change. If
you want to change the sources yourself, you have to commit the
changes to git, then run debian/rules get-orig-source
, then
build the package.
Enable multiarch:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
Install and prepare pbuilder (use the same distribution you are using,
i.e. sid
, wheezy
or quantal
):
sudo apt-get install pbuilder
sudo pbuilder create --distribution sid --architecture i386
This creates an i386 chroot which will be used to build the i386 package on an amd64 system. pbuilder automatically manages the build dependencies. The pbuilder base can later be updated with
sudo pbuilder update
Build the package with pbuilder and install it and its dependencies with gdebi:
cd ags
pdebuild
sudo gdebi /var/cache/pbuilder/result/ags_3~git-1_i386.deb