Member Discussions

Hi, I was looking for some fun and maybe some insight in how muds actually run, so I was going to compile 1stMUD on my Ubuntu box to run locally, but I've encountered problems in the compiling and since I have no experience coding, I'm just not sure how to go about it. I have my building essentials installed (Not that they would be necessary, right?) and I have the latest GCC, but when I try to 'make' in the SRC directory, I get this:


--
13:54:51 : Compiling act_comm.c...
In file included from act_comm.c:41:
merc.h:93:18: error: zlib.h: No such file or directory
merc.h:413: fejl: ISO C++ forbids declaration of ‘z_stream’ with no type
merc.h:413: fejl: expected ‘;’ before ‘*’ token
make: *** [act_comm.o] Fejl 1
--


Right off the top of my head, it just looks strange that it mentions C++, when it's supposed to be using C, or am I totally wrong here? Any help would be appreciated, though.

Well, I began working on the same thing a short time ago, so I might offer a few questions that could help.

Are you sure you have a C compiler?

If you're using rom24b6, I'd suggest looking up quickmud. It's a port of rom24 with modification to run on cygwin or ubuntu generally out of the box. Of course nothing's perfect...

Well, I seem to have GCC 4.1, which is a C-compiler, but I'll try getting the ROM Source you mentioned and tinker with that a bit..

Doesn't gcc come with compilers for c, c++, fortran, and others?

Yes GCC can compile alot of stuff.

1stMUD has been using g++ (just a switch to tell GCC to compile using the c++ rules) for several versions.

I would highly suggest unless you really know what your doing with code, don't use 1stMUD.

Try out quickmud, it's clean, and for the most part sturdy. 1stMUD has alot of cool stuff but there are some major issues with it that can be hard if not impossible for people that don't have experience bug tracking.

Anywho, yes, 1stMUD tries to compile with g++ the c++ compilier (which is perfectly fine, just more strict, tighter code requirements). Since C++ is based off C the compiler will, generally, accept C as well. It will just force it to comply with the standards of C++.

-Syn

> Doesn't gcc come with compilers for c, c++, fortran, and
> others?

Yup, GCC stands for "GNU Compiler Collection". However it used to stand for "GNU C Compiler" back when it only supported C, which sometimes causes confusion.

I'd suggest a well supported base if you're new, like LP, Dead-Souls, Smaug, DoT or stock ROM.

Of course, dozens of people told me the exact same thing when I started and I chose the most obscure base ever that very few people had even managed to run without stability issues and I don't regret it. :D

Do you usually have to tinker much with the actual source-files to make them compile? So far I haven't been able to successfully compile any of the codebases I've gotten.. The one that seem to get closest (Or at least the one that ran for the longest without errors) were Godwars Deluxe and yet, it still failed in the end - Leaving me none the wiser..

I'm not terribly interested in actually running a MUD, I'm just curious, so maybe you need more indepth knowledge to actually get it running, but it just seems awfully hard just to get it up and I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.

And my mistake - As KaVir pointed out, GCC is not a C compiler, but it does contain both a C and a C++ compiler, so I should be fairly set. I would think. But I really have no idea.

Well.. yes, most stock codebases arent going to run perfectly. Most of them are created on X system, and through GCC revisions and the simple nature of the different OS's they are being used on you will run into problems.

Something that worked fine on a fedora box might crap out on a 64 bit Suse box. There are allot of ins and outs and unless you are really interested in putting in some work, you wont have much luck.

-Syn

(Comment added by synorel on Mon Apr 16 19:08:33 2007)

I would say go with quickmud or perhaps rom 24b6 or stock ROT or maybe ansr.

Since you were going for a ROM deriv mud. 1stMUD again is something that would take alot of work to get working right.

Comments from other posters aside, the issue here is that the compiler can't find the zlib.h header file. This is a library file, so there are one of two explanations:

Either the library is installed and the file is present somewhere on your system, but the compiler is not looking in the right place. If this is the case, you need to tell the compiler where to look by adding the -I switch to the command line (-I/path/to/header/directory).

Or:

The library hasn't been installed. If this is the case, you will need to download the source from zlib.net, build and install it.

If either of those is beyond you, you may be better off trying another codebase. However, there is the possibility that you will run into similar types of errors re. missing headers / libraries.

Yeah.. good point, I think we all completely skipped past that. Thanks for pointing it out.

Hope all of this helps you out.

-Syn

You're not interrested in running a mud?

If you want something to screw around in, on my site:

www.flcodebase.com

I have a precompiled windows executible (compiled in cygwin with gcc-windows) of the fl code that is mostly for builders, but has been ran as a port by at least one of my builders when I was out of town and it crashed. Its a beefed up rom. Quite a few classes and races.

There are also several windows execs of just rom that you could run for fun.