[needs-packaging] urbanterror

[Jack Coulter]

http://www.urbanterror.net

Urban Terror is a proprietary total conversion mod of id Software's first-person shooter Quake III Arena. It plays as a tactical first person shooter similar to Counter-Strike. While the mod and data are proprietary, the standalone mod uses the ioUrbanTerror engine, which is a rebranding of the ioquake3 engine distributed under the GNU General Public License.

I'm working on three packages related to this, the data, the client and the server.

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

I've uploaded two source packages to revu relating to this. The data package and the client/server package (which compiles the two separate client and server binary packages).

[StefanPotyra (sistpoty)]

Patch to use Ubuntu's libjpeg62 instead of the static copy. Patch is against http://revu.ubuntuwire.com/details.py?upid=1386. Oh, I forgot to include debian/control, you'll need to add libjpeg62-dev to the build-depends there.

[Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen (ralf-nieuwenhuijsen)]

Will this make hardy? I do hope so!

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

Unfortunately, we're past the feature freeze for Hardy, but it's looking good for Hardy+1.

[Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen (ralf-nieuwenhuijsen)]

I though it was entered the new queue _before_ the feature freeze,
thereby according to the page about feature freeze, still on time.

2008/2/19, Jack Coulter <email address hidden>:
> Unfortunately, we're past the feature freeze for Hardy, but it's looking
> good for Hardy+1.
>
> --
> [needs-packaging] urbanterror
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/179646
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

Hmm, it may be possible then, its on revu, but there are still a few issues with both the data and main packages that need to be addressed. (the game engine requires a custom embedded libjpeg62, and attempts to compile it against Ubuntu's libjpeg62 results in graphical corruption, also the license of the QVM (zpak000.pk3) included in the urbanterror-data package is under question of whether it can be included due to its license (currently the single file under a non-free license is downloaded after the user accepts its EULA))

I need a number of MOTUs to either advocate the use of the games embedded libjpeg62, or someone with much more packaging/C skill than I needs to patch it to work with the system library.

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

I can confirm I have missed the feature freeze, I'm going to target Debian instead, as it should automatically be included in Intrepid. I don't know if this bug needs to be closed now, I'll leave it open for now.

[Daniel LaGesse (dlagesse1992)]

Is there any more progress on this? I run Ubuntu, and would like to know how to fix the graphics/text problems in game. This is due to libjpeg62 then? Which version should I install to get it to work?

Thanks, and good luck!

Daniel

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do for now as upstream has been found to be violating the GPL (ioquake3 engine which is GPL, depends on QVM which is under an incompatible license, the quake 3 SDK EULA). So basically until upstream resolves this, there is no way the package will be accepted into either Ubuntu or Debian. I have however hosted it in my PPA for now if you wish to have a way to install it via apt. The lines for /etc/apt/sources.list are as follows:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jscinoz/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/jscinoz/ubuntu hardy main

Hope that helps,
Jack Coulter

[Pierre Vorhagen (pvr)]

Hi, very good project!

I just wanted to point out that somebody else seems to have done some good work here also: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=747587
Maybe think about merging these two projects?

In all cases, my question is; can I add your PPA to the officiel french ubuntu documentation, in the urban terror page? So that people can add it and then install urbanterror via apt-get, as it is a cleaner way than downloading the zip filein my opinion...
If not, maybe host it on another repository that wouldlike to host this?

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

Pierre, Feel free to mention it wherever you want, Please be aware that if/when UrbanTerror makes it into the official repository, I'll be removing it from my PPA.

As to the other package attempt, I'll talk to that guy about it, but it should be unnecessary as my package is complete, just awaiting confirmation on some issues regarding the license and file size.

Regards,
Jack Coulter

[Kai Mast (kai-mast)]

We are in jaunty now and it still isn't in the repositories.

Any progress?

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

Package exists and is on GetDeb, I tried submitting it to Debian but it was rejected as they believed the arch-all 700mb urbanterror-data package is too big for their archive, I assume that the response would be the same here, unless I am mistaken?

[Cory Walker (lala32)]

I definitely agree. This is a very developed and fun game. I know a lot of people who choose not to switch to Ubuntu because of the lack of good FPS's. I know there are good games like nexiuz and such, but most people prefer realistic FPS games like Urban Terror. I don't think the file size matters compared to how many people will switch to Ubuntu.

[Johan Linde (johanlinde-deactivatedaccount)]

Please note that Urban Terror does NOT violate the GPL since they have licensed ioQuake under the Quake 3 SDK license, which doesn't require them to distribute source code. So that shouldn't be an issue. I had this conversation with people related to Urban Terror a couple of years ago.

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

Johan Linde, can you provide a source for this claim? Also I believe the licensing issue was resolved regardless. Code for Quake 3 mods is actually run in a virtual machine, called the QVM, and in the case of UrbanTerror it is this code that is non-free (but entirely distributable). The engine itself is a slightly modified ioQuake3, and the source is fully available as the GPL requires, and it's my belief that non-free code run in a GPL virtual machine, does not trigger the linking cause of the GPL (Disclaimer: IANAL). Do note however, that the lead developer of UrbanTerror has intentions to GPL the actual game code eventually.

I was attempting to get this included upstream, and as I said, the licensing issues were resolved, the current blocker however is the size of the package. It was determined that such a large data package (700MB) can not be included in the main repositories, and as a result Debian was setting up a new data.debian.org archive which is for large, architecture-independent data packages (game data, scientific data, etc). I'm not sure if an equivalent thing is being set up for Ubuntu, or if such a large package is suitable for the main Ubuntu repository.

Ideally, I'd prefer for this to be packaged upstream, and just trickle down back to Ubuntu, to ensure widest exposure. However, if it is preferable for this package to be submitted directly to Ubuntu, then I need to receive word on the issue of size.

[SEWilco (scot-wilcoxon)]

It sounds as if Debian is working on making the package available. Maybe the Debian status here should be something other than "New".

[travisman1994 (travisman1994)]

i want this in lucid!

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

Hi I'm sorry, but I am unable to continue working on this package, I no longer use Ubuntu or any Debian-like distro. I'll change the status back to New until someone else can pick this up.

[Daniel Doña Álvarez (daniel-dona)]

I'm working on this. I think we can make 2 separate packages, one for the executable client (or server) and another one forn the .pk3 files.

[Kai Mast (kai-mast)]

Why don't we just take the packages from playdeb.net?

[Daniel Doña Álvarez (daniel-dona)]

Because we must provide the source code, not just the .deb files.

This is a preview, there is 2 packages, 1 with the .pk3 (maps, textures...) which is about 1GB and another one with the specific executable (i386 or amd64).

Packages are right now:

urban-terror (maybe it must be renamed to urban-terror-client) [Executable file]
urban-terror-data [.pk3 files]

TODO:

urban-terror-server
urban-terror-extra-maps [unofficial maps made by the community]
create MAN pages
create help pages for GNOME
create "dialog" to inform about the EULA <- I'm not sure if this is necessary

[Kai Mast (kai-mast)]

Any progress on this?

[Jack Coulter (jscinoz)]

Unfortunately no. I tried submitting the package upstream to Debian a while
ago, however it couldn't be included due to licensing concerns.

I'm not sure where things are at currently, I no longer play this game, nor
use a Debian or Ubuntu derived distro. If someone else wants to take over,
feel free.

Regards,
Jack

Excerpts from Kai Mast's message of Sat Mar 10 14:52:22 UTC 2012:
> Any progress on this?
>

[James Stewart Miller (jamesstewartmiller)]

Is there any progress on this?

the whole source code is available on GitHub for the game including a fork.

https://github.com/FrozenSand/UrbanTerror42 - source code posted by Barbatos of frozen sand

https://github.com/anthonynguyen/ioq3-for-UrbanTerror-4 a fork.