Albian Years to Openc2e
From ccdevnet
| CAUTION - CREATURES AT WORK |
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This tutorial provides a step by step guide for those who have a copy of Albian Years and would like to run it under OpenC2e. The Creatures: The Albian Years software was only released for Windows 98 through XP. Windows users need only run the install setup to obtain their files. For Mac users, we're going to extract the data files using Unshield and build a folder that OpenC2e will accept and run the game from.
Contents |
Extracting Albian Years on OSX
Getting Unshield
Albian Years ships as a Windows CD. You can read it with a Mac, but you can't get at the bundled files without some extra help. Load it in your CD/DVD drive.
Precompiled Unshield for OSX 10.3 and Up
(Download the unshield-bin.tar.gz 26-Oct-2005 19:31 14k file.)
Unarchive the downloaded file, if it hasn't done so already. There should be two items in the folder, a README-FS2.txt and a terminal icon called "unshield".
Pulling Files from the CD
Now, you're going to have to open Terminal. Search for "Terminal" in Spotlight, or go to Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities.
Now to tell Terminal what to do. At the terminal prompt, type the line below exactly. You're telling Terminal to make a folder (mkdir) called albianyears.
mkdir albianyears
Hit Return on your keyboard. You will get a second terminal prompt. Type the line below exactly. You're telling Terminal to change directories (cd) to the new folder you just made (albianyears).
TIP: What if I can't get my second line to work? It says no such folder/directory? Check your spelling. Terminal is extremely sensitive to spelling, you must name the folder identically on both lines.
cd albianyears
Last line, but the most tricky. Now you're going to tell terminal to extract a file using unshield into the folder you just set up. To do this, you have to tell it two things. The location of the bundled file you want to unpack, and where unshield is.
- The file you want to extract is data1.cab
- Replace YOUR USER NAME with your User Name, what it says next to your Home icon in your Finder Sidebar. If you do not have a Home icon in your Finder Sidebar, open up your Macintosh HD > Users folder and look it up there.
- The (x) after the location of unshield means extract. You're telling Terminal to take the program at this location (unshield) and extract the file at the second location (Volumes/ALBIAN).
- The line below assumes you have unshield in a folder called unshield-bin, on your Desktop. If you don't, you'll have to change the part after /Users/YOUR USER NAME/ or move it to your Desktop.
/Users/YOUR USER NAME/Desktop/unshield-bin/unshield x /Volumes/ALBIAN/install/data1.cab
If this doesn't work, chances are either unshield or your data file are in different places, or you've missed a letter somewhere. reread your line carefully and check it, make sure there are no extra spaces, all the slashes are there (and not \'s), and that you didn't forget the x! If it all looks to be right, check your file path. Terminal isn't very smart. You have to tell it exactly where unshield and data1.cab are, otherwise it won't work.
If all else fails, come track one of the ccdevnet programmers down in Sine (irc.freenode.net/#ccdevnet)
You'll know it's working when you see a stream of file names, mostly .s16's, being extracted in your Terminal Window. Congratulations! Extraction Complete. Open your User Folder, you should have a folder in it called "albianyears" with all the files you've nicked from the CD. You can Quit Terminal now.
Assembling Creatures 1
(TO DO)
Assembling Creatures 2
Open up the folder containing your mess of files. It's likely to be in your Home folder, called albianyears if you've been following along. If you peek inside, you'll see a bunch of subfolders. Some of these belong to C1, and some to C2. We're going to take out all the items belonging to C2. Notice how you have some folders with (2) after their name. Those all belong to C2 and share file names with similar C1 folders, take care not to mix them up!
- Make a new folder (on the Desktop for convenience works nicely). Call it something like Creatures 2.
- Make a subfolder in Creatures 2 called data. This is where you'll be moving the files to.
- In your albianyears folder, the one you dumped the files into with Terminal, take out the following folders and put them into data.
- Applet_Data_-_General_Files
- Body_data_-_General_Files(2)
- Eggs_-_General_Files
- Extra_-_General_Files
- Genetics_-_General_Files(2)
- Images_-_General_Files(2)
- Objects_-_General_Files(2)
- Sounds_-_General_Files(2)
Rename these folders to this:
- Applet Data
- Body Data
- Eggs
- Extra
- Genetics
- Images
- Objects
- Sounds
Next, open both of these folders and put their CONTENTS into data. Do not put the folder itself in. You want these files in the same directory as (Applet Data, Body Data, Eggs, etc.) above.
- Creatures_2_-_Executables
- Creatures_2_-_General_Files
Now all you have to do is place the Creatures 2 folder into the folder you have OpenC2e in. You don't have to do this (for now, since there's an Applescript being used to have the user manually point out the data folder's location) but it's convenient and keeps everything together.
- See Also: C2 File List Reference by fuzzie
