A few days after posting the Windows build of BZWorkBench, I was able to fix the build on Linux. There are still some issues with building on Mac OSX, but I can’t debug that as I don’t have OSX. Anyway, here are the steps for compiling on Ubuntu 9.04. It should be similar for other distributions. Instructions are in the full article.
Here’s an example with HiX loaded:
BZWorkbench on Ubuntu 9.04 with the HiX map loaded.
The first step is to install the various build dependencies that are required (Adjust this as required for your distribution):
sudo aptitude install subversion g++ libopenscenegraph-dev libfltk1.1-dev
Then we will check out a copy of the latest source code from SVN:
svn co https://bzflag.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/bzflag/trunk/bzworkbench/ bzworkbench
Then we will change directory into the Debug folder:
cd bzworkbench/Debug
Then we will start the build process:
make
Once this is done, there should not be any error messages showing. Of course, if there is, you’ll have to determine why. Or you could ask on the BZFlag forum or the BZFlag IRC channel for assistance.
We should then be able to change directory into the root of the source:
cd ..
Then we can run the binary using this command:
./Debug/bzworkbench
You should then be presented with a screen that looks like this:
BZWorkbench on Ubuntu 9.04
You can then load up an existing map file, or create a new one. Not every 2.0.x feature is supported. For instance, ‘group’ and ‘define’ are not yet supported. But this editor does have support for a lot of the features.
Someone at work told me that you can get a program that imbeds OSX inside windows, as a sort of emulator or something. That might make OSX debugging possible?
You cannot legally run OSX on non-Apple hardware. It would be a violation of their EULA, even if it was just to run in a Virtual Machine for debugging.
Does BZWorkbench have a sourcceforge page or something similar? I am interested in making my own maps.
What capabilities does it have, is it just square un complex objects, or can it offer more?
BZWorkBench is part of the BZFlag project. It has a lot more features than the old BZEdit, but I honestly haven’t used it much to know what all it supports. You’re free to try building the code. (Or, if you run Windows, you could download the Win32 build I posted in the previous article)
But I’d still consider it to be alpha/beta software at this point, so some things will be missing or won’t work.
Where do I download it?
You have to compile it yourself from the source code. The steps listed in the article will work for Ubuntu, but you will have to adjust the package dependency installation depending on your Linux distribution.
Is there an easier way to do it? It doesn’t work for me when I try it
Unfortunately “doesn’t work” isn’t going to help me debug the issue. I do think that it requires FLTK 1.3 now, which you will have to build and install yourself. If you have issues, post on the BZFlag forum ( http://my.bzflag.org/bb/ ) or ask on the #bzflag IRC channel ( http://my.bzflag.org/w/IRC ). In either case, you will need to provide details such as build errors and the library versions you used. For IRC, you should use a pastebin site for providing any large amount of info (such as the build errors) instead of sending it all raw to the channel.