PyWeek - ODE note

I've just noticed Dam Builder has been listed as "not working in Linux" on this page. This is rather frustrating as the whole game was developed under Linux.

The note is that the game crashes with the following error:

File "src/dambuilder/physbody.py", line 14, in Ball
j = ode.Plane2DJoint(ode_world)
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'Plane2DJoint'

This is due to a version of ODE/PyODE that lacks Plane2DJoint support.

Unfortunately, this version of ODE/PyODE does not appear to be shipped yet in typical Linux distributions. Since I understand full well people don't want to mess about with installing new versions of library dependencies as root, I've taken a lot of care to include a 'buildout' version which can build and install these (and PyGame) as a user, on Linux. I've used this myself during development.

Download the -buildout version of the game, and read the section "Extensions that can be built with Buildout" in the INSTALL.txt. Comment this entry should you have any problems.

I hope that this extra hassle doesn't stop people altogether from trying out this game under Linux. I did do my best to help. :)

— faassen on 2007/04/09 20:29 of Dam Builder