"On air. On sea. On land. Still the Internet's greatest wargame simulation."
"All the news that fits, we print."
July 23, 1994
In This Edition
This is what's new since the last edition of EMPIRE NEWS:
Jim Ortlieb nas announced a new long term game called "PuddlePlanet"
(see "New Games Announced").The Riverworld blitz has moved and changed (see "Blitzes").
The "GOODBYE KSU" game was cancelled due to lack of interest.
Regarding long term games, "Riverworld" has officially ended,
"Smorgasboard" is back up, and two new games, "Outremer" and "European Empire VI" have started up (see "Long Term Games").Ulrich Drepper has released myxec 0.2, a new X-Windows Empire client,
and Ken Stevens has released pei.1.0.3, a new "smart" Empire client
(see "Clients").The server team is preparing to tackle the Empire WISH LIST (see "Server").
Mirkwood (played by Sean Eddy and Tom Jones), among the creme de la
creme of Empire countries, has retired. So admired was this nation,
that r.g.e was flooded with songs of praise for days.Special thanks to Jim Ortlieb who was kind enough to archive r.g.e for
me while I was away on vacation, and thus made it possible for me to
compile this issue of the EMPIRE NEWS upon my return.
"PuddlePlanet"
Jim Ortlieb has announced a new slow long term game! There will be 1 update
at midnight EDT every 3 days. Players will begin with a 30 sector
start island with low gold resources. There will be plenty of ocean
between start islands. The game will open on Tue 26 July at 13:00 EDT.
The first update will be on Wed 27 July. If you would like to join
the game, send the following to ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu:
Country Name:
Representative:
Skill Level (0-10):
Email address:
Playing address(es):"BloodBowl"
Chad Zabel plans to run a couple of BloodBowl games in august to
test the new server code. Watch r.g.e. for details."Hidden III"
Kevin Klemmick will announce Hidden III sometime early in the fall.
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 Dwarven Chowder I woodbine.ewl.uky.edu 7777 Visitor visitor 17 Jun 94 Junkiefest IV gsbux1.uchicago.edu 1617 Visitor visitor 17 Jun 94 Outremer essi.essi.fr 1737 CIA FBI 28 Jun 94 EuroEmpire VI empire.engg.ksu.edu 6104 Visitor Visitor 19 Jul 94game name deity updates: frequency ETU's time ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Smorgasboard wjs@doc.ic.ac.uk 1/day 40 03:30 EDT Dwarven Chowder I empire@ewl.uky.edu 1/day 48 22:00 EDT Junkiefest IV ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu 1/day 60 21:00 EDT Outremer sp@essi.essi.fr 1/day 64 06:00 EDT EuroEmpire VI empire@engg.ksu.edu 1/day 48 every 28 hrsRiverworld
Riverworld has come to a close. Less than 24 hours after a solo
declaration of victory by Mirkwood, a lightning storm struck central
PA, and severely damaged the filesystem the game was running on. The
win was to be official in 2 hours. The last deity power report showed
Mirkwood at 666 sectors, and nearly twice the "power" of the second
place country, Waffen I believe. Ice Barbarians, Krikkit, Kaerconan,
UUCP, and beep were all large 300-400 sector countries. There were
several other survivors, especially Camelot who (at 70 sectors) fought
massive naval, air, and ground battles with beep since last winter.
mpeg avail at: http://random.chem.psu.edu/Riverworld.mpgSmorgasboard
is back up. Current power chart leader is LV426 with 195 sectors.Dwarven Chowder I
Current power chart leader is LV426 with 215 sectors.JunkieFest IV
Darkland is the current power chart leader with 240 sectors.
The NASDAQ award (for most sectors exchanged between two countries) goes to Second_Foundation and Apisto. The "Red Baron" award (for first plane) went to Palmyra. The JunkieFest games are run by Jim Ortlieb to help new players learn how to play. Only new players,
called "newbies", are allowed to join these games. In Junkiefest, new
players are invited to ask questions and can learn the different
aspects of the game without fear of an experienced player "taking them
out" right from the start.Outremer
is french for "Ultramarine". Current power chart leader: C.L.P.I.A
with 230 sectors.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.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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- pei.1.1.0 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 ve Donald Harper C vague WISH LIST Ken Stevens ongoing Users.Guide Demon E. Wilkinson preparation Windows client Sam Tetherow C++ preparationVM/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.1.1.0
Ken Stevens and Sam Tetherow are working together to improve pei.
Version 1.1.0 of pei is due in the middle of August. New features
will include neweff commands for ships, planes, and land units, and
many enhancements to the code.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. Version 1.2 is
available on the "Elisp Archive" wherever that is. Hopefully it will
soon appear on the ksu archive.Win3 client:
Pat Loney is writing a Win3 client using winsock and tcpip.ve - Visual Empire:
According to an email sent by Don to the EMPIRE NEWS dated 5 Jul 1994,
Don is, in fact, working on ve.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 Jul 6 1994 pei.1.0.3.sh.Z 77 Ken Stevens 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 ???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.1.0.3 - Perl Empire Interface
is a port of eif to perl. It has all the functionality of eif, plus
it has built in auto-explore, civ-mover, auto-feed, and distribution
tools.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.gzemp_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).
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) 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 is debugging this new version. Once that is done,
Ken Stevens will send the current Empir 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 Etienne 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) 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 Bill Sharp Smorgasboard sharp@alderaan.lanl.gov Chuck Simons (retired) Metzada c/o Chad Zabel Ken Stevens children (Kaiserdome) stevens@math.toronto.edu Sam Tetherow(Drazz'zt) Khazad'ur Dwarven Chow 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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