Hi!
Welcome to Civil. This document explains some of the windows centric issues to get Civil running. The first thing to do is insure you have Python and Pygame installed and running. See the Pygame website for instructions on how to do this: http://www.pygame.org
When that's done you'll need to setup an environment variable which tells the system where you'd like Civil to place it's scenarios and save games.
Under UNIX this would normally be your HOME directory, but as Windows doesn't provide you with such a beast [as standard] you'll have to choose a location that you'd like to use.
To setup the environment variable under NT4:
- Right click on the "My Computer" icon.
- Select "Properties"
- Select "Environment Variables"
A window should appear, and at the bottom are some entry boxes.
Type "HOME" (no quotes) into the variable name entry, and the location of your home directory (or where you'd like civil to store it's bits) in the "Value" entry.
Click 'OK', 'Apply' and close the window.
Under Windows 2000, right click on the "My Computer" icon and select "Properties". Click the "Advanced" tab at the right. Then select "Environment Variables".
A window will appear that will allow you to enter "System Variables", and "User Variables". Civil needs the HOME to be set as a "User Variable", so click 'NEW', enter "HOME" (no quotes) into the "Variable Name" field and the directory you wish to have Civil store it's files in, into the "Variable Value" field.
Click 'Ok', 'Ok' and 'Ok' to close the three windows.
You should now be able to run civil.
If you've done this correctly, Civil should run, however, in some instances Civil gets confused, and will create it's diretory incorrectly. Say you choose the value "c:\temp" as your HOME, Civil may create the directory "c:\temp.civil" -- this is a known problem and relates to changes in operation between some Microsoft Operating Systems. We'll fix this in a later release. :-)
A temporay work around is to create the folder ".civil" in your home directory, and copy the contents of the wrongly created .civil to this new folder. Civil should work after that.
If you get really stuck, email the Civil developers and we'll do our best to help you.