Contents

• Derived C sources
• Building an executable from the C sources
• Text data handling.
• Summary of kernel compilation symbols

I assume that you already have an A-code game C source, either from one of the A-code games on the adventure downloads page, or as the result of translating some A-code source by running acdc. If so, all you need now is an ANSI C compiler. In the below I assume gcc being used, but any ANSI-compliant compiler should do.

If your system has the unistd library installed, you should add -DHAVE_UNISTD_H to all compilation commands given below.

• Basic build
  To get a basic game executable, simply compile and link all C source files:
   
  gcc *.c -o <advname>
   
  On Unix/Linux/Mac platforms the result includes the default browser interface, which features command recall and editing. If you do not want the browser interface, and are happy with a "dumb" version with no command recall and editing, to be played in a console window, you can strip off browser support as follows:
   
  gcc *.c -DCONSOLE -o <advname>
   
  A "dumb" executable, is what you get by default under DOS or Windows, where the game has to be run from the DOS prompt (but see below how to build a better Windows version).
• Console mode command recall/editing
  On Linux, Unix and Mac you can also add command recall and editing in the console mode of the game. For this you need readline and ncurses libraries installed on your machine. Note that you will need the development readline package, not just the library itself!
   
  If the libraries are available, the simplest thing to do is to use the advbuild script supplied in the tools sub-directory in the 239K gzipped A-code version 12.29 tarball. The script will attempt to determine whether you have the libraries available, and if so, will include them in the build.
   
  Alternatively, you can can build the executable by hand:
   
  gcc *.c -DREADLINE -lreadline -lncurses -o <advname>
   
  You may also need to add -I to indicate where the readline include files are to be found, if they are not in a standard place.
   
  An executable with readline support will still default to the browser mode. You can use -DCONSOLE to strip off browser support.
• Command recall/editing on Windows
  There is at present no browser mode for Windows executable, but you can build more user friendly windowed version using the Glk library. I use the Cygwin Unix emulator and there the build command is
   
  gcc *.c -g -o adv770w.exe -DHAVE_UNISTD_H -DGLK -lglk -mno-cygwin -mwindows
   
  If you are using anything else on Windows, you are on your own, but the above should give you some idea of what may be required.
   
  One of the requirements is, of course, the Glk library itself. You can use David Kinder's 308K winglk.zip implementation for Windows.

• Creating the text data file
  Even though game C sources no longer come with the .dat text data file, this file can get automatically constructed by the game executable. To do this, first build the executable in one of the three ways described below (for preloading, paging or reading of the data file), and then run the resulting executable in the directory containing the C sources. Failing to find the .dat file, but finding adv6.h instead, the game will construct the .dat file from the .h one. From then on the game will run normally, getting its text data from the .dat file, which should be kept in the same place as the executable (but see the separate document on game invocation command options for an alternative).
• Loading text data on game startup
  If -DMEMORY is added to any of the C compilation commands suggested above, the text data file will be preloaded into a dynamically allocated buffer on game startup. This used to be the default arrangement in A-code versions 10 and 11.
• Reading data from the text file
  If your memory is constrained, but disk I/O is reasonably quick (which it would be unless you are running the game from a floppy disk), you can use the -DFILE compilation flag. This causes the game to read from the data file with no paging of its own, though one hopes that *some* paging will be done by the OS. As a guess, such machines will have no GUI browsers, so -DCONSOLE should also be added to compilation flags.
• Loading text data on game startup
  If -DSWAP is added to any of the C compilation commands suggested above, all access to the text data file will be through an internal paging system of 32 1KB buffers, paging data in and out on the first-in-first-out basis. The number of swap buffers can be modified by defining the SWAP symbol to have a particular value, e.g. -DSWAP=40. The number of buffers will be coerced into the range from 16 to 128 inclusive.
   
  This method is only useful for the oldest and slowest machines. Again, it probably makes sense to add -DCONSOLE as well, since a machine with such a limited amount of memory is unlikely to sport a GUI-based browser.