Eschalon Savefile Editor

Main | Installation | Usage | Mapping Information | Screenshots (character) | Screenshots (maps)

Installation

General Installation Notes

See the README file. To run the application outside of Windows (or if you want to run the source directly in Windows), you'll need: gtk+, Python, Cairo/PyCairo, and PyGTK. For Linux users, these are certainly available from your distribution, and may already be installed. Use your distro's package manager to install these, if they're not already. OS X users are on their own for now, I'm afraid, but I'm pretty sure that packages do exist for that platform.

An installer is provided (as of 0.5.0) for Windows, but for other platforms there are no installers. On UNIX (and any other system you can convince it to run on) the app is meant to be basically just run from wherever you unzipped it or untarred it, or by setting up a symlink somewhere, or creating a shortcut in your desktop environment of choice.

The map editor component of this package requires that an Eschalon install directory be present on your system. The application will try to locate it on its own, but if the installation directory isn't found, you'll be prompted to provide the location. The character editor can also use the Eschalon game directory to do image lookups of its own, but it doesn't actually require the directory to be present.

Both the map editor and the character editor have a preferences screen (the preferences are shared between programs) where the game directory can be set, in addition to your savefile directory (which the program will also try to auto-detect). The savefile directory is just used as the directory the "Open" dialog will default to.

Linux Specifics

What I'd recommend is just leaving it untarred wherever you untarred it, and make a symlink to eschalon_b1_char.py, eschalon_b1_map.py and eschalon_b2_char.py into somewhere in your $PATH (~/bin is probably the best location). For example:

$ cd ~/bin
$ ln -s /path/to/eschalon_b1_char.py .
$ ln -s /path/to/eschalon_b1_map.py .
$ ln -s /path/to/eschalon_b2_char.py .

At that point you should be able to just run "eschalon_b1_char.py" from the command prompt, for instance. Setting up shortcuts through your window manager of choice should work fine, as well. Failing that, just run them from the directory you untarred them into.

As of 0.5.0, the minimum gtk+ required MIGHT be 2.18.0, though you may have success with earlier versions. If there are problems with older versions, please let me know so I can take a look and possibly get a workaround in place. The app will show a warning if your gtk+ doesn't meet this requirement, but allow you to continue regardless.

Windows Specifics

Starting with 0.5.0, I've provided an EXE which should install the application with a standard installer, which will leave you with a shortcut to both applications in your start menu. This is the recommended way to run the application on Windows.

If you prefer, you can continue to run the Python source directly, which will require the following support packages to be installed:

Once those dependencies are installed, you should be able to just double-click on eschalon_b1_char.py or eschalon_b1_map.py (from wherever you unzipped the archive), and it'll open up an "Open" dialog.

OS X Specifics

Apparently, getting all the prerequisites installed on OSX (specifically the PyGTK/PyCairo stuff) is somewhat non-trivial, and may be pretty frustrating for folks who aren't used to digging into UNIXy software installation practices. Since I don't have access to that platform, I can't really help too much. If anyone does figure it out, please drop me a line so I can provide some better docs.

In the meantime, you may want to check out Goblin Hacker instead, which is a native OS X application, and should be far easier to get running.