Getting started

Getting started in Space Civilizations is a quick and easy process. Within a few minutes you can create an account and start playing the game!

The following instructions will guide you through this process:

You need to register to the game. To do so choose a username, which you will use in-game and in the forum. You need to enter a valid email address, as you will receive an activation email.

Once you receive the activation email, click the link in it to confirm your registration. Delivery of that email should be a matter of minutes, but with some email providers delivery can take up to 24 hours! If you think something went wrong, please do contact support.

In order to play Space Civilizations, you need to download the client software and install it. Please follow the instructions during the installation process.

Please note: If you do not have sufficient user rights to fully install the game, a warning will be displayed. Please do pay special notice to that warning, as it will advise you how to install the game regardless. Most likely it will fail to register the file-association (.scgalaxy) and mime-type. These are not required to play the game! However, it will make it easier to enter a galaxy. Please read the chapter “How to install and play without administration rights” in the download section for further information.

You are now ready to pick the galaxy in which you want to play. On the right hand side you see a list of currently running Galaxies that are ready to sign up to. Clicking on the galaxy link will bring up detailed information, like the number of players, the length of one turn, and when the ticks are being started.

By clicking the “Sign up” button a planet will be assigned to you in that galaxy. This process can take a few seconds.

Once you have signed up to a particular galaxy you can click “Enter Galaxy” at any time, to check the state of your empire, and to give orders to your fleets and planets.

When clicking “Enter Galaxy” in your browser a small file is sent to your computer. We call this the “Galaxy-Pass”, as it contains the necessary information to access your empire. A requester will pop up that asks you what to do with that file.

Click “Open”. We also recommend to un-tick “Always ask before opening this type of file”, which will suppress this requester the next time you want to enter the galaxy. This will allow you to subsequently enter a galaxy with a single click.

Please note that a Galaxy-Pass is only valid for 3 minutes! If you try to use a Galaxy-Pass that is older than that, the server will return the error “Galaxy-Pass is corrupt or has expired”. The Space Civilizations client should start up and display a progress bar. It will login and download the latest galaxy-data from the server. This process should only take a few seconds.

At this point you would be able to change the connection settings, and specify that you are behind a firewall or playing via a proxy. Please read the chapter “How to play from behind a firewall” in the download section, if you have troubles connecting to the server.