Windows Installation

Run the executable, select a directory to install armagetron into and enjoy. Start menu entries and a desktop shortcut will be created for you. To uninstall, start the uninstaller from the start menu.

Run the executable. It should find and update the previous version automatically.

If you have the .zip-version, unpack it to the place you want Armagetron to be (using WinZip, for example) and create the desktop/startmenu shortcuts manually by right-dragging armagetron.exe from the installation directory.

To uninstall, simply delete the extracted directory and the shortcuts you made.

The contents of the installation directory should be something like this:

Additionally, if you installed the moviepack/moviesounds from the addons page, you'll see the two directories

containing ONLY files and no subdirectories. When you have run Armagetron, you'll see the additional files

Inside the var subdirectory, You may want to create your own configuration files

The various directories you can set have the following impact on how the game loads and saves files.( Usually, you don't have to bother about it; there are reasonable defaults. But if you want to do some meddling with the data, these options are your ticket. )

Sounds, textures and models will be first looked for in the directory specified with --userdatadir. If they are not found there or if --userdatadir was not used, they are looked for in the directory specified with --datadir. This directory defaults to the current directory if not specified.

(I'll leave out the bits about "if option xxx is not set" from now on ) Configuration files are first looked for in --userconfigdir, then --userdatadir/config ( the dir passed to --userdatadir, appended with /config ), then --configdir and finally --datadir/config.

Log files ( game results, the settings made in the in game menu ) are loaded from --vardir, then, if not found there, from --userdatadir/var and finally from --datadir/var. They are only saved in the first of these directories that was specified.

Armagetron uses OpenGL for the 3D graphics. A software implementation of OpenGL comes with all Windows versions and Armagetron can use that. Of course, if you have a 3D accelerator card, you want to use that; usually, when you installed the driver for your card, an accelerated implementation of OpenGL was registered with windows.

If you experience problems with the graphics or if Armagetron does not even start correctly, try installing the most recent drivers for your graphics card you can find. A convenient way to do so is GLSetup.

A small problem here: the standard OPENGL32.DLL has no hardware acceleration. Instead, 3DFX supplies you with a file called 3dfxVGL.DLL or 3dfxOGL.DLL (found in your windows\system folder). Simply copy (drag it with the right mouse button and select "copy" from the pop-up-menu) it into the folder "armagetron.exe" is in and rename it there to "OPENGL32.DLL". Then, "armagetron.exe" will use this file instead of Microsoft's standard OPENGL32.DLL. If you cannot find 3dfxVGL.DLL or 3dfxOGL.DLL, you should first check whether you can find ANY .DLL files in the folder; if not, you'll have to enable the item "show all files" (or similar) in the folder options. If it's still not there,
If you have problems with that procedure or get crashes in glide3x.*, download this working version for VooDoo 2 (maybe 1) and unpack it into your Armagetron directory. According to the driver, you need at least Glide 2.56 installed; it really should work if you use the driver version 3.02.02 (or higher?).

This document was created by Manuel Moos

Last modification: Tue Oct 14 09:46:43 CEST 2003