Question: What is tar.gz and how do I open it?
Answer: tar.gz means, it's a gzipped tarball, thus an archive. Use, e.g., tar -xzf archive.tar.gz to extract archive.tar.gz.

Question: How do I compile the source code?
Answer: The INSTALL file (found at top level of source code archive) provides basic information and the README (same location) explains special options and install steps.

Question: What is SDL?
Answer: It's the great Simple DirectMedia Layer (http://libsdl.org).

Question: And I guess SDL_mixer is...
Answer: Yes! A mixing tool based on SDL. These two libraries are all you need to compile an LGame (Okay, some libraries like libmath, libpng and libz are also required but any distro should install them by default).

Question: You're trying to say...
Answer: SDL is required by ALL games and SDL_mixer is recommended for LGeneral, LBreakout2 and LTris. If you don't get SDL_mixer the games will run but obviously without sound. For win32 you'll need SDL.dll and SDL_mixer.dll (http://libsdl.org) copied to your windows directory.

Question: I have both libraries installed but the configure script can't find 'sdl-config'?
Answer: The development packages are required since you want to compile the source instead of just running binaries. Usually these are not installed by default. So check your distro's packages and get the development stuff or compile and install SDL and friends directly from source (http://libsdl.org).

Question: I updated both libraries but they cannot be found?
Answer: If you installed the latest source you must run 'ldconfig' to apply the changes to your system. You also need to delete the 'config.cache' file.

Question: Okay, 'sdl-config' is found but it bails out with strange errors?
Answer: Then SDL is making some trouble so check its FAQ at http://libsdl.org.

Question: I'm running RedHat 8.0 beta and I installed everything from SDL to SDL_mixer devel but when configure checks for SDL_mixer it utterly fails?
Answer: One of the patches for libsmpeg is corrupted in RH 8.0b so if you downgrade libsmpeg to 7.3's compiling should work again.

Question: Fullscreen isn't fullscreen!
Answer: I once had that problem, too and it's an X-SDL, SDL-X problem. I solved it by updating my distro but maybe it's also okay to check if you have 640x480 resolution available in your Xconfig.

Question: Sound comes with some delay?
Answer: Since 2.4 there is a hidden option in the config file called audio_buffer_size which has a default value of 512. The location of the config file is either ~/.lgames/lbreakout2.conf (Linux) or <INSTALLPATH>\lgames\lbreakout2.conf (Win32). I'm running a K6II-450 and if your computer is faster increase this value (1024) and if it's slower decrease it (256).

Question: Sound is delayed and I used GCC 3.4 to compile the game.
Answer: Get the patch from Gentoo and recompile SDL 1.2.7 (without the patch it won't compile). This should fix the problem. (Thanks to Eddie Dulaney)

Question: I have LGeneral, the Panzer General data and lgc-pg but the converter doesn't work?
Answer: The default installation path is /usr/local/share/games/lgeneral but some distros change the path (ASP Linux is known to do so) in their packages which results in a problem when running 'lgc-pg'. So either get the LGeneral stuff completely from source (it doesn't compile long) or check the installation path when using an LGeneral binary package.

Question: I tried to play a recent version of LBreakout2 in windowed mode in Windows but the mouse won't move.
Answer: In the game directory open lgames\lbreakout2.conf with an text editor and set the option rel_motion from 1 to 0.

If you encounter a different problem that should be listed here contact me.