Parallel Realities - Frequently Asked Questions

All source code found on this site is available under the GNU General Public License (often referred to as the GPL). You can obtain a copy of the license by clicking here.

Please make sure you are aware of the terms of this license before installing or running our software. Please also note that game assets are Non Free and should not be included as part of a Linux distribution or made available in any repositories.

Game FAQ

Why hasn't game X been updated?

Most games on this site are no longer maintained.

Will there be anymore updates to game X? It would be great to add these features...

No, sorry.

Your game should play more like this one...

Then it won't be the game we set out to make. If you wish to play a certain type of game you should either buy it, develop it yourself (like we do!!) or tweak our code.

Site FAQ

Which browser is this site designed for?

This site is designed to be used with any browser that supports CSS, Javascript and HTML. It should function correctly in all modern web browsers. Even without CSS this site will still be usable. Pages on this site are designed for a minimum resolution of 800 x 600 in 16 bit color or greater.

Do you collect personal information?

We do not collect any personal information on this site.

How can I link to your screenshots?

You can link to the screenshots by using the page's Screenshots anchor tag. For example, if you wish to create a link to the screenshots for Metal Blob Solid, you can do so by creating a link to,

http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/blobWars.php#Screenshots

Please be aware that linking directly to the images will not work.

I've found a typo / factual error / page error...

Please email the Webmaster (address can be found on Contact page) with a description of the error.

Compile / Installation FAQ

Help on installing and using Parallel Realities' games on Linux can be found here.

How can I recompile the game under Linux?

Please ensure that you have all the required development libraries before you attempt to do this.

Here is an example of recompiling Project: Starfighter,

tar zxf starfighter.tar.gz
cd Starfighter-1.1
make
make install*

* - You will need to be root to perform this step.

Once you have done this, you can run the game simply by typing,

starfighter

into a terminal window. It is also possible create a desktop or menu icon to play the game**. To do this, create an icon / menu entry that executes "starfighter". You may need to refer to your desktop environment's documentation as to how to do this.

** - Metal Blob Solid should do this automatically for KDE and Gnome environments.

When recompiling I get lots of errors...

If you're fairly new to Linux and programming in general you may see the following when trying to recompile,

In file included from code/ai.cpp:1:
code/ai.h:4:21: SDL/SDL.h: No such file or directory
code/ai.h:5:27: SDL/SDL_image.h: No such file or directory
code/ai.h:6:27: SDL/SDL_mixer.h: No such file or directory

Most Linux users will have the appropriate SDL libraries installed on their system. However, if you do not have them you will need to download them from the SDL homepage (see above) or check your install CDs. Additional libraries may be required for other projects.

Cross Compiling FAQ

Note - This guide is highly likely to be out-of-date and not entirely correct.
It will, however, point you in the right direction.

How can I cross compile Metal Blob Solid for Windows?

A Windows specific makefile (called makefile.windows) is included with the Metal Blob Solid source downloads. The can be run by typing:

make -f makefile.windows

You will need a few extras in order for this to work. First, you will need to install:

mingw32
mingw32-binutils
mingw32-runtime

You will also need to download SDL, SDL Image, SDL Mixer, SDL TTF and SDL Net development and runtime files for Windows. You should create the following directory structure somewhere:

Windows
Windows/bin
Windows/include
Windows/lib
Windows/runtime

In Windows/bin:
Copy in sdl-config from the bin directory of the Windows SDL development download.

In Windows/include:
Copy in all SDL headers
Soft link a folder called SDL to the current directory (ln -s . SDL) (reason for this is complicated. Don't worry, just do it!)

In Windows/lib:
Copy in all lib files

In Windows/runtime:
Copy in all dlls

Now edit two files:
sdl-config - Update prefix to point to your Windows directory location.
makefile.windows - SDLC should point to the absolute path of sdl-config

With all this done, you should now be able to run

make -f makefile.windows

to create a Windows build of Metal Blob Solid. A similar method can be used for building Legend of Edgar and Virus Killer. If you have any comments or additions, please use the form below.

Comments (latest 5)

Steve
March 10th, 2010 at 13:38

@reup - Which game, which platform and how did you install it?

Tim Dickson
March 10th, 2010 at 17:42

any chance of a cross-compiling info or tutorial, or specific instructions on cross-compiling metal blob solid, ?
thanks.

Steve
March 10th, 2010 at 17:48

I'll see what I can put together. There is a makefile.windows included with the Metal Blob Solid sources, so that should be used as a base.

Tofor
August 2nd, 2010 at 03:24

Hmm, I'm trying to build Blob Wars I from source under gentoo. I get a segfault when I try to run make install. Any suggestions? It appeared to 'make' correctly...

Steve
August 2nd, 2010 at 08:03

@Tofor - Try building using the following:

make USEPAK=0

but DON'T run "make install"

Then just type ./blobWars in the local directory. This will run the game and cause it to spit out a load of debugging information. It may well be that you're trying to run the game on a 64-bit system, although that should've been handled.

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