How to... build 'Elite:The New Kind' from scratch

(Windows 98 tested)

  So what we have here is an idiot's guide to building the newkind.exe from the sources.

Ingredients

• About a 100Mb disk space available, if you have none of the tools below.
• Unzipper: PowerArchiver - powarc70208.exe
• C Compiler: MinGW - MinGW-1.1.tar.gz
• Executable Compressor: UPX - upx120w.zip
• Extra File Utils - GNUfileutils fileutils316-ming.tar.bz2 (optional)
• Stream Editor: GNUsed sed-2.05.zip (optional)
• Graphics API: Allegro - all401.zip and dx70_mgw.zip
• Elite: The New Kind - newkind.zip and newkindb.zip

Recipe

1.Install unzipper

• install the unzipper powarc70208.exe, this can handle zip, tar.gz and .bz2 archives.

  2.Install C Compiler

• (Note: with this and subsequent unzips, I'm assuming you include unzipping folder structure)
• unzip MinGW-1.1.tar.gz to c:\mingw32
• unzip dx70_mgw.zip to c:\mingw32 (saying 'yes' to replace)
• unzip upx120w.zip to c:\mingw32\bin
• unzip sed-2.05.zip to c:\mingw32
• unzip fileutils316-ming.tar.bz2 to c:\mingw32
• Add the following lines to the end of your 'c:\autoexec.bat', or environment variables in NT/2000/XP

  set MINGDIR=c:\mingw32
  set UPX_BIN=%MINGDIR%\bin\upx.exe
  set PATH=c:\mingw32\bin;%PATH%
  

• reboot (only if you altered autoexec.bat)

  3.Compile and Install Graphics API

• unzip all401.zip to c:\
• in a dos box type the following

  cd c:\allegro
  fix.bat mingw32
  set STATICLINK=1
  make
  

• sit back and make a really hot cup of tea, spend some quality time with the family, whilst you wait for the graphics API to be built from sources. (about 10mins)

  ---

  (optional)
• in the same dos box type the following

  make compress
  

• this will also take a while, it is compressing all the compiled exe's down, to save you room. The demo exe's are worth playing with if you have time.

  ---

  (required)
• in the same dos box type the following

  make install
  

• this will install your compiled allegro binaries to MinGW directories, ready for use.

  4.Compile Elite:The New Kind

• unzip newkind.zip and newkindb.zip to c:\projects\newkind
• in the same dos box type the following

  cd c:\projects\newkind
  del newkind.exe
  make
  

• You should now have a newkind.exe, which you can play with to your hearts content. Try fiddling with some of the source, and see your changes to the Elite universe...

Elite:The New Kind was the hard work of Christian Pinder

Elite was originally written by Ian Bell & David Braben and published by Acornsoft.

These build instructions by Jeremy Rayner who is trying to port the C code to Java at javanicus.org