Spring RTS Engine

Hi,

I'm a new user and I've successfully installed SpringLobby on Ubuntu 9.10 but I'm not able to play any games? I wanted to play Kernel Panic so I downloaded the zip file and extracted it as instructed, but I have no idea how to play it now, this isn't documented anywhere as far as I know... Can anyone help me??

Thanks in advance,
MG2R

you installed SpringLobby?... what about Spring?

Wiki Article on how to install Spring

Auswaschbar wrote:

• be sure you have installed both springlobby and spring-engine
• after unzipping kernel panic, you should see folder maps/ and a folder mods/
• copy both folders into ~/.spring/
• then you can do 2 things:
  • start spring, you can then select kernel panic in the modlist
  • start springlobby, and start a singleplayer game of KP, or join the multiplayer server and find a KP game there

I've managed to install Kernel Panic through the synaptic package manager but now whenever I want to play a KP crashes and displays a message like this
uuuh... HELP? :p

please attach infolog.txt as a file to your next post.
please also pastebin(.com) the log files under AI/Interfaces/Java/log/
also.. i guess you are using JKPAI. try using one of the other AIs (Lua ones), in case you can choose that in the way you start the game (in the lobby you can). in case you have them available, AAI, RAI, KAIK and the Null*AI's wont work with KP.

hoijui wrote:please attach infolog.txt as a file to your next post.
please also pastebin(.com) the log files under AI/Interfaces/Java/log/
also.. i guess you are using JKPAI. try using one of the other AIs (Lua ones), in case you can choose that in the way you start the game (in the lobby you can). in case you have them available, AAI, RAI, KAIK and the Null*AI's wont work with KP.

I tried one of the bots that weren't in your list of non-working bots and now the game started and ran stable :) thank you

the only problem now is that I have no idea what to do in the game :D but I'll go ahead and read some docs on that...

one other thing: is it usual that there almost no-one online?

there are 228 players online atm.
maybe you connected to backup server?

The lua AIs that come with some games are usually the most stable but can only play the game they come with.
S44 and CA also have them.

The only AI that can play Kernel Panic are:
- Kernel Panic AI
- Fair KPAI
- NTai
- Baczek's KP AI

But I don't know if NTai and Baczek's KP AI have been compiled for Linux. And if they have been, I don't know if they're as stable as in Windows. And even if they were, they would be a pain to setup.

So, when playing Kernel Panic under Linux, it's best to only use "Kernel Panic AI" and "Fair KPAI". These are "Lua AI", which means that instead of external .so or .dll, they are just a .lua script inside the mod. That makes them very stable, very hard to break, and even when they error out, you just get spammed in the console instead of Spring crashing. Also, because these Lua AI are very easy to modify by a mod maker without C++ skills, they have been customised to take full advantage of all Kernel Panic special abilities.

If, instead of using a lobby, you run Spring directly, the menu inside Kernel Panic should trigger, and let you play skirmish without running the risk of picking a wrong AI.

I am aware of how picking the wrong AI make Spring crash is a huge problem for newcomers. To mitigate the issue six month ago already:
- Asked engine and lobby dev to implement a way for mod to blacklist or whitelist AI. But AI devs would rather let noob crash than risk not showing an AI that might accidentally work.
- Made a simplified skirmish generator as a Lua widget inside the mod. But it only work if your run Spring directly, without a lobby. I specifically asked mammadori who made the Kernel Panic Linux package to include a shorcut to direct launch Spring with a dummy script (so it jumps straight to KP menu), but I guess the message was lost.

i would still like to get the logfiles i told you to paste (from the crashed game, if you might reproduce it). so i can fix that crash.

hoijui wrote:i would still like to get the logfiles i told you to paste (from the crashed game, if you might reproduce it). so i can fix that crash.

I've regenerated such a crash :)

thanks
does not contain useful info but... well, lets forget about i. if it happens fro someone else that depends on this working, i'll bug hunt with him.
have fun!