Downloading, Installing and Configuring

Downloading

Timewarp runs on Windows, Linux, BeOS, and DOS. Normally, once the files are downloaded, it is necessary to compile the project as well. This situation may be made easier in the future, please be patient.

You can get the latest official release from:

You may instead get the latest, bleeding edge version via SourceForge CVS. Instructions on how to do this can be found here.

Installing

Pick your Operating System and Compiling method of choice:

Windows - MSVC

TimeWarp can be built with Microsoft Visual C++.  Open up ./twwin.dsw and pick
Build/Rebuild All
from the menu.

Windows - MinGW

TimeWarp can be built with Minimalist GNU for Win32. 

Download MingWG:
http://www.mingw.org/
Install it.

Download ALLEGRO:
http://http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/
Install it.

Download this ALLEGRO extension:
http://www.geocities.com/jeffery_guan/jgmod/jgmod.zip
(optional, but necessary for some features)
(homepage is http://www.geocities.com/jeffery_guan/ )
Install it.

    If you have installed jgmod then just type:
    $ make win32=1

    If you don't have jgmod type:
    $ make win32=1 NO_JGMOD=1 

    That's it! Run timewarp and have fun!

Linux

1. Installing Allegro:

    If you already have Allegro installed you can proceed with part 2.
    If not, then get the recent Allegro beta from:
    http://alleg.sourceforge.net/allegro/wip.html
    To compile and install, untar Allegro and cd into Allegro dir.
    Then type the following commands:
    $ sh fixunix.sh
    $ ./configure
    $ make depend
    $ make
    $ su -c "make install"

2. Install Lua
    If you already have Lua installed you can proceed with part 3
    if not, then get recent Lua version from: 
    http://www.lua.org
    
3. Installing jgmod (optional)

    If you want music, you'll have to get jgmod from
    http://www.geocities.com/jeffery_guan/jgmod/jgmod.zip
    Unzip the jgmod.zip and execute:
    $ sh fixunix.sh
    $ make
    $ su -c "make install"


4. Installing cvs
    
    You should already have this tool

5. Installing TW

    3.1 Make timewarp directory 
    $ mkdir timewarp
    3.2 Enter directory
    $ cd timewarp
    3.3 Get latest version from CVS
    $ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/timewarp co .
    
    4 If you have installed jgmod then just type:
    $ make

    If you don't have jgmod type:
    $ make NO_JGMOD=1 

    That's it! Run ./timewarp and have fun!


6. Updating TW

    Of course you can simply download the newest TW version. But that's
    a huge download. You could also download the newest patch. But there's
    a much better way! Update your version:
    $ cd timewarp; cvs update; make
    

BeOS

Star Control: TimeWarp on BeOS

Since BeOS is no longer installed on my computer,
the latest versions of TimeWarp have not been compiled
for BeOS.

However, older versions of TimeWarp are known to work
on BeOS, and there haven't been any significant platform
changes, so newer versions should also work there.

Furthermore, the BeOS version of Allegro (a library used
by TimeWarp) has matured substancially with Allegro version
4.0.0, so a new build of TimeWarp for BeOS should work much
better than the old ones.

The last time I built TimeWarp for BeOS, everything compiled
and ran, but TimeWarp would crash after aproximately 10
minutes, and sound & music were unreliable.

Configuring

Ini files used by TimeWarp:

server.ini : server side game settings (physics, gravity, etc.)
client.ini : client side game settings (video, sound, view, etc.)
joys.ini   : joystick calibration settings
fleets.ini : fleets for normal games
scp.ini    : keyboard setup, player setup
tmp.ini    : temporary game initialization data, for the most recent game


How to tweak .ini's for slow computers:

	In game (or in client.ini [Video]), change screen width & height to as low as your video card will go, and change bitsperpixel to 8 (hideously ugly) or 15/16 if in fullscreen mode, or whatever your desktop color mode is if windowed.
	In client.ini [View]
	change Anti-Aliasing to 0
	change Mip_min to 1 (may help for low-ram computers)
	In server.ini [Game]
	change TicRate to 20 (also helps modem games)
	In server.ini [Stars]
	change Number to 100
	In server.ini [Planet]
	change GravityRange to 10