Wolfpack Empire

"All the news that fits, we print."
June, 1995
Vol. 2, No. 5

In This Edition

What's New
New Games Starting Up
This Month's Winners
Server
This Newsletter

What's New

Long Term Games (http://www.empire.net/~children/pea_pages/games.html) and
Blitzes (http://www.empire.net/~children/pea_pages/blitzes.html)
These sections have been moved out of the EMPIRE NEWS and into the PEA Pages (http://www.empire.net/~children/pea_pages/index.html).

Arctic Blast II
David Fish has annouced a new long term game.

Dr. Jeckyl
Michael Straub has announced a new long term game.

BioHazard II?
Peter Clark plans to announce a new long term game soon.

pei version 1.8 (http://www.empire.net/~children/PEA/player/clients/)
has been released. It works under perl5, has firewall support, and has a
number of bugfixes.

British Empire II
was won by Angels.

World War II
was won by Panzie, Cathouse, and Dristonia.

BioHazard
ended with no winner declared.

Documentation
I moved the information in this section into the FAQ and the Server
section.

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New games starting up

Arctic Blast II
David Fish has announced a new long term Empire game:
* nine continents (180 sectors) with three countries per continent
* wilderness sectors will start with 1 deity mil and land units will start with negative mobility.
* resources fair to good, FAST WAR, world size 128x64
* Run on Chainsaw 3.31
* 60 ETU updates once every other day at 10:00am EDT
The game will open on 10 June.
Unbroken countries will be replaced on 11 June at 23:00 EDT.
Updates will be enabled on 12 June at 10:00am EDT.
To register, send the following to Dave Fish (davef@eskimo.com):
* Your Name
* Your Country Name
* Your Password
* Your E-Mail address
* Your experience level
* Your favorite beer. (This is important)((Well sort of))

Dr. Jeckyl
Michael Straub has announced a new long term game:
* 15 countries
* 30 sector start islands, 32x64 world size
* lots of free land with 1 deity mil, all land bridgeable by 1 bridge
* tech base 1.5, 4 updates per day with 16 ETU per update

He would like you to suggest preferences as far as world size, tech, start islands, hours, weekend play, and whatnot. The game will begin as soon as enough interested players sign up. send coun, rep, and preferences to Michael Straub (DRJECKYL@UWYO.EDU)

BioHazard II?
Peter Clark (pclark@pclark.pcix.com), the deity of BioHazard, plans to
announce a new long term game very soon

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This month's winners

BioHazard
Due to technical difficulties, BioHazard ended early with no winner
declared.
World War II
(http://www.empire.net/~children/PEA/player/past_games/WorldWarII/)
was won by Panzie, Cathouse, and Dristonia. It was a well fought game by everyone involved. It started and stayed at tech 220, and there was a lot of water to deal with. The fighting was constant for the last many weeks. Here are the final top four:
         sects  eff civ  mil  shell gun pet  iron dust oil  pln ship unit money
   Panzie 260   93% 195K 9.6K 8.0K 751  6.6K  48K 3.0K  29K 170   49   65   30K
 28329.44
 Cathouse 154   96% 110K 4.7K 6.1K 1.0K  14K  31K 754  6.9K  98   64   41   21K
 17195.35
Dristonia 128   97%  92K 4.4K 5.6K 966  8.6K  23K 1.1K 9.1K  90   84   31   16K
 14520.87
  Uppland  92  100%  75K 4.0K 2.0K 179  6.0K  25K 369  7.8K  70   24   15  7.3K
  9593.03
British Empire II
(http://www.empire.net/~children/PEA/player/past_games/BritishEmpireII/) Angels was declared the outright winner. The final blow was Angels early
aquisition of nukes, ending in his taking out most of his oponents
capitals on the last day. The world was 170x56 (medium sized world), 21 countries, 45 sector start islands 4 sectors apart. Here are the final top four:
         sects eff  civ   mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pl  sh  un mon
   Angels 573  94% 423K  17K  22K 1.6K 37K 143K  12K  21K 275  47 83 176K
123651.76
   mayhem 203  95% 165K 8.2K 9.4K 489  2.3K 32K 3.7K 4.7K  50  17 30 123K
 23204.78
  Caladan 122  98% 106K 5.2K 3.2K 244  1.5K 24K 1.2K 9.3K  43  13 20  29K
 18468.90
    Andor  81 100%  79K 2.1K 3.2K 300  3.0K 20K 918  5.6K  35  16 17  15K
 13710.92
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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!

The New Threaded Server
(http://www.empire.net/~children/ftp/deity/server/empire2b1r15.tar.gz)
If you'd like to try running the beta version of the new server, then get
this one.

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.

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. There are now no known bugs in the new Server. 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,
and AIX and about 15 of the WISH LIST items have been coded. Ken
Huisman has set up an auto-resetting blitz
(http://www.empire.net/~children/pea_pages/blitzes.html) to test the
new server code. It always uses the most recent version of the code.

LAST MONTH
The Server Team decided to leave pinbombing as it is and solve the
data integrity problem in a different way. Dave Pare fixed the way
threads work so that no thread will get swapped out on I/O while it's
changing the database. This will greatly improve the data integrity
of the new server. Dave Pare also ported the new server to the
DEC-ALPHA OSF1 operating system. Ken Stevens fixed the division by
zero bugs in the assault code. This is what's in empire2b1r15.tar.gz.

PRESENT
Ken Stevens has written "configure" program for Empire to make it
much easier to configure and install the new server. Right after you
untar the server, you simply type "configure". After the program
makes an intelligent guess as to which operating system you are
using, it will ask you 12 questions (world size, port number, etc...)
and then go away and modify all the files that need to be edited.
Then you just type "compile &" and you're away to the races. No muss,
no fuss. If you run "configure" again later, it sets its default
answers to what you answered the first time. All of this is
documented in READ_THIS_FIRST. The "configure" program (written in
csh) follows all of the standard GNU "configure" conventions
(filename.in contains @variable@ to be substituted). The "configure"
program will be released as empire2b1r16.tar.gz sometime this week.

FUTURE
If all goes well, most of the important items on the WISH LIST will
be addressed within a year and we will have a vastly improved Empire
Server, which will be released as Empire 3.0!

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 2 mail messages per
month). 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

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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 with "EMPIRE NEWS" in the subject line.

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

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