YAL Guide
Step by Step guide to building YAL on Linux
- Install the YAL dependencies (see the table below)
- Download YAL (http://vega.livecd.pl/~havner/yal/linux/yal-0.3-rc2.tar.bz2)
- Open a terminal window
- Extract the tarball with tar xjf ~/Downloads/yal-0.3-rc2.tar.bz2 (modify the path if you downloaded the tarball elsewhere)
- cd yal/trunk (still need to double check the extraction path)
- ./build-all.sh
- If there were no errors, you should now have a "bin" directory in yal/trunk
- Make the binary executable with chmod 755 bin/fs2_launcher
- Copy bin/fs2_launcher into your FS2 directory (or anywhere in your $PATH that you like)
- Optional: create a shortcut on your desktop
| Distribution | Command to install dependencies |
|---|---|
| Fedora 16 64bit | sudo yum install gcc gcc-c++ make qt qt-devel SDL-devel |
| Ubuntu 11.10 (& derivatives) 64bit | sudo apt-get install build-essential libopenal qt4-qmake (check if we also need libqt4-devel?) |
Configuring YAL
- Once you have YAL running, click on the Browse button at the top and select the FSO build you want to use. Make sure that you're using a release build and not a debug build, meaning that if you downloaded the build, the build name should end in an "r" and not a "d", or if you built it yourself, that you didn't use the --enable-debug option when you ran autogen.sh. [Debug builds are only for generating debug logs. You shouldn't use them if all you want to do is play.]
- Open the Audio/Joystick tab and make sure the correct sound device is listed (probably PulseAudio).
- If you want, open the Features tab and enable any features you want. This page describes the features.
- Click "Apply" at the bottom of the launcher to apply the changes.
If you decide to get the MediaVPs, you can follow the MediaVPs' instructions to set up YAL to use the MediaVPs.
Important: If you try one launcher and then the other one and then run into problems, see below.
If you have problems when you use one launcher and then use the other one
Some necessary background: The launchers store information about your selected mod and flags in a file called cmdline_fso.cfg. On Linux, that file can be in either your home folder ~/.fs2_open/data/) or in your FreeSpace2 folder (by default, ~/FreeSpace2/data/). If there's a cmdline_fso.cfg file in both places, they can conflict with each other and cause problems.
YAL saves cmdline_fso.cfg in your home folder, and wxLauncher saves it in your FreeSpace2 folder. Therefore, depending on which launcher you want to use, either delete or rename the copy of cmdline_fso.cfg that's in the folder that your launcher of choice doesn't use.
Note: As with all files/folders whose names start with ".", the .fs2_open folder is hidden. To view it, set your file manager to show your home directory, then press Ctrl-H if you're using GNOME or LXDE, or press Alt-. if you're using KDE.
