Glest - Multi-platform Multi-player 3D RTS

I was trolling through some random blog (I forget who, else I would give credit) and came across a link to Glest
which purported to be a multi-platform, multi-player RTS.

We all need distractions at times and amusements, so I figured I would give it a shot. The first attempt at compiling it from the soureforge provided zip files failed miserably. Small issues like having to convert conf files with dos2unix, satisfying dependencies, etc.. so I chose the alternate route and grabbed the svn provided trunk. I still needed to fuss around a bit, automake needed to be version 1.7 (Ubuntu 7.10) and install dev portions of certain libraries.

This was considerably easier, it compiled per the instructions and loaded up just fine (after I set it to windowed mode). There are still some key issues with the linux variant, the "Start Game" and "Join Game" options don't work - they issue errors if you are watching your terminal. The good thing was you can play the multitude of AI scenarios which are provided.

Overall, it seems like a good distraction, although I could definitely see some need for improvements. Units attacking, auto-actions, etc but overall if development continues it will be an awesome game.

An update, thankfully someone on the forums (hailstorm) pointed me to this site which offers a fix for the "Start Game" option. You can find the information at http://hailstone3.truefreehost.com/?tag=compile