Please talk to me about OHRRPGCE on Linux

Make games! Discuss those games here.

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Foxley
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Post by Foxley »

Man, that looks intimidating. I might just pick up a itty bitty PC and throw Lubuntu on it actually.
TMC
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Post by TMC »

His notes are obsolete. Compiling on Raspberry Pi is now no different from compiling on any other Linux distribution. The only difference is how you install FreeBASIC: there's no official package for linux-arm.

I've put up instructions on getting FB here: https://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgc ... erry_Pi.29

I recently tried to cross-compile to Raspberry Pi from x86_64 linux (which is a different process) but found that really difficult due to problems with libraries (I got it to compile but not link). It appears that either you need to edit some of the system libraries to remove absolute paths they contain, or use a chroot + qemu to emulate running a physical Raspberry Pi instead of cross-compiling. If I had an actual RPi it would be trivial.

I still intend to try compiling it myself, running RPi under the qemu virtual machine/emulator. Probably not too soon.
Last edited by TMC on Thu Jun 22, 2017 12:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Bird
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Post by Bird »

I'm not happy with OHRRPGCE games on Linux, because the MIDI support is bad. It's not trivial to set it up, with having to place files at specific locations and downloading additional sound libraries. Today, the big majority of OHR games uses recorded sound with .ogg or .wav files, but that comes with the downside of a bigger file size. Still, old OHRRPGCE games with MIDI music are around here and they don't play well on Linux without their music.
TMC
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Post by TMC »

Working MIDI support should hopefully require simply installing a set of instrument patches (soundfonts) using your distribution's package manager, basically it's an optional dependency for the OHRRPGCE. But it is definitely confusing and annoying and not trivial, and on my own system I've manually installed the FluidR3 instruments.
(Also I think some of the information about MIDI and Timidity on the Linux Notes is out of date.)

Recently I discovered SDL Mixer X, and I'm very interested in switching to it instead of SDL Mixer, which has been an endless source of frustration. SDL Mixer X adds two alternative MIDI synthesizers, neither of which needs any soundfonts. These would be very useful for distributing games for Android, where currently you have to include soundfonts, which bloats your games a lot, and as a backup on Linux when soundfonts for Timidity are missing. One of them is ADLMIDI, an OPL3 synthesizer. I tried it out and the results sound pretty good to me, aside from the instruments often sounding quite different from the FluidR3 ones. What do people think about the quality of it? Also, it supports loop points!
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Bird
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Post by Bird »

MIDI really sounds different on every computer system with their different sound cards.

FluidR3 is an important note here for Linux users, because if you don't have that, it only uses the Freepats (if they are installed). And that sounds terrible. Quite often, there are instruments missing! With FluidR3, the songs sound more epic, but there is quite a difference to the MIDI sound of old Windows computers, which sounded more simple and I'd say "soft". A song can feel totally different, depending on these soundfonts!

With SDL Mixer X the MIDI sounds more like on the old Windows computers. Could be good!
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Bob the Hamster
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

I haven't tried ADLMIDI yet, but I am excited for the possibilities of SDL mixer X. It sounds like just what we need! :)
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