OGRE 1.x C++ starter template for easy prototyping on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with Scons build system. There are just three easy steps setup, clone and build & run and you are ready to start prototyping.

next posts in OGRE miniseries: OGRE, using camera

tip: if you are not yet familiar with SCons watch out scons-starter tutorial

1. setup

Normally the easiest way to start with OGRE is from official package (libogre-1.12-dev), but I’ve found that it is broken in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (user input is not working at all). Luckily for us the solution is dead simple. We are going to build the library by are own!

  • install dependencies with
sudo apt install libxaw7-dev libsdl2-dev libgles2-mesa-dev libxt-dev libzzip-dev libfreetype-dev scons g++ pkg-config git cmake

command.

tip: you can skip libgles2-mesa-dev package if you do not need OpenGL ES2/3 renderer support

git clone https://github.com/OGRECave/ogre.git

command

  • checkout newest 1.x version with
cd ogre
git checkout -b v1.12.9 v1.12.9

currently the newest available 1.x version is 1.12.9

commands.

  • configure OGRE with
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DOGRE_BUILD_RENDERSYSTEM_GLES2=TRUE -DOGRE_BUILD_PLUGIN_ASSIMP=FALSE  ..

tip: omit -DOGRE_BUILD_RENDERSYSTEM_GLES2=TRUE in case you do not need OpenGL ES2/3 renderer support

note: in case you have installed libassimp-dev package, building OGRE will fail with dependency issues (No rule to make target 'Dependencies/lib/IrrXML.lib', needed by 'lib/Codec_Assimp.so.1.12.9'), that is why -DOGRE_BUILD_PLUGIN_ASSIMP=FALSE configuration option used

  • build OGRE with
make -j4

command.

  • install OGRE with
sudo make install

command.

note: the library is installed in /usr/local directory

  • configure dynamic linker run-time bindings with
sudo ldconfig

command, otherwise system can’t see newly installed libraries and you will end up with cannot open shared object file … complains after you try run OGRE application.

  • create link for libzzip.so.13 which is installed as libzzip-0.so.13 in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with
cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
sudo ln -s libzzip-0.so.13 libzzip.so.13

commands.

tip: optionally you can also install OGRE documentation as ogre-1.12-doc and tools as ogre-1.12-tools packages

2. clone

Clone starter project repository with

git clone https://github.com/sansajn/ogre-linux-starter.git

command and delete ogre-linux-starter/.git directory after cloning finished.

3. build & run

To start a build process go to ogre-linux-starter and run scons with

cd ogre-linux-starter
scons

commands.

use -jN option to speed up whole build process like scons -j4 and scons -c for cleaning the project directory or scons --help for further help

Scons will create ./hello as a result. So

./hello

will run the sample app. In my case I can now see

image

You are done, feel free to modify …

tip: there is great jump-in tutorial for OGRE there