In order to make your own Elements, you will need to download and build the MFM software from source. It is kept on a git repo at Github.

Cloning the repo from Github seems relatively straight forward, but there are some dependencies that need to be installed in order to get the source to build. Here is a full tutorial describing how to build the MFM software from the source.

Note: This tutorial is performed on Ubuntu 14.04 . Your installation procedure may vary.

First, you will need to install git. This can be done with a package manager, such as apt-get:

sudo apt-get install git

You will need g++, a c++ compiler, in order to build the software. Simply use your package manager to download it:

sudo apt-get install g++

Next, you will need to clone the codebase to your computer. To do this, browse to the folder which you would like to contain the repo and clone:

git clone https://github.com/DaveAckley/MFM

The MFM software uses SDL to render to a window, play audio, and render fonts.

The MFM software needs SDL version 1.2 . Do not install SDL 2.0!

libsdl1.2-dev is the package for the main SDL system.

libsdl-image1.2-dev is the package for translating image types other than bitmaps.

libsdl-mixer1.2-dev is the package for playing audio.

libsdl-ttf2.0-dev is the package for rendering TTF fonts. This is an SDL 1.2 package.

You will need to install the following packages with your package manager:

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev
sudo apt-get install libsdl-image1.2-dev
sudo apt-get install libsdl-mixer1.2-dev
sudo apt-get install libsdl-ttf2.0-dev

Now that you have installed all of the dependencies that you need, you can build the MFM software. Simply navigate to the main folder and type:

make

This should build the software as long as the repo does not contain any errors. To run the software, the executable is located in the bin folder. Type:

bin/mfms

to run the simulator.

If you have installed MFM, you are now ready to install ULAM. This is a more powerful language to develop elements in the MFM environment. If you don't have MFM, you need to go back and have MFM installed first.

You will need to clone the code from github. Git will create a new folder of ULAM, so you don't need to make a new directory.

git clone https://github.com/elenasa/ULAM.wiki.git

After the clone is done, a new directory is created: /home/user/ULAM. The 'user' is your account name.

To install ULAM compiler, you need to told ULAM where to find MFM. Touch a configuration file Makefile.local.mk in the /home/user/ULAM/ulam1/ directory. Then put the following code into this file:

#Local configuration
MFM_ROOT_DIR := /home/user/MFM
#Rebuild of local configuration(This file) changes
ALLDEP +=$(ROOT_DIR)/Makefile.local.mk

Now you can install the ULAM compiler. Go to the /home/user/ULAM/ulam1/. Type the make command.

make

If it throws out errors, there may be some dependencies lacked that caused these errors. Open the Synaptic Package Manager. Make sure you have installed libcapture-tiny-perl. Once you get all the packages installed, Make again. Welcome to ULAM.