Difference between revisions of "Installation Instructions"

Revision as of 01:39, 19 November 2007

Installing Darwinbots is usually quite easy. Occassionally, the programmers will make a mess of things, making new installations more difficult.

There is a step by step guide for installation here

New Installations

For a completely new installation it is necessary to download version 2.1 and run the setup file before upgrading to later versions.
This will set up all of the necessary directories and install the program. It will also add a number of activeX files to the Windows\system32 directory.

The download is available at the current Downloads or you can also try the old FTP.

Upgrading

The Darwinbots community is quite active, and major releases are made public generally every month. Each new version contains substantial improvements. Don't cheat your Darwinbots experience! Be sure to have the latest version installed.

Upgrading Darwinbots is quite easy, as all you need is the new sysvars file and executable. New patches are listed on the FTP and Wiki FTP in chronological order, so newer releases are generally listed last for a section. Each release comes with a code archive and patch, downloadable seperately.

Newer releases are, obviously, of higher numbers. Thus 2.36 comes after 2.35 but before 2.4.

Note that the old FTP is no longer updated.

After downloading the zip of the new version, unzip it to your Darwinbots folder. (typically C:\Program Files\DarwinBotsII) Yes, you must do this manually. The developers are far too busy with real programming to figure out how to implement an autopatcher.

When you unzip your new version of DarwinBots, "sysvars2.21.txt" will automatically overwrite the existing version if you have one. This is okay since the sysvars files are backward compatible.

Final Note

New versions almost always have bugs. The first week or so after a new release is filled with the programmers releasing minor updates almost daily. These updates are noted by the suffix numbers of the version. Thus, 2.37.0 was the initial release of 2.37 2.37.4 is the 4th bug fix version released.

We know it's a pain to download a new patch almost every day. But it's only through community bug testing that the bugs can be isolated at all.

Anything with the same first 3 digits (that is, all versions of 2.XX) have the same features and differ only in minor bug fixing.

Vista problems

If you have problems running under Vista (missing COMDLG32.OCX), you'll need to run the program as an administrator.

Windows 95 Potential Compatibility Warning

A user running Windows 95 reports that installing Darwinbots will overwrite an older version of comdlg32.dll with a newer and Windows 95 incompatible version. If you experience this problem (frequently receive the error <<Can't find comdlg32.dll>> or <<comdlg32.dll linked to missing export shell32.dll>> when you run just about any program) please report them in the forum for proper debugging.

Installing DarwinBots under Linux

DarwinBots can run under Linux using the wine Windows emulator, although the simulation speed may be slower and bugs and crashes may happen. Following these steps will usually make it work:

• Install the Wine package.
• Get the libraries MSVBVM60.dll, scrrun.dll and wininet.dll from reliable sources. If DB crashes when you try to run it, you'll problably need a few more dlls.
• Place those files at the folder /(username)/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32.
• Open a terminal window and go to the system32 folder.
• Write "wine regsrv32 scrrun.dll". This will register the dll in the Wine Windows registry.
• Now, do "winecfg", select "wininet" at Libraries and specify it to be run first as native.
• Get the DB installer, place the setup.exe file somewhere in the drive_c folder.
• Go to that folder and type wine setup.exe. This will install the old DB version and some needed files. Then you can drop the newer executables and run them with wine. If you aren't comfortable using the terminal, you can load a wine file explorer running "winefile". You can also configure how wine emulates Windows for the DB executables with "winecfg", although the Windows 2000 default setting seems to work well.

If you are on a Gnome desktop, avoid using Gedit to edit the code of your robots, as it will enter incompatible line breaks.

--MacadamiaNuts 17:17, 10 November 2007 (MST) Return to Main Page