Installation

Welcome to the Getting Started guide!

This guide explains how to install the Aetherion game engine on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS by manually building required system dependencies, OpenVDB, FlatBuffers, and setting up the Python environment.

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

The examples below target Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Other distributions may require adjustments to package names or paths. All commands are intended to be run from the terminal.

Ensure you have Python 3.12 available:

python3 --version

Installing Available System Dependencies

Installing Aetherion Game Engine system dependencies

Install system build tools + dev‐libs:

sudo apt-get update \
   && sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
      wget \
      bzip2 \
      ca-certificates \
      git \
      build-essential \
      cmake \
      ninja-build \
      pkg-config \
      libeigen3-dev \
      libtbb-dev \
      libsdl2-dev \
      libsdl2-image-dev \
      libsdl2-ttf-dev \
      libmsgpack-dev \
      libmsgpack-cxx-dev \
      liblmdb-dev \
      libspdlog-dev \
      libboost-iostreams-dev \
      libboost-all-dev \
      zlib1g-dev \
      libblosc-dev

Flatbuffers

Build and installing flatbuffers:

FLATBUFFERS_VERSION=24.3.25 && \
git clone --depth 1 -b "v${FLATBUFFERS_VERSION}" https://github.com/google/flatbuffers.git /tmp/flatbuffers && \
mkdir -p /tmp/flatbuffers/build && \
cd /tmp/flatbuffers/build && \
cmake \
   -DFLATBUFFERS_BUILD_TESTS=OFF \
   -DFLATBUFFERS_BUILD_CPP17=ON \
   -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
   -DFLATBUFFERS_ENABLE_PCH=ON \
   -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local \
   -DCMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR=lib \
   .. && \
make -j"$(nproc)" && \
sudo make install && \
rm -rf /tmp/flatbuffers

Installing OpenVDB v11.0

1. Installing pre compiled OpenVDB v11.0

Download and install pre compiled OpenVDB v11.0:

curl -sSL https://arthurmoreno.github.io/aetherion-docs/wheel-html-index/system-libs/openvdb-11-0-1-1_amd64.deb -o /tmp/openvdb.deb \
   && sudo dpkg -i /tmp/openvdb.deb && sudo apt-get install -f -y && rm /tmp/openvdb.deb

2. Compiling and Installing OpenVDB v11.0

Install system dependencies for OpenVDB v11.0:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
      ca-certificates \
      build-essential \
      cmake \
      ninja-build \
      git \
      pkg-config \
      zlib1g-dev \
      libboost-iostreams-dev \
      libtbb-dev \
      libblosc-dev

Clone & build and install OpenVDB v11.0:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openvdb.git /tmp/openvdb \
   && cd /tmp/openvdb \
   && git fetch origin --tags && git checkout v11.0.0 \
   && mkdir /tmp/openvdb/build \
   && cd /tmp/openvdb/build \
   && cmake .. \
   && make -j4 && make install

Clone & build and install OpenVDB v11.0:

curl -sSL https://arthurmoreno.github.io/aetherion-docs/wheel-html-index/system-libs/openvdb-11-0-1-1_amd64.deb -o /tmp/openvdb.deb \
   && sudo dpkg -i /tmp/openvdb.deb && sudo apt-get install -f -y && rm /tmp/openvdb.deb

Installing Aetherion Game Engine system dependencies

Install system build tools + dev‐libs:

sudo apt-get update \
   && sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
      wget \
      bzip2 \
      ca-certificates \
      git \
      build-essential \
      cmake \
      ninja-build \
      pkg-config \
      libeigen3-dev \
      libtbb-dev \
      libsdl2-dev \
      libsdl2-image-dev \
      libsdl2-ttf-dev \
      libmsgpack-dev \
      libmsgpack-cxx-dev \
      liblmdb-dev \
      libspdlog-dev \
      libboost-iostreams-dev \
      libboost-all-dev \
      zlib1g-dev \
      libblosc-dev

Build and installing flatbuffers:

FLATBUFFERS_VERSION=24.3.25 && \
git clone --depth 1 -b "v${FLATBUFFERS_VERSION}" https://github.com/google/flatbuffers.git /tmp/flatbuffers && \
mkdir -p /tmp/flatbuffers/build && \
cd /tmp/flatbuffers/build && \
cmake \
   -DFLATBUFFERS_BUILD_TESTS=OFF \
   -DFLATBUFFERS_BUILD_CPP17=ON \
   -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
   -DFLATBUFFERS_ENABLE_PCH=ON \
   -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local \
   -DCMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR=lib \
   .. && \
make -j"$(nproc)" && \
sudo make install && \
rm -rf /tmp/flatbuffers

Installing miniconda on Ubuntu. (Also see the official miniconda install tutorial)

CONDA_DIR=/opt/conda && \
wget --quiet https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh -O /tmp/miniconda.sh && \
bash /tmp/miniconda.sh -b -p "${CONDA_DIR}" && \
rm /tmp/miniconda.sh && \
"${CONDA_DIR}/bin/conda" config --set always_yes yes --set changeps1 no && \
"${CONDA_DIR}/bin/conda" config --set channel_priority strict && \
"${CONDA_DIR}/bin/conda" update -q conda

Creating a conda environment

To create a conda environment for the project, use the following command:

conda create --name aetherion-312 python=3.12

conda activate aetherion-312

Installing the game engine python package

The –index-url option instructs pip to use our custom Aetherion wheel index on GitHub Pages so that you get pre-built binary packages optimized for your platform, avoiding long build times and compilation errors. To install the game engine python package, use the following command:

pip install --index-url https://arthurmoreno.github.io/aetherion-docs/wheel-html-index/ aetherion