Pyskool requires Python (version 2.7) and Pygame (version 1.8+).
On Linux/*BSD, Python and Pygame are available via the package management system. Python is in the python package on all systems; Pygame is in the python-pygame package on Debian-based distros and openSUSE, the pygame package on Fedora, the devel/py-game port on FreeBSD and NetBSD, and the devel/pygame port on OpenBSD.
Windows and Mac OS X users should take care to select the Pygame installer that matches the version of Python that is installed.
There are various ways to install the latest stable release of Pyskool:
If you choose the zip archive or tarball, note that Pyskool can be used wherever it is unpacked: it does not need to be installed in any particular location.
However, if you would like to install Pyskool as a Python package, you can do so by using the supplied setup.py script. After installation, the required images, ini files and sound files for each game will need to be created. This can be done by using the --setup option; for example:
$ skool_daze.py --setup
To install Pyskool as a Python package on Windows, open a command prompt, change to the directory where Pyskool was unpacked, and run the following command:
> setup.py install
This should install the Pyskool game launcher scripts in C:\Python2X\Scripts (assuming you have installed Python in C:\Python2X), which means you can run them from anywhere (assuming you have added C:\Python2X\Scripts to the Path environment variable).
To install Pyskool as a Python package on Linux/*BSD/Mac OS X, open a terminal window, change to the directory where Pyskool was unpacked, and run the following command as root:
# ./setup.py install
This should install the Pyskool game launcher scripts in /usr/local/bin (or some other suitable location in your PATH), which means you can run them from anywhere.
To run Pyskool in Skool Daze mode, double-click the skool_daze.py file in the Pyskool directory. To run Pyskool in Back to Skool mode, double-click back_to_skool.py.
If that doesn’t work, try the command line. Open a command prompt, change to the Pyskool directory, and do:
> skool_daze.py
to run Pyskool in Skool Daze mode; or, to run Pyskool in Back to Skool mode:
> back_to_skool.py
To run Pyskool in Skool Daze mode, open a terminal window, change to the Pyskool directory, and do:
$ ./skool_daze.py
or, to run Pyskool in Back to Skool mode:
$ ./back_to_skool.py
When skool_daze.py, back_to_skool.py or one of the other game launcher scripts is executed, it looks for the following things:
Each of these things must be present in one of the following directories in order for Pyskool to find it:
$HOME refers to the user’s home directory. On Windows this is typically C:\Users\username or C:\Documents and Settings\username.
$PACKAGE_DIR refers to the directory in which the pyskool package is installed (as shown by the --package-dir command line option).
When you need a reminder of the locations that Pyskool searches for data files, run one of the game launcher scripts with the --search-dirs option.
If Pyskool doesn’t start, run the game launcher script from the command line and read the diagnostic messages that are printed to the console for clues about what’s going wrong.
When Pyskool is running, it will dump screenshots to, save games to, and load games from either $HOME/.pyskool (if it exists or can be created), or the current working directory.
skool_daze.py, back_to_skool.py and the other game launcher scripts support the following command line options:
The --create-images option first looks for Skool Daze and Back to Skool tape or snapshot files by the following names in $HOME/.pyskool:
If no such files are found, TZX files are downloaded from one of the sources listed in images.ini and saved to $HOME/.pyskool. Then the required images are built from the tape or snapshot files and saved to the appropriate subdirectories under $HOME/.pyskool/images/originalx1.