Cant start Echelon Book I :( undefined subroutine

Linux support forum for Eschalon: Book I
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Hano
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Cant start Echelon Book I :( undefined subroutine

Post by Hano »

Hello,

i have installed echelon (OS: ubuntu gutsy) like: apt-get install echelon and all works fine. But if i want start the game i get following error:

Undefined subroutine &main::after called at /usr/bin/echelon line 309.

Someone know this problem??

Michael

PS: If you need further information pls teal me. I'm new with echelon and linux and so i dont know what is needed
acoustibop
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Post by acoustibop »

AFAIK Eschalon is not included in any repositories, Hano - how can you install it with apt-get? You should get a .tar.gz package that you decompress where you want it. Then you run the executable to start the game.

Edit: Ah, I see what you've done - you've installed a French-only email application frontend called echelon.

If you're going to use the command line, you must make sure things are typed in correctly, or you'll get worse messes than this.

Eschalon: Book I (note the spelling) is a commercial game; you won't get it for free in the repositories - nice try!
acoustibop
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Post by acoustibop »

Nothing back from you Hano - in case you haven't found out by now, you can download a free demo for the game (great demo, too!) here, and buy the game here.

It's very easy to install the demo or the game, too. First download and decompress the game wherever you want, then run the executable - that's all.

To elucidate: download the demo/game to wherever you want to play it from - I'd recommend your home folder. I don't know what distribution you're using, but I'd guess it's probably Ubuntu or a Ubuntu derivative - it's certainly Debian. Anyway, once you've downloaded it, open a terminal, which will open in your home folder - if you've downloaded it somewhere else, cd into that folder.

Then type this in (best to paste and copy it, since you seem to have a penchant for mishandling code... ;)):

Code: Select all

tar xvpf eschalon_book_1_demo.tar.gz
or

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tar xvpf eschalon_book_1.tar.gz
depending on which you downloaded. This will tar it into its own folder (which will be the same name as the downloaded file but without the extensions) with the correct structure and permissions.

cd into the folder - do

Code: Select all

cd eschalon_book_1_demo
or

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cd eschalon_book_1
and type

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./eschalon_book_1_demo
or

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./eschalon_book_1
The game should start (may take a minute) - if it doesn't, note (accurately!) the messages in the terminal and post them here - it may be you're missing a dependency.

However, you do need a few basic things - a videocard running its proprietary driver - at least, I don't know if other cards can manage it, but ATI cards certainly need the fglrx driver - and a working soundcard.
Last edited by acoustibop on February 29th, 2008, 1:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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BasiliskWrangler
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Post by BasiliskWrangler »

acoustibop: thanks for all your help troubleshooting the Linux version. It takes a lot of stress off of me to have a Linux expert like you hanging around the forums!
acoustibop
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Post by acoustibop »

I'm not exactly an expert, BW, but Eschalon: Book I is generally so easy to run in Linux, that even I can manage a bit of troubleshooting and, of course, I'm glad to do so. ;)
Kalidarn
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Re: Cant start Echelon Book I :( undefined subroutine

Post by Kalidarn »

Of course you can package your own deb file. RPMs and DEB files can be installed without being in a package manager with the tool dpkg and rpm. This way it can be tracked by the package manager and set various permissions (in gentoo our games packages are all set so you must be in the 'games' group in order to access them. Obviously proprietary software can't go into a repository. A suggestion to basilisk games might be to create a deb archive and a rpm, release. With linux we unfortunately have two major package management formats deb/rpm and slackware/gentoo/arch etc all just use scripts on a simple tgz archive (like what's currently issued).

Do note though if you do your own package creation eschelon.cfg needs to have read and write access even if the game doesn't actually write anything to it.
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