Okay, so, “ziqiao starskiff haven”. Sounds like a weird sci-fi movie title, right? Well, it’s actually the name of a little project I messed around with today. Basically, I wanted to see if I could get this “StarSkiff” thing—it’s kind of like a game engine, I guess—running on my machine. I saw some folks online talking about it, and, you know, I got curious.
First, I had to find the darn thing. I did some searching and finally found the StarSkiff Haven GitHub repository. Seemed like the official place, so I went ahead and cloned it to my computer. You know, the usual git clone stuff. It took a little while because my internet’s been acting up lately. I swear, I spend half my life waiting for things to download.
Getting Started
Once I had the files, I opened up the folder and… yeah, I was a little lost. There were a bunch of files and folders, and I wasn’t totally sure where to start. Usually, there’s a README file that tells you what to do, but this one was kind of… sparse. It mentioned something about needing “Zig,” which I’d never even heard of before.
So, more searching. Turns out, Zig is this new-ish programming language. I had to go to their website and download the compiler. They had instructions for different operating systems, so I followed the ones for mine (Windows, of course – what kind of a maniac do you think I am?! ). Installing it was pretty straightforward. Just added the Zig folder to my PATH environment variable. You know, the usual techy stuff. No biggie.
The Build Process
With Zig installed, I went back to the StarSkiff Haven folder and tried running the build command the README mentioned: zig build run. I crossed my fingers, hoping it would just… work. And… surprise, surprise, it didn’t! A bunch of errors popped up on the screen. Something about missing dependencies. Classic.
I spent a good hour or two digging through the code and trying to figure out what was going on. Finally, I found some clues in the file. It looked like I needed to install some extra libraries. I’m not gonna lie, I’m still not 100% sure what all these libraries do, but I followed the instructions and installed them anyway. It was a bit of a trial-and-error process, to be honest.
Success (Kind Of)
After jumping through all those hoops, I tried the zig build run command again. And this time… it actually worked! I mean, a window popped up, and I saw… something. It wasn’t exactly a game, more like a basic 3D scene with some shapes moving around. But hey, it was something! I felt a little jolt of that “I made this work!” excitement. You know the feeling, right?
- Clone the repository.
- Install Zig.
- Figure out the dependencies (the hardest part!).
- Run
zig build run. - Celebrate (even if it’s just a little).
So, yeah, that was my day with “ziqiao starskiff haven”. It wasn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever done, but I learned a few things. I learned about Zig, I learned a little bit about how game engines (maybe?) work, and I learned that I’m still pretty good at figuring things out, even when the instructions are… less than clear. It was a good, solid day of tinkering. Now, to decide what else to break… I mean, improve. 
