FREECOL
I. Requirements II. Compiling FreeCol III. Running FreeCol IV. Troubleshooting V. Help, Feedback & Bug Reports VI. About
The program is written in Java. It can be ran with any Java Runtime Environment (JRE) that is at least version 1.8. The JRE (or JVM) can be downloaded from: http://java.sun.com/getjava/download.html
In order to compile the game, you'll also need Apache Ant, get it at: http://ant.apache.org
This process requires the 'native2ascii' task, which is an optional ant task. Some Linux distributions place optional tasks in a different package, so make sure you have installed all necessary packages if you are a Linux user.
NOTE: The compiled files are included with the releases, so this step is not required in order to play the game.
Launch a command prompt and go to the directory where you unpacked the FreeCol package. Make sure the file named 'build.xml' is in your current directory. From that directory execute the command 'ant'. In case the command could not be found, check your Ant installation and make sure that the ant (*nix) or ant.exe (Windows) file is in your PATH. See the Ant installation manual for more information. If the compilation fails, check your CLASSPATH environment variable and make sure that '.' is a part of it.
Launch a command prompt and go to the directory where you unpacked the FreeCol package (in case you downloaded the binary package) or the directory where you executed the 'ant' command (in case you downloaded the source package). Make sure the file named 'FreeCol.jar' is in your current directory.
Execute the command 'java -Xmx512M -jar FreeCol.jar'
Windows users may need to execute 'java -Xmx512M -cp . -jar FreeCol.jar'
In case the command could not be found, check your Java installation and make sure that the java (*nix) or java.exe (Windows) file is in your PATH.
Run 'java -jar FreeCol.jar --usage' to get a list of available command-line parameters.
You may ignore the message: "The music files could not be loaded by FreeCol. Disabling music." because there is no music available yet for FreeCol.
Q: I get the following error: The data file "data/images/units/Unit0.png" could not be found. A: Use the command-line option --freecol-data to specify the location of the 'data' directory. For example: java -jar FreeCol.jar --freecol-data C:\Games\FreeCol\data
Q: I am unable to start the game. A: Try running the game in windowed mode: 'java -Xmx256M -jar FreeCol.jar --windowed'
If you need help with anything related to FreeCol that is not yet documented somewhere then you can send an e-mail to the mailing list: [email protected]
General Feedback is very much appreciated. Send an e-mail to [email protected] if you want to provide feedback.
FreeCol is currently still beta software and may contain some bugs.
If the client should hang/freeze/crash then remember that you can always press -- or --<F1 or F2, ...> when using Linux/Unix or -- when using Windows.
If you manage to close FreeCol in this way or if you encounter less serious problems then you can provide the developers with information on the problem you've had by entering the following data as a bug report at FreeCol's Sourceforge page at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=43225&atid=435578
- Detailed description of the problem you've had
- Contents of the file 'FreeCol.log' which can be found in the directory from which you launched the client
- If possible: a stacktrace that you may see when running the game from the command line.
Content is Copyright (C) 2002-2015 The FreeCol Team The authors of FreeCol can be found on the FreeCol homepage. FreeCol's homepage can be found at http://www.freecol.org