"On air. On sea. On land. Still the Internet's greatest wargame simulation."
"All the news that fits, we print."
August 8, 1994
In This Edition
This is what's new since the last edition of EMPIRE NEWS:
Jim Ortlieb's "PuddlePlanet" tournament will be starting any day now
(see "New Games Announced").Monte Freeman plans to run a long term game some time soon (see
"New Games Announced").Chad Zabel will be announcing a new game soon (see "New Games Announced").
The game "UAlberta Open" has just started up (see "Long Term Games").
Dwarven Chowder I and Junkiefest IV ended, and Smorgasboard will be
ending any day now (see "Long Term Games").Don Harper has beta-released ve (see "Current Projects").
Ulrich Drepper has released myxec 0.2, a new X-Windows Empire client
(see "Clients").Ken Stevens and Sam Tetherow have released pei.1.1.1, a new "smart"
Empire client (see "Clients").Sam Tetherow has released a bare bones client for IBM PC compatibles
called "baseemp" (see "Clients").The server team is debugging the new threaded server and preparing to
tackle the Empire WISH LIST (see "Server").
"PuddlePlanet"
Jim Ortlieb and Chad Zabel are co-Deitying an Empire tournament which
will be starting any day now. There will be two 128x128 worlds called
"Romulus" and "Remus". Players will begin with a 30 sector start island
with low gold resources. There will be plenty of ocean between start
islands. Updates will be at midnight EDT once every three days with
60 ETU. The games will run until 15 December at which time the top
20 countries from both games will be thrown into a new 128x128 world
with larger start islands. The tournament is currently full."Paperboy"
Chad will be announcing a quick, 2 updates a day, game for 20
countries with small start islands, lots of free land on a 64x32
world."Promethius I"
Monte Freeman, the deity of the P.I.N.G. Test Game plans on running a
long term game some time soon. It will be open to all interested and
up 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Watch r.g.e. for details. The world
will be drawn by hand using xland."Hidden III"
Kevin Klemmick will announce Hidden III sometime early in the fall
when he "returns" (from where, nobody knows...)."Bloodbowl"
Chad Zabel plans to run a BloodBowl game using the new server code.
He will annouce it as soon as the new code is ready to test.
These blitzes reset every day:
Name host port coun pass updates resets --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riverworld random.chem.psu.edu 1618 1-10 1-10 10 min 8:00pm EDT Levante zwetsche.ethz.ch 3000 1-15 1-15 10 min 3:30am EDTThe Riverworld blitz has been very active of late with some excellent
players showing up fairly often. The first update is at 8:30pm EDT.
To give late-starters a better chance, Drake has changed the start
configuration of this game somewhat--you begin with 30 sanctuaries,
each containing 550 civs. You can login to the Riverworld blitz as a
visitor using either "Visitor/Visitor" or "visitor/visitor".The Levante blitz runs modified code which decays commodities every update.
If you want to receive mail regarding new blitzes starting up, send mail
to blitz-announce@engg.ksu.edu with the subject line "subscribe".
These are the long term games currently being run:
game name host port country password started ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Smorgasboard alderaan.lanl.gov 2001 visitor visitor 22 May 94 Outremer essi2.essi.fr 1737 CIA FBI 28 Jun 94 EuroEmpire VI empire.engg.ksu.edu 6104 Visitor Visitor 19 Jul 94 UAlberta Open brule.forsci.ualberta.ca 1617 Visitor Visitor 7 Aug 94game name deity updates: frequency ETU's time ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Smorgasboard 1/day 40 03:30 EDT Outremer sp@essi.essi.fr 1/day 64 06:00 EDT EuroEmpire VI empire@engg.ksu.edu 1/day 48 every 28 hrs UAlberta Open empire@forsci.ualberta.ca 1/day 48 22:00 EDTSmorgasboard
will be ending any day now. Here's the top four of the power chart:
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money LV426 380 96% 290K 14K 6.9K 835 3.8K 76K 2.5K 8.8K 150 300 180 505K CCCP 275 97% 233K 5.5K 12K 750 7.0K 103K 5.3K 5.3K 110 210 110 215K Lothlorie 345 94% 240K 7.4K 6.0K 480 7.1K 73K 3.5K 8.9K 80 130 130 190K Apache 210 93% 170K 8.7K 17K 985 2.5K 39K 2.5K 2.4K 30 140 90 100K After these four, the size of the countries dramatically decreases.Dwarven Chowder I
was won by LV426, Pepsi, and Fodderland.JunkieFest IV
has ended. I lost the end-game post to r.g.e so I can only guess that Darkland won the game.Outremer
is french for "Ultramarine". Current power chart leaders: C.L.P.I.A
with 450 sectors and Partyland with 330 sectors. Note that the host
for this game moved from essi to essi2.European Empire VI
is Empire played on a map of Europe. There are some interesting
modifications to the code in this game to make trade and market more
fair. Updates are as follows: Sun 4:00, Mon 8:00, Tue noon,
Wed 16:00, Thu 20:00, Fri midnight. All times are EDT.
Here are the current power chart leaders and their sizes:
Arkhangel 495, Paris 380, Ankara 200, Prussia 125. After these four,
the power drops off dramatically.UAlberta Open
is being run by Bob Beck and Ken Huisman. The game just started, so
there is no current leader.If you want to receive mail regarding new games starting up, send mail
to empire-announce@engg.ksu.edu with the subject line "subscribe".
These are the projects that Empire coders are currently working on:
project coder language status ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ve Donald Harper C beta pei.2.0 Ken & Sam perl 1 mo VM/CMS client Sam Tetherow REXX 1 mo GNU Emacs client Markus Armbruster elisp 1 mo Win3 client Pat Loney C 2 mo WISH LIST Ken Stevens ongoing Users.Guide Demon E. Wilkinson preparation Windows client Sam Tetherow C++ preparationve - Visual Empire:
Don has more or less finished fixing ve. Contact Don if you want to
be a beta tester.VM/CMS client
Sam Tetherow has finished a complete rewrite of the standard VM/CMS
client. His new version uses CMSPipelines which is not supported on
all VM/CMS systems. He also has an older "stand alone REXX code"
version which doesn't need CMSPipelines. He is currently modifying it
to have similar syntax to pec.pei.2.0
Ken Stevens and Sam Tetherow are working together to improve pei.
They hope to add many new features which may be found in the
"WISH_LIST" file in the package.GNU Emacs client:
Markus Armbruster is presently working on an elisp client for Empire. It will have three windows: input, output, and map. He's got the basic's working and is now adding sophistication. The most recent version is available at: i44ftp.ira.uka.de:pub/misc/empire/emacs/empclient.el.gz Hopefully it will soon appear on the ksu archive.Win3 client:
Pat Loney is writing a Win3 client using winsock and tcpip. He is currently looking for someone with win3 programming expertise to help him finish the project.WISH LIST:
If you know of any bugs in Empire or if there are any features you'd
like added to Empire, then please mail them to Ken Stevens (see "Who's
Who?) with the word "wish" in the subject line. The criterea for
new features being added to the wish list are:
1) It shall improve the player's experience
2) It shall not be complex
3) It shall not change the game in any fundamental wayUsers.Guide:
Damon E. Wilkinson is revising the Users.Guide, adding documentation for
land units, missions, starv, budget, bestpath, and other features
which have been added in the Chainsaw code.Windows client:
Sam Tetherow is in the preparation stages of porting a C++ client to
Microsoft Windows. He will first write a PC client in C++ and then port
it to Windows.
Clients are available via anonymous ftp to ftp.cis.ksu.edu in the
directory /pub/Games/Empire/clients.submitted name size author system lang works? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jun 23 1993 empclient-1.1.tar.Z 20 Dave Pare & company Unix C yes May 27 1994 eif1.0.2.tar.Z 160 Doug Hay Unix C yes Aug 13 1994 pei.1.1.1.sh.Z 102 Ken & Sam Unix perl yes May 12 1994 hpc.sh 56 Drake Diedrich Unix perl yes May 12 1994 pec.2.0.sh 14 Sam Tetherow & comp Unix perl yes Apr 19 1993 xemp5.0.02.tar.Z 1333 Etienne X-windows C yes (not on ksu) myxec-0.2.tar.gz 529 Ulrich Drepper X-Windows C yes Apr 19 1993 emp_mux.tar.Z 12 Alan M. Levi Unix C ??? Apr 27 1993 VMS/* 93 Donald Harper VMS C yes Apr 19 1993 VM_CMS/* 55 Sam Tetherow VM/CMS REXX yes Apr 19 1993 client2.0.tar.Z 13 Dave Pare & company Unix C ??? (soon @ ksu) baseemp.tar.Z 7 Sam Tetherow IBM PC C ???To add your client to the archive, send email to Karl S. Hagen (see
"Who's Who?") and he'll tell you what to do.empclient-1.1 - Empire Client
This is the standard bare-bones Unix client.eif1.0.2 - Empire InterFace
has multiple-game support, command scripting, aliases, history
substitution, access to system files and programs. Recent bugfixes by
Jim Gillogly (fixed the "kill" command) and Ken Stevens (fixed
highlighting for the "sect" command) are included in version 1.0.2.pei.1.1.1 - Perl Empire Interface
is a port of eif to perl based on hpc. It was written by Ken Stevens
with many tools added by Sam Tetherow. Pei has all the functionality
of eif, plus it has built in auto-explore, civ-mover, auto-feed,
distribution, unit management, and mailer tools. The latest version
should always be available at euromath.dk in pub/incoming.hpc - Harmless Perl Client
is a bare-bones perl client.pec.2.0 - Perl Empire Client
by Sean "Elven King" Eddy, Michael "the Elf" Feuell, and Sam
"Drazz'zt" Tetherow. It is a perl client with functionality somewhere
between hpc and pei.xemp5.0.02 - X Empire
is an X-Windows interface for playing Empire.myxec-0.2 - My X Empire Client
is a new colour X-Windows Empire client. It is not yet available on the ksu
archive, but you may ftp a copy from:
i44ftp.ira.uka.de:pub/misc/empire/myxec/myxec-0.2.tar.gz
He will put version 0.3 on the ksu archive when it is ready. Due to a
recent disk-failure, this could take longer than expected.emp_mux.tar.Z
is a client "multiplexer" to allow two people to connect to the same
country at the same time.VMS client 4.0
is a client for VMS systems.VM/CMS empclient
is a client for VM/CMS systems.client2.0
is a modification of the standard client for "BSD Empire" (a version
of the server no longer supported).baseemp.tar.Z
This file will soon arrive in the clients directory at the ksu
archive. It is a bare-bones client for the IBM PC which coders can
use as a base for writing their own clients.
Empire documentation is available at ftp.cis.ksu.edu:
Empire FAQ:
/pub/Games/Empire/FAQ.*Empire Description:
/pub/Games/Empire/WhatIsEmpire-FAQ.txtChainsaw info pages:
/pub/Games/Empire/docs/chainsaw.3.0.info.tar.Z
The info pages are also available on WWW at:
http://opus.chem.psu.edu/~dld/info/Users Guide (presently being revised)
/pub/Games/Empire/docs/Users.Guide
If you want to run a game, you can get the source for the server from
ftp.cis.ksu.edu:
/pub/Games/Empire/source/chainsaw.3.31.tar.Z
Please mail Ken Stevens for his "How to Run a Game" document before
making a game announcement to r.g.e (this document will be included in the next release of the Empire Server code.)Kevin Klemmick has modified the plane code to generate more readable air combat reports. Deities are encouraged to replace the aircombat.c and mission.c files in chainsaw.3.31.tar.Z with ones found in:
pub/Games/Empire/source/newplanes.shDrake Diedrich has uploaded a diff file containing all the bug-fixes
to Chainsaw 3.31 used in the Riverworld games (mostly changes in the
info files and spelling corrections):
pub/Games/Empire/source/diff.cs.river.ZEmpire Server Team:
This is what the Empire Server Team has done so far:
1) Chad Zabel fixed a number of bugs in the server.
2) Chad Zabel added HIDDEN mods and new plane mods.
2) Ken Stevens and Chad Zabel worked together to clean up the Empire
options (cutting down the number of options from 75 to 28).
3) Dave Pare has merged the hree Empire processes into one
"Monolith" server using a threading package.Currently, Chad Zabel and Dave Pare are debugging this new version.
Once that is done, Ken Stevens will send the current Empire WISH LIST
to the Server Team, and the team will discuss priorities and "who will
do what" stuff.Once the high priority bug-fixes and new features have been added,
the source will then make its way over to Karl S. Hagen who will clean
up the code and add a "smart client" protocol mode which will be
cryptic but carry more information in less space. The idea with a
smart client is that it will take care of most sub-prompting, and it
will maintain an internal database of sectors and units which is
updated asynchroniously by the server.Server Mailing List:
The mailing list, a forum of discussion regarding changes to the
server, has been established (with current traffic about 2 mail
messages per day). If, and ONLY IF you are very familiar with the
Empire source code, have experience modifying the Empire source, and
have time to help with the Server project, send mail to
empire-list-request@engg.ksu.edu with the body content: subscribe
Player tools are available via anonymous ftp to ftp.cis.ksu.edu in the
directory /pub/Games/Empire/tools/Player:submitted name author language works? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sep 2 1992 EddyTools.tar.Z Sean Eddy C no Sep 2 1992 GEET-2d.tar.Z Lynn Slater elisp no May 12 1994 autofeed Jim Gillogly perl yes May 12 1994 chitools.sh Ken Stevens C,awk,perl yes Sep 2 1992 cmc-tools.tar.Z Cowboy Bob/King Craig C no Dec 18 1991 ewall.tar.Z ??? ??? no Sep 2 1992 hex.ps.Z Scott D. Yelich postscript yes Sep 2 1992 news_power.sh Jim Gillogly perl yes Dec 18 1991 rdist.tar.Z ??? C no May 12 1994 simu Drake Diedrich awk yes Apr 9 1993 ve.tar.Z see below C almostTo add your tools to the archive, send email to Karl S. Hagen (see
"Who's Who?") and he'll tell you what to do.Here is a summary of the tools that work:
autofeed moves food from sectors with too much to those with too
little. (It uses "dump" rather than "starv" so it is a little slow).chitools.sh contains 7 tools including a civ mover, production delta
program, autofeed script, spy info database, and a mail-like interface
for reading telegrams.hex.ps.Z prints hex paper.
news_power.sh parses the news into a more concise form and produces a summary report at the end.
simu is an update simulator, showing you what your country will look
like after the next update.ve.tar.Z "visual empire" is a cursers interface for viewing your
country. It was written by Matthew Diaz, Michael Baldwin,
Bill Jones, Jim Knutson, Ken Montgomery, Dan Reynolds, Jeff Wallace,
and Julian Onions (*whew!*).
These are the tools that either do not work, or are obsolete:EddyTools.tar.Z contains 3 tools. "distributer" and "civmover" are
out of date and do not work, but "accountant" (calculates production
deltas) still works.GEET-2d.tar.Z is an emacs "robot" client that doesn't work.
cmc-tools.tar.Z was a fantastic civ-moving tool and I wish someone
would fix it. What was so great about it was the way you could set
civ-moving prioritites in a configuration file. It has 4 tools,
"pmvr", "mmvr", "umvr" (for moving civs, mil, and uw's) and a "dist"
tool for setting dist paths (now obsolete).ewall.tar.Z is a tool for sending telegrams to multiple recipients
(now obsolete).rdist.tar.Z What the heck is this? There's no documentation.
submitted name author language works?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb 13 1992 DuckScripts.tar.Z Don Harper mixed yes
Feb 13 1992 EvilDeityScripts.tar.Z Dave Nye sh yes
Oct 11 1991 emptools.tar.Z Peter J. Nicklin C yes
Jul 12 1993 fairland.1.6.2.tar.Z Ken Stevens C yes
May 13 1994 RiverworldTools.tar.Z Drake Diedrich mixed yes
Nov 6 1992 transferkit.tar.Z Thomas Ruschak C yes?
Nov 6 1992 xland-2.0.tar.Z Dan Bennett C no
Apr 9 1993 xland-chain3.0.tar.Z Dan Bennett & Tom C yes?Here is a description of the various deity tools:
DuckScripts.tar.Z contains 35 perl, awk, and csh scripts which parse
the output of various empire report commands (power, plane, prod, etc.)
and generate summaries of the data.EvilDeityScripts.tar.Z contains the shell scripts "saveass" and
"watchdog". "saveass" saves a copy of the empire data files just
before an update so that you can restore from backups if something
goes wrong. "watchdog" checks to see if either emp_tm or emp_login
has crashed, and if they have, restarts them. A sample crontab is
included.emptools.tar.Z contains the source for GNUmake version 3.56 (probably
quite an old version) and mkmf ("make makefile"), two unix utilities
used to compile the server.fairland.1.6.2.tar.Z is a land generator program (now a part of
chainsaw.3.31.tar.Z I believe), which creates a world with a specified
number of continents of a specified size with equal resources.RiverworldTools.tar.Z contains a number of scripts for running a game. It
includes modifications of Dave Nye's "watchdog" and "saveass" scripts,
as well as scripts for auto-resetting a blitz, a script for checking
login irregularities, and a cool program which draws colour maps
of the game as it progresses and converts them into a mpeg movie.transferkit.tar.Z is a program for transfering a game from one machine
to another.xland-chain3.0.tar.Z replaces xland-2.0.tar.Z. It is an X-windows
program used by deities to "draw" land for an empire game using a mouse.
Karl S. Hagen maintains the Empire WWW page at:
http://www.engg.ksu.edu/empire/Drake Diedrich maintains a WWW page which keeps an up-to-date status
report of all Empire games:
http://random.chem.psu.edu/cgi-bin/EmpireCheckThe Chainsaw 3.31 info pages are available at:
http://random.chem.psu.edu/~dld/info/What's the World Wide Web? See for yourself. To quote Drake
Diedrich, "It is way cool." If you have emacs, then you can connect
to the World Wide Web using "w3". Just ftp the following two elisp
packages and install them:diredall.tar.Z available at ftp.thp.Uni-Koeln.DE /pub/gnu/emacs
w3.tar.gz available at cs.indiana.edu /pub/elisp/w3There are also more graphical WWW clients available (e.g. X-windows),
but I don't know where they are--once you get into WWW with the emacs client, you should be able to find them.
In alphabetical order, here is a list of Deities and Empire coders:Name Country Deity of email ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Markus Armbruster armbru@pond.sub.org Dan Bennett (retired) Eurasia (Kent State) Drake Diedrich harmless Riverworld dld@random.chem.psu.edu Stefan Hauser Rohan etienne@imp.ch Ulrich Drepper drepper@ira.uka.de Sean Eddy (retired) Mirkwood sre@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk Chris Farrel Geravik cfarrell@yar.cs.wisc.edu Michael Feuell Krikkit (Carnage) Monte Freeman Fizban P.I.N.G empire@empire.ping.com Jim Gillogly Banzai, POE Andy Green (Paperboy) green@ids.net Karl S. Hagen Greyhelm greyhelm@engg.ksu.edu Don Harper Duckland harper_d@uhdux2.dt.uh.edu Doug Hay (retired) Aliens Kevin Klemmick Waffen (Hidden) kklem@netcom.com Andrew Lasda (Flatland) alasda@nyx.cs.du.edu Pat Loney Overlord European loney@kaos.lerc.nasa.gov Dave Nye (retired) EvilEmpire (BBN) david_nye@wellfleet.com Jim Ortlieb CrackHouse (JunkieFest) ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu Dave "H.D." Pare mr-frog@xcf.Berkeley.EDU Stephane Perennes Outremer sp@essi.essi.fr Thomas Ruschak The_Scum (Chainsaw) ts@ecn.purdue.edu Chuck Simons (retired) Metzada c/o Chad Zabel Ken Stevens children (Kaiserdome) stevens@math.toronto.edu Sam Tetherow(Drazz'zt) Khazad'ur (Dwarven) UCPL079@UNLVM.UNL.EDU Damon E. Wilkinson Mantarr st1dg@jetson.uh.edu Scott Yelich AO (Santa Fe) scott@santafe.edu Chad Zabel Rad_Zone (BloodBowl) zabel@cs.und.nodak.edu
If you have any additions/corrections/changes/feedback to the information in this post, please email me at stevens@math.toronto.edu.
Ken Stevens a.k.a. Buster, ruler of children
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