README

Introduction
------------
GemRB (Game Engine Made with preRendered Background) is a "port"
(actually a new implementation) of the original Infinity Engine (the one
of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, ...) to
Linux/Unix, MacOS X and Windows with some enhancements. Would you like to
create a game like Baldur's Gate?

It means that you either need some of the original game's data
somewhere on your harddisk, or you can try to use the data from the
Dragonlance Total Conversion project - see the link below.

The original game data has to be installed on a windows
partition and mounted or copied to your (Linux/Unix) filesystem, installed
with WINE or extracted manually from the CDs using the tool `unshield'.

What little documentation exists is mostly in gemrb/docs/en/ and
subdirectories, the gemrb.6 man page, this file and the website.

Supported platforms
-------------------
Supported (i.e. we got reports about successfully running GemRB) systems:
Linux x86, x86-64, ppc
FreeBSD x86
MS Windows
various Macintosh systems (even pre x86) also should work ...
some smart phones (Symbian, Android, other Linux-based, Ios)
some consoles (OpenPandora, Dingoo)
some exotic OSes (ReactOS, SyllableOS, Haiku, AmigaOS)

g++ 4.3 is known to miscompile gemrb.

Requirements
------------
See the INSTALL file.

Contacts
--------
Our homepage:
http://gemrb.org

Our project at sourceforge.net:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gemrb

New GemRB forum (users):
http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showforum=91

IRC channel:
The best way to talk with us is by joining the #GemRB channel
on the FreeNode IRC network. There's somebody to talk with most of
the time.


Useful links
------------
IESDP, documentation for the Infinity Engine file formats and more:
http://iesdp.gibberlings3.net/

Near Infinity, Java viewer and editor for data files of the original games:
http://www.idi.ntnu.no/~joh/ni/index.html

DLTCEP, MS Windows viewer and editor for data files of the original games:
http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showforum=137

Unshield, extractor for .CAB files created by InstallShield
http://synce.sourceforge.net/synce/unshield.php

Valgrind, a powerful developer tool to fix programmer errors (leaks, buffer overflows and all the like that happen)
http://valgrind.org/

SDL, Simple Directmedia Layer, the graphical library used for GemRB
http://www.libsdl.org/index.php

OpenAL, Cross-Platform 3D audio libraries, the sound library used for GemRB
http://openal.org/

WINE, Open Source implementation of the Windows API, useful for installing the games
http://www.winehq.org