"If you can," being the unfortunately relevant portion of that... compiling is one of those computer tricks I've yet to pick up. Same reason coding itself tends to be a brick wall to me; I go to a tutorial (or several different ones, all with the same freaking problem.) of some sort, people start spouting gibberish -- read, terminology specific to the field -- at me, it takes upwards a few hours and massive backtracking1 to even start to figure out what the blazes I need to do to get the thing to function. I'm a very patient person... but not that patient. There miiight be a smidgen of bitterness there.
Guess I can give it try number N+(however many it's been now). Maybe I'll get lucky with someone actually capable of explaining how the process works rather than assuming the reader knows half of it, or an actually simple and non-coder usable complier, or something.
Though... would simply replacing the series folder work?
EDIT: Oh hey, got the SDL version to compile, apparently. Was as simple as opening the gearhead.pas with the mentioned ppc386... thing. Why doesn't anyone just say that, damnit? Seriously, "right-click on 'file-X', 'open with' 'file-Y'"? Why is that so hard for people to mention? I mean, it obviously won't work in every situation, I guess, but that's a helluva a lot easier to parse for someone with no interest in learning a language.
Now to figure out how to get the ASCII version to function. Seem to have got that, too, though I had to go into the fp.exe2 and muck around for a bit. RCSing is generating "ERROR: Who do they work for? tired to grab empty element -1 from Core Story." I'll see if it works anyway... Few steps after loading I get an e-mail progressing the content. Huzzah! Though it might be a little screwy; I've apparently been hired by two different people to either investigate two different fleets over Emerald, or investigate the same one. Maybe I'll get paid twice...
1Vague example: You must <gibberish1> then <gibberish2>. Definition of gibberish one is <gibberish3>, whose definition is <gibberish4>. Fifteen cursives backwards, I finally find something in plain english defining what the hell <gibberish18> meant, and can -- assuming one of the intervening gibberishes didn't have something like gibbersh12a^3 in the definition -- start working my way back forward. Both the teacher's child and philosopher in me want to beat them in the head with a stick, shouting things about starting from the actual basics -- plain language definitions and concepts -- not the presumed basics (gibberishN^5). There's supposedly tutorials out that there do it, but I've yet to find one where I didn't need three different dictionaries and a high-powered searchlight to even start to make progress on.
2 Oh wow, UI. I am transported back to my childhood in the early nineties. I remember installing Doom with that general interface scheme.
EDIT2: Oh, and thanks for the reply, of course.
EDIT3: Yeah, the double fleet thing? Basically let me completely skip one episode; went from ep 2 to ep 4 in two conversations. Obviously I scummed backwards to, yanno', not do that, but there's going to be this one dude in Emerald sitting there with a free 'pass one episode' card for a while, I guess. I wonder what'll happen if I come back and talk to him after the endgame...
