Please help me installing this game

I downloaded Advanced civilizations from home of the underdogs.
The file consists of a zip file with ten zip subfiles.
When unzip them all in one file the game file sget replaced, does not work, my PC even crashed.
There does not appear to be any readme file.

The reason I'm not asking this on their forum is because of ****ing cookie problems.

[Mao]

Try dling it again or just mailing the admin. of the site?

[ravagon]

I think from memory that those ten subfiles are just different parts of a single archive (that, for example, spanned multiple floppy disks) hence when you extract them you need to treat it as a single archive.
I don't know how to do this with winzip if the files are on a hard disk so you might want to either try pkunzip or copy the files onto separate floppy disks and extract them as a spanned archive. Hope this helps.

Mao, I don't think they'll reply on a request for helping to install a game.

Ravagon, thank you for your help, although I'm not sure what you mean with "archive".

[ravagon]

Let me try and explain that a little better. When using winzip to compress files you compress them into a single file (archive). However if you are trying to compress, for example, larger files (>1.4Mb) onto floppy disks (with a capacity of 1.4Mb), your archive file has to span multiple disks. What they (whoever uploaded the game in this format) have done is to rename all of the disks separately, copy them out to hard disk, and then compress them into another archive.

Errrmmm. I don't know if all that blathering on is helping very much so here's what you want to do;

i) Assuming you are using winzip to extract

1) Extract all 10 subfiles to your hard disk (Named either Adciv, Adciv1, .. Adciv9 or Adciv1 ..Adciv10 I think (?) ).

2) Copy each file to a separate floppy disk and number each disk (You need to know the order in which to insert them).

3) Rename the file on each disk to Adciv.zip (Not exactly sure about this name as I'm not on my home pc at present but the filename should probably be obvious from the names of the 10 extracted subfiles - probably the first)

4) Extract from floppies starting with the first. The additional disks should be called in consecutively as you get to the end of the previous disk.

Thats it. End result (I think) should be 1 big file 9.5 odd Mb + some others.

ii) Using pkunzip (or something else able to extract from spanned archives while on a hard disk).

1) Extract to the 10 subfiles as before.

2) Look up switch for extracting from a spanned archive (I don't know this off the top of my head - should be under advanced properties or somesuch).

3) Extract from first subfile using the switch. At the end you should get a prompt to continue with the next subfile. May have to specify name/directory etc.

Thats all folks. As above.

Best of luck and I hope all of that made at least some sense.
[This message has been edited by ravagon (edited August 09, 2000).]

[Urban Ranger]

Hmm...


If these are indeed spanning archives, you don't extract them first. Instead, you:


1. Download all the pieces
2. Copy each one to a floppy diskette
3. Use Winzip to extract from the first floppy


I think

EDIT: I have just wandered to the site and found they have a single file (13MB) available.
[This message has been edited by Urban Ranger (edited August 09, 2000).]

[ravagon]

UR, yeah. That threw me off at first too. Not only did they zip all of the floppy disk components into a single archive, they renamed them all too. Makes things rather confusing.

[Urban Ranger]

A couple of things:

1. The first zip file (~1.5MB) is too big to be copied to a standard HD floppy. So the spanning idea is out.

2. The zip file contains "arj.exe." I would think this has something to do with extracting the game.

But what are the rest of those files? .UNO and all that...

[ravagon]

Uhhhh? Um. I never actually noticed the first file being that much bigger (I was too lazy to copy all of the files to separate disks so I dug up an old copy of pkunzip I think and that was able to extract everything just fine). I wonder if whoever compressed it could've used arj to create the archive? I think the later versions can actually do that now. - Create zip archives I mean.
Although that still wouldn't explain why the first file is still larger - maybe it had something else added later?

In any case if nothing else seems to work I'd try downloading a, er, "shareware" copy of winace (www.winace.com - sorry, don't know how to make this a hyperlink offhand). That can extract files from just about anything.

Best of luck anyway.

[Urban Ranger]

Moral of the story: RTFM.


Read the fine ( ) manual, that is. There are a number of .nfo files that come with the first zip file are readable text. Just follow the instructions, dang it


I think it uses arj.
[This message has been edited by Urban Ranger (edited August 10, 2000).]