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How to play the development version

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Nightinggale edited this page Oct 18, 2023 · 26 revisions

This guide will tell you how to download, compile, play and update the development version.

First of all, a git client is needed. Any git client can be used. Many people use tortoise git, so pick that one if you don't know which one to use.

It's recommended to install git in the default location and not use a portable install. This will reduce risk of problems with the scripts later.

Also this guide is aimed at people who will not program themselves. However the guide for getting the MS visual studio up and running is almost the same. At the end there is a guide on visual studio, which can be ignored for non-programmers.

In Colonization (next to Colonization.exe), you should have or create a folder called /MODS.

Use git to clone https://github.com/We-the-People-civ4col-mod/Mod.git.

Create the local repository you clone inside the /MODS folder and call it e.g. /We-The-People

Select the branch "develop" or switch to it using the branch selector in the bottom left.

  1. Go into MODS/We-The-People/Project Files.
  2. Double click on Get Compiler.bat (This will install the compiler required for step 4.)
  3. If needed, it will tell you how to install strawberry perl as well as opening the download URL in the default browser. The portable installer will NOT work.
  4. Once perl is installed, double click compile.pl to compile

This gives the option of 6 different ways to compile the DLL. Typing help will explain the difference between each of them. In general mainly two of them are interesting:

  • Option 2: Dynamic Release: a decently optimized DLL, which is fast to compile and adapts to xml changes
  • Option 6: Hardcoded Final Release: slow to compile, needs recompilation for xml changes, but is optimized to the fastest possible gameplay

People generally use option 2, through if you plan to play for hours without altering anything in xml, 6 might be better.

How much slower (6) is depends on your CPU, but you can likely expect something like 5-7 times slower, which means it might take like 3 minutes extra. The extra compile time doesn't really matter if you compile once and then play for hours, but if you want to change xml settings and then restart the game to see the result over and you do that multiple times in a row, it quickly adds up. This is one of the reasons why there are multiple options for compiling the DLL rather than just "the best".

Once the DLL is compiled, the game can be played normally.

compile.pl is able to create a shortcut to starting the game directly in the mod. This is created with the command "bat" as it creates a bat file rather than a standard windows shortcut. This bat file will compile the DLL if needed and then start the game in the mod.

Updating to get the latest changes

  1. Use smartGIT to pull (changes)
  2. Compile a new DLL
  3. Play

Step 2 can be skipped if the bat file is used to start the game, making it way more convenient.

Visual Studio

In project files there is a Microsoft visual studio project file. This can be used to get a full IDE to work with should you wish to explore the source code. Any version can be used, through people tend to use 2010 and 2017. It makes no difference as the IDE is just a frontend to the makefile, which will always use the 2003 compiler (has to be same as the exe for memory allocation reasons).

Just double click it and get going. There are a few bat files related to the project file. It can be converted between 2010 and 2017 as using the correct version allows full use of IDE features such as jump to where functions are declared etc. Also Setup Debugger.bat sets up the ability to start the game from inside the project, with or without the debugger attached. Doing that will force compiling first and as such it will work like the bat file to start the game.

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