-------- THE STEEM ENGINE --------
STE emulator for X by Anthony and Russell Hayward
This is the X version of Steem, also known as XSteem. It is a port of Steem, the Win32 Atari ST emulator, to GNU/Linux systems, which follows the Windows version pretty closely.
---- DISTRIBUTION ----
Steem is freeware, but not open-source.
At the moment we are distributing XSteem as pre-compiled binaries for use on 486-compatible Linux systems. We hope to make Steem open-source in the not too distant future.
---- INSTALLATION ----
This should be super-simple right now. Just make a folder somewhere for Steem to live in and decompact the tarball to there. Now just run the file "steem" from this directory and it should work.
Steem is conservative as far as directories go, it just decompacts to a folder and works there. You should always run Steem from its directory so it can find its config file.
If you want to be able to run Steem by typing "steem" into any terminal, we suggest you put a shell script called "steem" in /usr/bin/ (or any standard path in the PATH variable) containing something like:
#!/bin/bash
/[Steem's directory]/steem
Don't forget to make the script executable.
---- DOCUMENTATION ----
Most of the Win32 docs still apply to XSteem. You can read them by clicking on the "i" icon in Steem's window, then on "Win32 Readme". Some of it hasn't been put in yet, and some of the dialogs are a bit different, but you should be able to work it out. There are a few differences for the X version.
.Hard drives
Note that the hard drive emulation is a bit more strict
in XSteem than Win32 Steem. You can only see files
with 8.3 filenames. If you want to put stuff on the
mounted drives via the OS, make sure its filename is
short enough. If you have any problems check file
permissions, sometimes people have found they don't
have read access to the files they are trying to use.
.Joysticks
In the Joysticks dialog there is a section to allow you
to configure PC joysticks. Hopefully Steem should support
all Linux joystick driver versions, let us know if you
have one we have missed. When you open your joystick
you'll see controls appear for each axis. This allows you
to set the range of movement and also the deadzone. You may
want to make the deadzone rather large for an analog stick
in Steem as it works digitally with all input (if it is the
centre then it is off, otherwise it is on). If you have the
deadzone too small then even a slight movement of the stick
will equal a button press or direction change. Above each
axis calibration bar you will see a little arrow showing
the current position of the stick. With older driver
versions you will have to set the axis range, this
indicates how many different positions the stick can
move to, decrease it until all movements of either axis
fit inside the width of the axis calibration bar, but
still give a good range of movement.
To choose a PC joystick input just click on an input picker (the white boxes with text in the middle in the Joysticks and Shortcuts dialog) and press the direction/button you want to use.
.Sound
If sound is a bit duff try running Steem as root, that
might improve things.
.Command line
To see a list of command line switches that apply to the
X version run steem from a terminal with the command line
HELP.
---- DEBUG BUILD ----
Maybe one day we will port the debug build to X but it is such a big job it won't be for a while. In the meantime the best thing if you want to do some debugging is to run the Windows debug build under WINE, that works as long as you use the command-line "noints" when starting Steem. You may also want to add "nodd nods" to avoid DirectX. Try not to be too ambitious when using Steem under WINE. The best way to debug something is to use XSteem to get to the problem position and then save a memory snapshot. Now run the debug build, load the memory snapshot and try to work out what is wrong.
That's it, we hope you enjoy using Steem.
http://steem.atari.org/
steem@gmx.net