Adventure Commander

A text base adventure game written in C++

Author

Aaron Walter - ajwalter - 792829065

Features

• Completely written in C++
• Cross platform with Linux and Windows (Portable)
• Uses UTF-8 characters with Emoji support that works cross platform
• No usages of new and delete, memory management with std::shared_ptr<>

Final Assignment

For the final assignment, I decided to port my entire code base to Windows Visual C++ and MinGW build environments. I thought it would be a fun challenge to write 100% portable code (at least between the major desktop operating systems).

The toughest challenge of porting the code was the preservation of UTF8 (specifically emoji). Windows native consoles do not allow UTF8 beyond the "Basic Multilingual Plane", so emojis were unsupported. Instead, I ported the code base to use a library called "Public Domain Curses" on Windows and regular NCurses on other linux based operating systems.

The solution was challenging. The version of PDCurses that I am using allows me to render text to a graphical environment instead of the built in console. This also makes it a stand alone application that makes it feel more "native" to windows. The main problem, however, is that UTF8 still isn't supported! To use Unicode, you must first convert UTF8 to UTF16 using the native windows library. There are still some issues with this method which cause graphical glitches when rendering Unicode in the native windows console.

There were many other challenges along the way, such as getting my Makefile to compile on Windows and MinGW as well as various CMake issues. At one point I tried using SDL2 with SDL TTF, which failed pretty badly. The result, however was driver.cpp and driver.h, which allows anyone to implement their own rendering subsystem if they want to port the code elsewhere.

The rest of this README describes various processes on how to build Adventure Commander for different platforms, as well as various troubleshooting tips.

Build using the Makefile

Ubuntu

1. Install ncurses on Ubuntu: sudo apt install libncursesw5-dev
2. Go to Makefile Common

Fedora

1. Install ncurses on Fedora: sudo yum install ncurses-devel
2. Go to Makefile Common

Windows (Native with MinGW)

1. Navigate to the included PDCurses wingui library cd library/PDCurses/wingui
2. Build the library with make -f Makefile.mng pdcurses.a WIDE=Y UTF8=Y
3. Navigate to the project directory cd ../../../
4. Go to Makefile Common

Makefile Common

1. Run make to compile everything
2. Run ./game to launch the game
3. Press TAB for in game help!

Build using CMake

Windows (Native with Visual Studio 2017)

1. Open the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2017*
2. Navigate to the library\PDCurses\wingui folder.
3. Build the library with nmake -f Makefile.vc WIDE=Y UTF8=Y
4. Open up Visual Studio and choose File > Open > Folder...
5. Make the folder cmake-build-windows-64 in the root of the project
6. Go to CMake Common

Windows/Linux (Linux Build with CLion WSL Toolchain)

1. Install ncurses on WSL: sudo apt install libncursesw5-dev
2. Open the project with File > Open...
3. Set up your toolchain (if needed): https://www.jetbrains.com/help/clion/how-to-use-wsl-development-environment-in-clion.html
4. Go to CMake Common

Windows (Native with CLion Visual Studio Toolchain)

1. Open the project with File > Open...
2. Follow the first 3 steps of Build using CMake > Visual Studio
3. Go to CMake Common

CMake Common

1. Press the build button
2. Navigate to the build directory cmake-build-*
3. Copy the resource folder into this folder
4. Run ./Adventure_Commander if in CLion, or press Play in VStudio
5. Press TAB for in game help!

Console setup

This game uses UTF-8 to make it look nice! Please read this if your terminal looks messed up (ex: question marks or blank output):

• If you are using Native Windows Build, PDCurses should take care of emoji.
• If you are using WSL bash, use the console emulator Cmder for emoji.
• If you are using gnome-terminal (called Terminal), UTF-8 works with emoji.
• If you are using xterm, press CTRL + RIGHT CLICK and enable TrueType fonts. (Use the --lame switch to disable emoji)

In any case, your locale should be set to "en_US.UTF-8". You can check with the command locale. SSH environments can sometimes break this, so you might need to put these in your ~/.profile if you are using SSH and see question marks:

• export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
• export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Screenshots