Daimonin and Mac OS X 10.3.9
Well, Matt (of UConn dotmatt fame) has convinced us at work to jump on his Daimonin server. Daimonin is a free MMORPG client and server program that is based on the Crossfire MMORPG. I remember playing Crossfire once a few years back, but wasn’t able to devote the time needed to get deep into that game. (As is the usual case with MMORPGs!) Daimonin has taken Crossfire to the next level in terms of graphics, sounds, and gameplay. Best of all, it is FREE! The Daimonin forums have a post that describes a straightforward way to install the required precompiled packages and install Daimonin on OS X 10.4. Unfortunately, those instructions don’t work on 10.3! I was able to figure out how to get Daimonin to work on 10.3, after compiling the libraries myself… (oh yeah, and the precompiled libraries in fink didn’t work…) This post describes how to compile and install Daimonin and the required libraries on OS X 10.3.
I have tested this with OS X 10.3.9. Daimonin requires SDL with SDL_mixer and SDL_image, two libraries outside of the SDL package. SDL_mixer requires the ogg vorbis libraries (for sound) and SDL_image requires the PNG libraries (for graphics.) The LZO compression libraries are also required. Be sure to install each package in the following order:
Install GCC Compiler
First, you’ll have to install the XCode Tools from Apple. This contains the GCC compiler, which is needed to compile Daimonin and all the associated libraries on Mac OS X. At the time of this writing, XCode Tools 1.5 is currently available for OS X 10.3. To get XCode Tools, you will have to go to the Apple Developer Connection and register (free). Then, go to the downloads section, and download the XCode Tools 1.5 CD. After double clicking on the file you’ve downloaded, and mounting the XCode Tools disk image, double click on the XcodeTools.mpkg file. When you get to the Installation Type part of the install, click the Customize button. Then, select only gcc 3.3 and Developers Tools Software, Mac OS X SDK, and April 2004 Xcode Tools Extras (or whichever date that refers to your version of XCode Tools.) Installing these other options (besides GCC) will create the proper links for GCC, so that GCC can be found when compiling a program.
After installing XCode Tools 1.5, you will then have to download and install the November 2004 gcc 3.3 Updater from the Apple Developer Connection. This will fix some bugs in the GCC that is in XCode Tools 1.5.
LZO Libraries
Download lzo-1.08.tar.gz from oberhumer.com. Uncompress this file to a temporary location, then open Terminal.app and change to the directory of the uncompressed lzo files. Then, type the following commands:
./configure --enable-shared
make
make test
sudo make install
SDL Libraries
Download the SDL stable source code (currently 1.2.9) from the Simple DirectMedia Layer website. Uncompress the file to a temporary location, then open Terminal.app and change to the directory of the uncompressed files. Then, type the following commands:
./configure
make
sudo make install
Ogg Vorbis Libraries
Download libogg (currently 1.1.3) and libvorbis (currently 1.1.2) from Xiph. These libraries are required for the sounds which are in .ogg format. Uncompress these files to temporary locations, then open Terminal.app. In each uncompressed directory, type the following commands:
./configure
make
sudo make install
SDL Mixer Library
Download the SDL Mixer library (currently 1.2) from the SDL website. Uncompress the file to a temporary location, then in Terminal.app change to the directory of the uncompressed files. Then, type the following commands:
./configure
make
sudo make install
PNG Library
Download the PNG source code (currently 1.2.8) from the libpng website. This library is required for the graphics which are in .png format. Uncompress the file to a temporary location, then in Terminal.app change to the directory of the uncompressed files. Then, type the following commands:
./configure
make
sudo make install
SDL Image Library
Download the SDL Image library (currently 1.2) from the SDL website. Uncompress the file to a temporary location, then in Terminal.app change to the directory of the uncompressed files. Then, type the following commands:
./configure
make
sudo make install
Daimonin
Now you can finally compile and install Daimonin! Download Daimonin for Linux and decompress to a directory. In Terminal.app, change to the newly created daimonin directory and do the following:
cd client/make/linux
sudo sh ./configure --build=ppc
sudo make all
sudo make install
To run Daimonin, you will have to start it with a sudo command, otherwise you’ll get a “SDL Parachute” error. Go back to the daimonin directory and you will find a new client directory (probably client-BETA3-0.966). Change to the new client directory and start Daimonin with:
sudo ./daimonin
Alternatively, if you are connecting to a particular server, you can issue the command (with “ip_address” being the address of the Daimonin server): sudo ./daimonin -server ip_address
You could also make a bash script that you could double-click to connect to your Daimonin server. Create a text file on your Desktop with TextEdit. Enter the following:
#!/bin/sh
sudo ./daimonin -server ip_address
Save to a file called daimonin.command (make sure the file’s extension is .command — that allows the script to run when you double click on it.) Then, go to a Terminal window and make the file executable:
cd $HOME\Desktop
chmod 755 daimonin.command
That should do it!