Linux Porting, Part 3–The Linkagening

So today I finished compiling the main game code, and I stepped into linking, and I started having issues, mainly mismatches between 32-bit and 64-bit libraries…

I was trying to compile the game in 32-bit (don’t need the memory space of 64-bit), but after some soul-searching (about 10 minutes of it), I decided to go for a 64-bit distribution on Linux (and probably the other platforms as well). If I need the 32-bit I’ll think about it later, mainly because it’s hard work making Linux compile 32-bit applications when it is a 64-bit install. The way .SOs work makes it very hard to understand exactly what’s getting compiled and where the conflicts are… And nowadays, I’m guessing there’s no big need for 32-bit systems…

So I’m porting the code to 64-bit, which carried a fair amount of small problems (just from the compiler point of view, complains about size of entities, etc), since the code wasn’t exactly prepared for that circumstance. Nothing is very hard, it’s just time consuming (especially because the IDE I’m using isn’t nearly as good as Visual Studio, even in terms of raw performance).

Now listening to “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” by “Iron Maiden”