I started studying and searching for solutions to run my all time loved AOE the way I want, modded as I want, when and where I want but I never found any that fullfilled my expectations:
- To be portable.
- To be clear.
- To be modular.
- Not using a cringy language or stack.
- Independent from a company's mood or agenda.
As you may have seen in that robocop sequence where they show every wrecked robocop's alpha version, many tools and languages failed:
- Unreal, a flamethrower to toast some bread.
- Unity, 2GB "hello wolrd".
- Pygame, python.
- SDL, not yet there.
That's the oversimplifyed version of the story.
For me it was OpenGL and I was making excuses to do something with it at the same time y was posponing it. BTW, my first programming language ever was C, then I jumped into C++ because someone told me so (I was 15 XD). 2 + 2 ends up adding what we all know.
Regardless what anyone says, that's the winning combo: ⚡ Portability ⚡ Easy to read ⚡ Modularity ⚡ Virile ⚡ Phrygian
First we need some dependencies/packages, keep in mind that I'm not using an IDE.
build-essential cmake git libglfw3-dev libglfw3 libglew-dev libglm-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev libxi-dev mesa-utils
build-essential, cmake and git are quite standard; libglfw3-dev, to manage windows and user inputs; libglm-dev for 3D math; libglew-dev, OpenGL functions. Then mesa-utils just to test OpenGL.
After installing all that, shoot:
glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"
You should get anything but an empty line or an error.
There are a couple of ways to get this header files but I'm sticking to the official site.
Here's the permalink to the form to get the right thing.
Copy or rename Makefile.Base to Makefile, then run make in that same directory.
I got two files to manage dependencies in the CMakeList just for the sake of using python but the choice is always yours (go make something similar in perl, please, I'll include it in the repo eventually.)
Give the makefile a chance and read it, it's got the typical make clean etc, extend it at will.
I'm a native castellano speaker and also cordobés, so you should expect not just a spanish-ish writing but also gibberish everywhere, I'll try to keep it as readable as possible. This is a personal project and I encourage everyone to manage their own things, I'm also helping some friends going further with C++ (assume it's them who are getting more of my attention). All the code was a mess split across directories, different computers and even handwritten pieces of paper, I'm abusing the power of midlife crisis to get it all togheter, be patient.
Love and regards, yours Abraham Ezequiel Chalave