Next: Mailing lists, Previous: Getting the game, Up: Top
Before installing Liquid War 6, you'll need to install the following:
Once all these libraries are installed, use the standard sequence:
./configure
make
make install
Liquid War 6 makes a heavy use of Automake and Autoconf.
Liquid War 6 requires Mesa, a 3-D library which offers a high level API similar to OpenGL. While Liquid War 6 will compile and run with theorically any Mesa configuration, it might not run fast enough with software rendering only. The frame rate will probably be well below 10 fps, which is not acceptable.
The reason for it being so slow is that the OpenGL API was not really designed for software rendering. It is possible to achieve better performance in 2-D and 3-D graphics in software mode, but not using a high-level API like OpenGL. You need to get your hands in the dirt. On the other side, using Mesa is very comfortable, and when it is configured to use the 3-D features of the hardware, it runs faster than any pure software solution.
Therefore Liquid War 6 requires some sort of hardware acceleration. And it will probably do for some time. The reason for using a 3-D library to provide acceleration is that fundamentaly, most recent hardware provide acceleration functions through their 3-D interfaces, and barely anything is done on the pure 2-D side.
The good news is that while Liquid War 6 requires acceleration, it does not require any fast, recent or expensive video card. It can reasonnably be run on video cards which date from the last century. If not from the last millenium.
It is important, if you want to run Liquid War 6 in the best conditions, to have a hardware which provides acceleration, and for which a free (as in speech) driver is available. As GNU/Linux is the platform Liquid War 6 is being developped on, it is also the platform it is being designed for.
In a general manner, knowing which hardware devices support GNU/Linux is important not only for practical reasons—you want your hardware to work with the software that you want to use—but also for ethical and political reasons. You can help the free software movement by purchasing hardware from manufacturers who support our goals and not purchasing from those who don't.
See the list of hardware devices that support GNU/Linux for more informations.
Keep in mind that owning a hardware which has no driver for it will make Liquid War 6 and possibly any 3-D game simply unplayable.
The following list describes some hardware configurations which are capable of running Liquid War 6 in correct conditions. This list obviously does not pretend to be perfect or exhaustive. If you know any other hardware capable of sufficient 3-D acceleration (fast enough to run Liquid War 6) with a free (as in speech) driver, please inform the maintainer.
This card is fully supported under GNU/Linux.
You need to load the `mga' driver into the Linux kernel, and the XFree86 configuration file should contain a section like:
Section "Device"
Identifier "G450"
Driver "mga"
Option "AGPMode" "2"
VideoRam 32768
EndSection
This card is supported under GNU/Linux. It is typically shipped with notebooks. Make sure to use the free (as in speech) driver. It exists and works.
Note that the ATI Radeon 9200 is the latest ATI card to be fully supported by a free driver. There is an effort to develop a free driver for recent ATI cards, but this is done through reverse engineering, for ATI do not give the specs of these recent cards. It is therefore extremely hard to write drivers for this hardware.
You need to load the `radeon' driver into the Linux kernel, and the XFree86 configuration file should contain a section like:
Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI9000"
Driver "ati"
EndSection