dopewars and Microsoft Windows
dopewars is designed primarily for Unix systems such as Linux, but it can be
made to work under Microsoft Windows (NT, 95, 98, 3.1) and even later versions
of MS-DOS. Three approaches to the problem are outlined below:-
- Install Linux
- The best way to run a Linux program is to install Linux! Recent
distributions of Linux (such as RedHat) are
a lot more user-friendly than traditional Unix systems, and will co-exist
happily with Windows. Linux is free, and so should cost you no more than the
price of a cheap CD-ROM or (if you have a fast connection) an FTP download.
A small Linux installation should consume significantly less than 500MB, and
you might even learn something in the process!
- Cygwin
- The Cygwin library
"provides a UNIX-like API on top of the Win32 API" (i.e. it allows programs
such as dopewars to be compiled on Windows 95, 98 and NT). The procedure
for compiling dopewars with Cygwin is as follows:-
- Obtain and install the Cygwin library from http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/ or a mirror.
- Obtain and install ncurses within the Cygwin environment. Suitable source
code and precompiled binaries can be found at ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/win32/develop/gnuwin32/cygwin/porters/Hirmke_Michael/B20/.
- Get the dopewars tarball from the download page
and extract it. Add the line "#include < getopt.h > " (without the
surrounding quotes) to the list of #include statements at the start of
dopewars.c. Then compile as normal (you may have to alter the Makefile
to tell gcc where the ncurses libraries and headers are) by typing "make".
- Set the terminal type to something sensible (I usually find that
"TERM=pcansi" will suffice at the bash prompt) and then run the resultant
dopewars.exe binary.
- DJGPP
- DJGPP is an implementation of
the Unix libraries for DOS systems (on processors of 386 class or higher).
DJGPP programs will also work happily within DOS boxes under Microsoft Windows.
DJGPP yields a dopewars binary which runs a lot faster than the equivalent
Cygwin program, but the implementation of sockets (i.e. networking) will only
work if the program is run within a DOS box under Windows 95 (note that
Windows 98 uses a different version of WinSock, and so will not work). If,
however, you only wish to use single-player mode, this is acceptable. The
procedure for installation with DJGPP is as follows:-
- Obtain and install DJGPP. The easiest way to do this is to use the
"Zip Picker" at http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/. Make sure that you select "Unix Curses Emulator" under "Extra Stuff".
Then follow the instructions given on how to extract the files and set up your
system for DJGPP.
- DJGPP does not support Unix sockets (networking) by default; in order to
rectify this you will need a socket library such as libsocket, which can be
obtained from ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2tk/lsck073b.zip or
a SimTel mirror.
- Install dopewars from the download page into a
suitable directory. Alter the Makefile to tell gcc where the libsocket and/or
pdcurses libraries and include files are, and change the "LIBS" line to read
"LIBS = -lcurso -lsocket" (without the quotes - and you may need to drop the
final "t" to get it to work properly).
- Compile dopewars as normal; this should yield a DOS binary dopewars.exe.
Last update: 11-10-99