And now I've taken a big step backward.
I solved the "silhouette" problem yesterday by turning off GLSL shaders. With that fixed, I was able to start playing the game. However, a couple of turns into my first mission, I encountered a critical problem -- I couldn't finish the round. Clicking the Finish Round button and typing "e" did nothing. Searching this forum, I found only one mention of this bug:
http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4904.0It occurred to me that if I'm going to be encountering bugs like that one, I should probably be using the latest stable version of the game instead of the development version. So, I did some research and learned how to get version 2.3. I compiled it and installed it. When I run the game, however, it crashes. The splash screen appears for about 4 seconds, then shuts down. This happens in Safe Mode as well. If anyone has any suggestions about how to debug this, please let me know.
TC i might know why you have sound or graphic problems.
1) Pls check steps how to install Pulseaudio (a simple google search will bring it up). You will need more help after setting it up bcs it does not work by default and you have to configure some things that someone new to linux will not know how to handle unless he is a very careful researcher-reader on how-to 's
2) Install latest graphic drivers either Nvidia or ATI. Even ubuntu's repository default current nvidia binaries have issues and it took me 3 hours to realise that on my desktop build until i re-installed properly over the ubuntu's repository binaries (including dev files) the latest from nvidia.com. After that everything runs smooth now, including ufoai.
Thanks, Tzzimy, for the advice. I'm dreading the prospect of messing with my audio or graphic drivers, but I know I'll probably have to do so eventually. I'll look you up on IRC if I need help.
I think that the best solution right now for Ubuntu users that do not want/do not know how to compile the game is to install wine (is in the repositories) and then download and install the windows version.
That's a good suggestion, Edsepulv. I may try it. However, part of my goal is to become proficient with Linux, so I'm going to keep working on getting the Ubuntu version to work.
-TC