FAQ

Can I run GORE on my operating system?

GORE client supports each OS with POSIX or Windows API available:
  • UNIX-like systems: GNU/Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, IRIX, MacOS X and others;
  • Windows XP, Vista
GORE server runs on *BSD, Linux, Solaris, MacOS X.

What dependences should be installed?

GORE client depends on glib, SDL, SDL_ttf, SDL_mixer, libyaml and zlib. To build it, you need Vala and C compilers (e.g. gcc). If you use MS Windows, you don't need to build it from sources: just download *zip archive with exe-file and all *.dll dependences (but if you want to compile it, get the source tarball and read WINDOWS_HOWTO.txt).

What is Free Software?

Free software is software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it.

Currently, many people use proprietary software that denies users these freedoms and benefits. If we make a copy and give it to a friend, if we try to figure out how the program works, if we put a copy on more than one of our own computers in our own home, we could be caught and fined or put in jail. That's what's in the fine print of the license agreement you accept when using proprietary software. The corporations behind proprietary software will often spy on your activities and restrict you from sharing with others. And because our computers control much of our personal information and daily activities, proprietary software represents an unacceptable danger to a free society.

If you play such games as World of Warcraft, you will suffer from all of this restrictments. Even ADOM, well-known single-player roguelike game, does lot's of this horrible things.

What Free Software means for GORE? It means that You can be sure that this game contains no spyware, no cheats, it can be used for no cost and be redistributed with no limitations, excepting those, that prevent taking away freedom of others. You can view and study sourcecode of this game (both client and server sides), modify it to fix some bugs or to add new features. You can take part in game development!

See GNU General Public License (client) and GNU Affero General Public License (server) for more details.

What is rogue-like?

Rogue-like is, probably, the oldest member of RPG genre. It's name comes from the first game of that kind, "Rogue". Almost all rogue-likes features only text interface, in that case various game objects are being represented by ASCII-symbols, for example, in many rogue-likes, '@' means player, and 'D' is a dragon. Player controls his character entering commands, which are simple short keystrokes. Most rogue-likes are single-player.

Now many professional game studios confront with problems concerned with the scale of their production. Game graphics takes too many man-hours and money, so to recompense all of the growing outlays they have to sacrifice lots of featches. Gameplay and different platform support are always being detruncated. Due to amount of money, taken up in game developing, companies cannot risk and often make standart, trite games with simple quests and lots of blood and fancy graphics. Thay make money, but not games.

Because of the fact that rogue-like games doesn't require advanced graphics detailization, it's developers aim for the diversity of game features and replayability. Farther more, creaters of free games don't make earning money their aim, so thay can risk, implement non-standart decisions and focus on minutiaes without any doubt. Free games are made by humans for humans. Often, it leads to the immense amount of playing possibilities, that couldn't be met in any commercially-successful (MMO-)RPG's.

Text based interface has another great advantage: dungeons, scenery, objects and even storyline can be randomly generated! Even developer doesn't know what the game will be.

And of cource rogue-like game gives you a chance to play games at work, because your boss will not even think that this heap of characters in the terminal is a game ;)

Can I run my own GORE server?

Yes. You can download and start GORE server on your computer, e.g. to play only with your friend or colleagues in office. Furthermore you can setup online server for public use, and if it will be enough stable and fast, we will put it to our server list on this site.
Note: If you will modify server sources, you must publish your version with all of it's source code, as it is said in GNU Affero General Public License.

How to contact with developers?

The best way to contact with developers is a mailing list. Send following message:

subscribe your_password nodigest

to gore-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net. Subscription lets you receive messages from other users. If you are not familiar with mailing-lists, you can send word "help" to the same adress. To post your messages mail to gore-devel@lists.sourceforge.net.

Client crashed (or hanged). What to do?

  • Find gore.log and send it to mailing list. Please, describe your problem in detail.
  • Restart client. If your character is not dead, your session will be restored.

Note that when you start client it will remove old log file. So if you want to send bug report some other time, backup gore.log file.