General Installation Notes

First off, if you're on Windows or Mac OS X, just go ahead and download the EXE or DMG version. That's all that you need to download, and you can safely ignore the rest of this page.

For other systems, or if you want to run the source directly in Windows/OS X, you'll need: gtk+, Python 2, 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 can get these from homebrew or MacPorts, and/or install them with pip or easy_install.

A note on the Book 2/3 Map Editors: The Book 2/3 map editors require two additional packages: PyCrypto and czipfile. PyCrypto may be installed by default (its package name tends to be python-crypto on most distributions, though Gentoo packages it as pycrypto). czipfile is probably not installed by default. The quickest way to get that installed is either through easy_install or pip, like so:

$ sudo easy_install czipfile

or

$ sudo pip install czipfile

Once again, if you're using the Windows or Mac packages, none of this should concern you.

A stand-alone package is provided (as of 0.5.0) for Windows and (as of 1.0) for OS X, 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 the utilities 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 .
$ ln -s /path/to/eschalon_b2_map.py .
$ ln -s /path/to/eschalon_b3_char.py .
$ ln -s /path/to/eschalon_b3_map.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're using the EXE version and receive the error "This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem," and you're running Windows XP, then you'll probably need to do one of two things. That error appears to only happen on XP Service Pack 2, so upgrading to SP3 will probably take care of it. Alternatively, you'll need to install the Visual C++ Redistributable from Microsoft. There's various versions of that software; I'm not sure whether you'd want to install the 2008 version or the 2010 version (there's also a 2005 version, though I assume that might be too old). If anyone wants to let me know if it matters at all, I'd appreciate it. The relevant links are here:

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 (or their Book 2 equivalents, from wherever you unzipped the archive), and it'll open up an "Open" dialog.

OS X Specifics

Starting with 1.0, I've provided an DMG disk image with a bundled stand-alone application. This is the recommended way to run the application on Mac OS X.

Here is how I set up the current OS X testing/build environment:

  1. Install Homebrew. (This requires XCode, which might not be installed by default, and apparently might cost you $5, if you're not part of Apple's developer program.)
  2. Run the following commands in the "Terminal" application:
    $ brew install pygtk
$ sudo easy_install czipfile
$ sudo easy_install pycrypto
  3. Go to the directory where you put the program source, and run the editor of your choice like any other command line application. 
    $ ./eschalon_b3_map.py

Here is an older set of instructions that also worked for some people:

  1. Install MacPorts. (This requires XCode, which might not be installed by default, and apparently might cost you $5, if you're not part of Apple's developer program.)
  2. Run the following commands in the "Terminal" application:
    $ sudo port -v selfupdate
$ sudo port install py26-gtk
$ sudo port install py26-crypto
$ sudo port install python_select
$ sudo port select python python26
    Apparently the py26-gtk install may take a very long time, on the order of 30-45 minutes. So be patient! You might get more progress information if you launch them as "sudo port -v install" instead of without the -v.
  3. If you want to edit Book 2 Map files, you'll probably want to try installing czipfile; see the General Installation Notes section at the top of this page for a couple of commands you could try to accomplish that.
  4. Then, to run the app, you can probably just browse to wherever you unpacked the archive and double-click on the program you want, or just launch it from Terminal as if it were any other CLI application.

If you run into an error during the py26-gtk installation like "Error: Failed to install xorg-renderproto", apparently you may need to run this command: 

$ sudo port -f uninstall render