Emulate rightclick on OpenTTD

In the original version of OTTD the right click is emulated by holding the ctrl key. Rightclick emulation can be enabled in the openttd.cfg file, by setting under the [misc] section,

rightclick_emulate = true

But the ctrl key is already mapped to othe things in the game (shared orderes for example). A very small modification to the code changes the key to shift. In /src/video/sdl_v.cpp change (line 387):

if (_rightclick_emulate && SDL_CALL SDL_GetModState() & KMOD_CTRL) {

to

if (_rightclick_emulate && SDL_CALL SDL_GetModState() & KMOD_SHIFT) {

or apply this patch file, by issuing,

patch -p1 -i right_click_emulate.diff

Then follow this post, or this one to compile. I've compiled ottd both with my shift patch and the original version.

deb for OpenTTD

I'd like to create a proper package for OpenTTD. So I've followed the ottd compilation wiki. At the end of the wiki page it is explained how to create a deb package.
I first had to install the following packages:

apt-get install build-essential fakeroot libfontconfig1-dev

then, from the root directory of the source code,

mv os/debian .

and

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -us

to build the package (ge75bb64).

I had some problems with openttd sound stuttering, to solve it I found that (thanks Rubidium in the #openttd channel) running with -s sdl:hz=22000 solves the problem. This can be also set to be the default in the openttd.cfg file, just set:

sounddriver = "sdl:hz=22000"

Emulating and Compiling for zubuntu

Emulating Zaurus
Since compiling natively on the Zaurus was slow, I decide looking for other options. Cross-compilation seems to complicated for me to setup (though probably it's not) - for that Poky seemed the easiest way. A compromise I found was to setup an arm system under Qemu. I found some of the solution on this post in the OmegaMoon blog.
First I needed the arm flavour of Qemu, Next, I used the Qemu Manager to setup the virtual machine (it can also create virtual disks).
Qemu needs a kernel to boot, I use this one.
Then I created two empty image disks (one for the operating system and one for swap). The tricky part is to setup the virtual disks. I did it on a linux machine (I use VMware to run a linux machine).
Format the disks,

mke2fs -F -m 0 -b 1024 virtual.disk

then mount it 

sudo mount -t ext2 -o loop virtual.disk mount_point

then extract the Zubuntu rootfs to this virtual disk (this is exactly the same process as setting up zubuntu for the Zaurus). I guess this can be done using one of the prepared virtual machines.
Now I put everything in the Qemu folder and use the following script to start the virutial machine,

qemu-system-arm -kernel zImage-versatile-2.6.24-rc7.armv5tel -append "console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty1 noinitrd fbcon=rotate:1 dyntick=enable debug psplash=false root=/dev/sda ip=bootp" -boot c -m 256 -hda virtual.disk -hdb swap.disk -net nic,vlan=0 -net user,vlan=0 -usbdevice tablet -localtime -M versatilepb

Alternatively, I use this virtual machine in the Qemu Manager.
The last is to create the swap partition, after Qemu boot into zubuntu,

mkswap /dev/sdb

and  enable it,

swapon /dev/sdb

For zubuntu to automatically start swap when booting, add to /etc/fstab,

/dev/sdb/        /none       swap       sw       0   0

Now this virtual machine can be used to compile "natively" for the zaurus. From the few tests I made compiling here is about twice as fast as compiling on the zaurus.


OpenTTD

OpenTTD is similar to simutrans, it is less sofisticated, but the performance here is much better than in simutrans (see this post).

OpenTTD with CargDist running on my Zaurus

To compile latest OpenTTD including the CargoDist patch (wikipage, forum thread), I did the following,
First install the prerequisites,

apt-get install git-core

For CargoDest libboost-graph-dev was also required (not sure if it is required by Cargodist)
then, to get the source code,

git clone http://fickzoo.com/fonsinchen/openttd.git
git checkout origin/cargodist

configure,

./configure --enable-debug=0 --prefix-dir=/usr

That (supposedly) disables debug, the prefix dir will set the installation dir to match that of the debian package (binaries under /usr/games and data under /usr/share/games/openttd).
Now compile

make

And with a little luck OpenTTD is compiled. To configure it follow the instruction in OpenTTD's wikipage.

Compiling simutrans

Installing prerequisites,

apt-get install zlib1g-dev libpng12-dev libSDL1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev subversion make g++

Get the source code,

svn co svn://tron.homeunix.org/simutrans/simutrans/trunk

Username is anon with empty password.
Setup,
Add #include "stdlib.h" to dataobj/koord.h.
Copy config.template to config.default.
Add at the end of config.default,

FLAGS += -DBIG_ENDIAN

FLAGS += -DUSE_C

and set,

BACKEND = sdl
COLOUR_DEPTH = 16
OSTYPE = linux
DEBUG = 0
OPTIMISE = 1
PROFILE=0
SDL_CONFIG = sdl-config

now,

make

On my zaurus the compilation takes about 3 hours. To run simutrans I first install the 102 version from the sid repositories and its dependencies (simutrans-pak64, simutrans-data and simutrans), then I copied the compiled binary (called sim) to /usr/share/games/simutrans and ran it from there, otherwise simutrans doesn't find the data files.
The downside is that apparently the Zaurus is too weak to run simutrans. I got 7fps at most and usually 4fps. I also tried to change to pakHAJO, but it didn't improve the situation much. I also tried pak32, which showed a little better performance.

Setup GPS on Zubuntu

First, to setup the bluetooth connection I need to install bluez,

apt-get install bluez

Next, gpsd,

apt-get install gpsd

And last tangoGPS, to present a moving map using the OpenStreetMap project (or other sources...)

apt-get install tangogps

Next setup the bluetooth connection. I'll be using rfcomm, the configuration file can be found under /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf. I'm using this one. To find the bluetooth address of the device I use (after I turn on the gps, obviously),

hcitool scan

The hcid.conf is missing in Zubuntu for some reason, so I create it (under /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf). I'm using this hcid.conf.
The pin code is saved under /etc/bluetooth/pin, and can be generated by

echo "0000" > /etc/bluetooth/pin

or any other pin code.
I also need to create the /bin/bluepincat.sh script for hcid, which contains,

#!/bin/sh

echo -n "PIN:"

cat /etc/bluetooth/pin

To bind rfcomm0 with the gps I do

rfcomm bind /dev/rfcomm0

The configuration for gpsd is under /etc/default/gpsd, there START_DAEMON should be set to "true" and DEVICES should point to "/dev/rfcomm0". To start the gpsd daemon,

/etc/init.d/gpsd start

Now I can start using tangoGPS and connect to my bluetooth GPS device.

VLC & Mplayer

VLC
vlc is in the zubuntu repository, on the desktop it is very reliable player. It is part of the zubuntu repository and can be installed easily. Running it might be a little more complicated, because vlc does not allowed to be run by the root user (which is the default user in zubuntu). After
searching in google a little, I found out that either vlc has to be recompiled with the "--enable-run-as-root" switch or using the vlc-wrapper. In the later case, I used the following command,

SUDO_UID=4212 vlc-wrapper as root

The problem with this method is that vlc does not have permissions to change the configuration file (~/.config/vlc/vlcrc).
Searching a little more I found this post which describe how the vlc binary (/usr/bin/vlc) can be modified to be able to run as root. This method is (not so) elegant, but it beats recompiling. To summarize, using a hex-editor (I used hexedit from the zubuntu repositories), line 630, change geteuid to getppid.

The video playback though, is very disappointing, even when using vlc-sdl-plugin (also from the repositories)...

MPlayer
For some reason mplayer is not included the jaunty arm repositry. But it can be found in the Debian one. The easiest way I found it could be installed was simply to add the Sid repository to /etc/apt/sources.list. To install mplayer, add at the end of the file,

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian sid main

then update the package cache by,

apt-get update

then install mplayer,

apt-get install mplayer

and that's that. It may be advisable to remove the line from sources.list. mplayer shows better performance than vlc, but still not enough to watch movies (to my taste).

Chess & Comics

QComicBook
Browsing the internet I stumbled upon this comicbook reader (which is in the repository). Supposedly it can read cbr files (rar compressed files), but I didn't manage to use it like that. But It's ok I can unrar the comics to a folder and read it there.
After install there wasn't a launcher in the icewm menu, so I have to start it from the terminal (until I'll manage to manually putting a launcher there...)

Crafty, XBoard
I got armel version of crafty from the maemo repository. xboard is in the default repository.
xboard can be started by issuing the following command:

xboard -font -*-fixed-bold-r-normal--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* -clockFont -*-fixed-bold-r-normal--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* -coordFont -*-fixed-bold-r-normal--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* -fcp crafty

The default fonts have to be overridden because xboard uses by default helvetica font which is not installed (I couldn't find it anyway...).
The fonts and engine can be set as default in the ~/.Xdefaults file, at the end of the file add,

xboard*font:*-*-fixed-medium-r-normal--*-130-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
xboard*clockFont:*-*-fixed-medium-r-normal--*-130-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
xboard*coordFont:*-*-fixed-medium-r-normal--*-130-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
xboard*firstChessProgram:crafty

then xboard can be started simply by,

xboard

Additional settings can be found in the xboard manpage.