"All the news that fits, we print."
August, 1995
Vol. 2, No. 7

In This Edition

• What's New
• New Games Starting Up
• Long Term Games
• Client
• New Server
• Old Server
• This Month's Winners
• This Newsletter

What's New

BugHunt I
Ken Stevens has announced the first long term game to be run on the new server.

Long Term Games
Three new long term games started up this month.

Empire2 b2r4 is beta released
Yet more improvements to the new server were coded this month. See New Server below for more details.

WS Empire 2.0 is alpha released
Jonathon Butler is working hard this month to bring Windows user a new
visual Empire client.

pei 2.3e is beta released
This version has no readline and is fully asynchronious.

Insanity I
Was won by mayhem, Spitzbergen, and Syrinx

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New games starting up

BugHunt I
The first long term game to be run on the new server will be hosted by Ken Stevens and Chad Zabel. 23 players have already signed up for the game. The game opens on 12 August and starts on 15 August. One thing that is special about this game is that countries will be given cash rewards for any bugs that they discover in the new server. For more details about this game, connect to the Howitzer Blitz
(http://www.empire.net/~children/pea_pages/blitzes.html) and type info
bughunt". If you would like to be in this game, then please send the following to bughunt@empire.net:
Name: (Your name in real life)
Country:
Password:
Email:
Experience: (Some number between 1-10)
If you don't know your experience level, then consult the Empire Player
Ranking System (http://www.empire.net/~children/ftp/player/docs/ranking.txt)

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Long Term Games

(http://www.empire.net/~children/pea_pages/games.html)

This month saw the starting of three new long term games: "BTBT Finals", "Thematic I", and "Insanity II". The machine that "Arctic Blast II" was being run on was attacked by a disgruntled hacker and essentially destroyed. Engineers on site estimate that the game should be back online "any day now".

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Client

There is clearly one thing, more than any other, which will determine the success of Empire in future years. The Empire Client. The day that Empire has a colourful graphical client available to Windows and Mac users, that will be the day that the number of active Empire players baloons to unimaginable proportions. While such a client is not yet possible due to deficiencies in the server protocol, you can expect that to change in the coming years, or perhaps even months. Our leading star in the realm of coding such a graphical client is Jonathan Butler, who has been working hard all summer on "WS Empire 2.0".

WS Empire 2.0 alpha 2
This is a sampler of my client with the Graphic Map. It also supports the new "toggle inform" and "toggle flash" async messages of the new server. Alpha 2 now supports "dump, ship, plane, and land" to build an internal database. The map view lets you look at the items in the database.

pei2.3e beta
While being a purely text interface to Empire, pei remains quite popular as the most "intelligent" client. You can find it on the PEA in player/clients/ (http://www.empire.net/~children/PEA/player/clients/). If you will be playing on one of the new Empire2 Servers, then it is recommended that you use pei2.3e to make full use of the new "toggle" command (e.g. you get instantly notified as soon as you receive a telegram, IRC like communication between players,...) One disadvantage of this new version of pei is that it no longer uses "readline". This means that you aren't able to use cursor keys to call up past commands. The reason for this is that I was unable to reconcile asynchronous communication from the server with raw input from the player. I do have a solution to this problem which I may get around to coding up sometime in the next month. I've been too busy with the new server to work on it. One advantage of not having readline in pei is that it is now *way* faster!

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New Server

Server Discussion (http://www.empire.net/~children/empire-list/) The traffic on the Server Discussion Mailing List reached an unprecedented high with 166 messages posted in the month of July. Highlights included:

• Julian Onions has made most of the empire OPTIONS run-time configurable, so it is no longer necessary to recompile the server if you want to change the server configuration.
• Sasha Mikheev broke major ground by porting the new server to Linux.
• Ken Stevens and Chad Zabel worked together to improve ship navigation & missile interdiction. In particular, Aegis cruisers (and three other modern cruisers) now have "anti-missile" capability and may be used to screen a fleet from enemy missiles.
• An extensive discussion of Autodefenses has resulted in the following four
  proposals:
  1. Forts should interdict land units just like how they interdict ships now.
  2. Interdiction should also be trigered against troops moving in after a
     successful attack. (The way it is now, they get a "free" move.)
  3. The mobility cost to units attacking should be increased.
  4. The idea of enforcing a stacking limit for units was rejected on the grounds that it would result in deadlock.

The New Empire2 Server (http://www.empire.net/~children/ftp/deity/server/)
If you'd like to try running the beta version of the new server, then get
this one.

The Empire Project Home Page (http://www.rr.ualberta.ca/~empire/)

PAST A team of coders has been working to improve the Empire Server. Dave Pare merged the three main server programs into one monolith server which uses threaded client-server communications. Ken Huisman beta-released the new Server and called it "empire 2 beta 0 revision 0" or "empire2b0r0". Since then, the server has been ported to SunOS 4.x, Linux, Unixware, DEC-ALPHA OSF1, and AIX and over 60 of the WISH LIST items have been coded. The server now comes with an easy-install "configure" script. Also, the info pages are now organized into subjects. Ken Stevens has set up an auto-resetting blitz (http://www.empire.net/~children/pea_pages/blitzes.html) to test the new server code (empire.net 7778). It always uses the most recent version of the code.

LAST MONTH
Sasha Mikheev, Julian Onions, Chad Zabel, Ken Stevens and others coded a number of items on the wish list. Empire2 b2r4 was released. Here are some highlights of what got coded last month:

• The following ships: "mc missile cruiser", "aac aa cruiser", agc aegis cruiser", and "ncr nuc cruiser" have been given a new ship capability called "anti-missile" This means that they will use their anti-missile systems to attempt to intercept enemy missiles aimed at any ship within a 1 sector radius. Note that just like abm & a-sat missile interception, only missiles
  belonging to countries you are "Hostile" or "At War" with will be intercepted. Thanks Chad!
• The "scuttle", "scrap", "mission", and "fuel" commands will now accept "l" or the unit type. (You are no longer required to type "la".)
• There is now a new kind of diplomatic relation that you can have with a country: "Friendly" which falls between "Neutral" and "Allied". This basically splits "Allied" into two steps: anything to do with ships is available to "Friendly" nations (nav, load, unload, tend, upgrade, order, sail, follow), whereas anything to do with planes or military support is reserved for Allies. This allows you to establish trading relationships without the necessesity of a military relationship. See info relation for full details.
• New command "skywatch" scans your skies overhead for satellites. Works very much like "coastwatch".
• The new Empire command "strength" will show you the defense strength of all your sectors (including reacting units from nearby sectors).
• xdist and ydist are now in player co-ordinates.
• Any interdiction of things being moved will also damage the sector being moved into. Note: this will slow down bridge attacks!
• Deliver now gets the same 4x bonus that distribute gets.
• The "spy" command now gives you much more useful information:

•    SPY report
          Wed Jul 26 21:10:13 1995
         sect   type own oldown eff  civ  mil  shl gun  pet food bars units planes
        29,5      c+   4      4  90  980    0  940  10    0    0    0     2      0

• Much of the "attack" function was rewritten to check for "special cases" which can result in lost military and units. Thanks Chad!
  
  PRESENT
  For an up to date list of the changes in the new server, connect to
  the Howitzer Blitz (http://www.empire.net/~children/pea_pages/blitzes.html) and type "info Empire2".
  
  Before and durring the BugHunt game, only a couple of minor WISH LIST items will be coded. There has been a call for a new features freeze until most of the bugs in the present version have been ironed out. Hopefully the BugHunt I game will ferret most of these bugs out of the woodwork.
  
  FUTURE
  Once the BugHunt I game has finished and all of the bugs have been fixed, Empire 3.0 will be "production" released (i.e. no longer beta). Then the team will consolidate the past couple of month's discussions into a few solid proposals, and a few of us will code up the specs as 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, on until the next milenium.
  

Empire Server Discussion mailing list
(http://www.empire.net/~children/empire-list/)
The mailing list, a forum of discussion regarding changes to the server, has been established (with current traffic about 150 mail messages per month). If, and ONLY IF you are very familiar with the Empire source ode,
have experience modifying the Empire source, and have time to help with the Server project, send mail to empire-list-request@empire.net with the
body content: subscribe

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Old Server

The Chainsaw Server
(http://www.empire.net/~children/ftp/deity/server/chainsaw.3.32.tar.gz)
This is the server that most people are using to run their games. Note
that the Chainsaw server now works under Linux!

Empire Tools (http://www.empire.net/~children/ftp/deity/tools/emptools.tar.gz)
If you do not have GNUmake or mkmf on your system, then you will also need to get this so that you can compile the server.

Linux mkmf (http://www.empire.net/~children/ftp/deity/tools/mkmf.linux.tar.gz)
Linux users will need to get this version of mkmf.

Deity Handbook
(ftp://ftp.Empire.Net/pub/empire/deity/docs/Deity.handbook.v1.tar.gz)
Chad Zabel has written a guide to help Deities compile and run the Empire
Server. Here is the table of contents:
1 Getting the source code and compiling the game.
2 Making modifications to the existing code.
3 Seting up a game: world generation, resources, adding countries.
4 Running a game: Deity commands and scripts.
5 Where to Get Help: fixing, debuging, and updating the source code.

How to Run a Game
(http://www.empire.net/~children/ftp/deity/docs/how_to_run_a_game.txt)
Before making a game announcement to r.g.e, please read and heed this
document.

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This month's winners

Insanity I
was won by mayhem, Spitzbergen, and Syrinx. While there were some connectivity problems towards the end of this game, the victory of these three countries was uncontested (although Resvon reputedly came close to threatening their win!) as mayhem put it, "the game was over before it was over." Here are the top four from close to the end of the game:

         sects  eff civ  mil  shell gun pet  iron dust oil  pln ship unit money
   mayhem 131   97%  70K 5.3K 2.9K 205  2.7K  16K 2.2K 5.0K  73   26   26   18K
 Spitzber 105   95%  60K 1.4K 2.2K 165  1.2K 9.8K 3.4K 5.4K  40   20   30  1.2K
   Syrinx  65   99%  42K 2.5K 1.1K 110  4.5K  12K 1.1K 2.1K  20   20   30   45K
   Aridon  75   91%  35K 1.2K 325   60  2.2K  14K 2.4K 4.3K  10   20   30   70K

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This Newsletter

If you have any additions/corrections/changes/feedback to the information in this post, please email me at children@empire.net.

Ken Stevens a.k.a. Buster, ruler of children

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