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"All the news that fits, we print."
June 24, 1994
In This Edition
This is what's new since the last edition of EMPIRE NEWS:Two new games "GOODBYE KSU" and "Outremer" have been announced
(see "New Games Announced").Two new long term games "Dwarven Chowder I" and "Junkiefest IV" have started up (see "Long Term Games").
The long term games Flatland and Paperboy are officially finished, and
Smorgasboard is temporarily down (see "Long Term Games").Ken Stevens and Sam Tetherow are nearly finished writing their perl
clients (see "Current Projects").The Empire Server Team has finished cleaning up the options and is now
implementing threading (see "Server").There is a new WWW page containing an up-to-date list of the status of all Empire games (see "World Wide Web").
Two new mailing lists blitz-announce and empire-announce are available
(see "Blitzes" and "Long Term Games").
"GOODBYE KSU"
This game will be run using old (pre-chainsaw) server code with MERC
mods for the benefit of some of our more senior players. It will open
6 July with the first update on 8 July. 60 ETU, 20:00EST, 64x64 large
shared continents with deity mil, avg resources, hoping for 40 countries (has 9 so far). Send the following to ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu
Country Name:
Representative: (this is your password)
Real Name:
Email Address:
Playing Addresses: (if different than your email address)
Skill Level: (I'll try to space you all out.... gimme an HONEST review of yourself.... "Hi. I'm U.S.Madison and I'm at least a 9.5!!!" will not cut it.
:-)
# of Chainsaw games: (approx)
# of KSU games: (approx)"Outremer"
is french for "Ultramarine". Chainsaw 3.31, possibly slow war,
256x128, 100 sector start island, min dist entre start islands 6, 64
ETU update at 6:00am EDT, game down on weekends, opens 22 June 6:00am EDT, unbroken replaced 29 June, updates enabled 28 June 6:00am EDT. Please send the following to sp@essi.cerisi.fr
Name of the player(s):
email of the Ruler(s):
Userid and Machine usually played from:
Representative(or password):
Name of the country:
Experience Level:"BloodBowl"
Chad Zabel plans to run a couple of BloodBowl games this summer to
test teh new server code. Watch r.g.e. for details."Hidden III"
Kevin Klemmick will announce Hidden III sometime early in the fall.
He now has a host to run the game on.
These blitzes reset every day:
Name host port coun pass updates resets --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riverworld opus.chem.psu.edu 1618 1-10 1-10 10 min 8:00pm EST Levante zwetsche.ethz.ch 3000 1-15 1-15 10 min 3:30am ESTThe Riverworld blitz has been very active of late with some excellent
players showing up fairly often. Friday night seems to be the
favourite night for the big guns.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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riverworld opus.chem.psu.edu 1617 visitor visitor Nov 93 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 94game name deity updates: frequency ETU's time ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riverworld dld@chem.psu.edu 1/4 days 60 21:00 EDT Smorgasboard wjs@doc.ic.ac.uk 1/day 40 03:30 EDT Dwarven Chowder I empire@ewl.uky.edu 1/day 48 20:00 EDT Junkiefest IV ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu 1/day 60 21:00 EDTFlatworld
To quote Kevin M. Roberts, "I assume it is safe to say that the first
Denver FlatWorld Game is bust." Flatland went down due to technical
problems. The deities intend to start up a new Flatland game soon.Paperboy
is, to my knowledge, the first public long term Empire game ever run
under Linux on a PC. Congrats Andy! Only half of the players were
able to break before the first update, and with a world size of 256x256 giving each player about 900 sectors, the players asked for a restart. Two weeks later, the deity heard their cries and brought the game down. Andy Green intends to run a new Paperboy game soon.Riverworld
Mirkwood is still sporting the yellow Jersey, although certainly not
without serious competition. Game reports from Mirkwood and UUCP have been one of the highlights of r.g.e this summer! It looks as though
Riverworld is one of those rare games where the power blocs remain
balanced right up to the endgame--the world powers possess nuclear
technology and yet, due to the scarcity of resources, naval and air
forces remain essential. The entire Empire community sits riveted to
their "Mirk-O-Vision" sets following the exciting developments of this
great game.Smorgasboard
is down until Sunday 26 June for an operating system upgrade. Rest
assured that your country is stowed safely on a DAT tape under a pile
of sweaters in Bill's closet! Relinquia sacked the first cap 16
seconds after the tenth update, and kolhar is the proud owner of
ship #0.Dwarven Chowder I
has begun. There are 3 players per 75 sector start island. Reef has
the honour of sacking the first cap, and beep built the first ship.
The deities are still looking for replacements in the event that
a player needs to drop out. If you are interested in having your name
added to the replacement list, send email to the deity.JunkieFest IV
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.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 Ken Stevens perl alpha parse.pl and tools.pl Ken Stevens perl 2 days hpc Drake Diedrich perl 2 wks VM/CMS client Sam Tetherow REXX 2 wks pec Sam Tetherow perl 2 wks Win3 client Pat Loney C 2 mo WISH LIST Ken Stevens ongoing Users.Guide Chris Farrell preparation Windows client Sam Tetherow C++ preparationpei - Perl Empire InterFace
Ken Stevens has written a perl client which has all the functionality
of eif and hpc. Features include: eif-style aliases, csh-type history
substitution (!!, !abc, and ^a^b), file redirection, piping, runfeed,
system escape, execution of commands from files, perl evaluation,
extensive interrupt handling and recovery, multiple game support
(addgame, kill, try), multiple commands separated by semicolon,
sub-prompt input, automatic conversion of .eifrc to .peirc, readline
support, cursor-key support for readline, and extensive documentation.
He will release it once he has finished polishing up user.pl. The
advantage of pei over eif is that it works with parse.pl and user.pl.parse.pl and tools.pl - modules for pei and hpc
Ken Stevens has taken over the coding of parse.pl and user.pl from
Drake Diedrich to give Drake more time to work on TinyEmpire (see
"Server"). parse.pl parses the output of nearly every Empire command
into an internal database. tools.pl (formerly user.pl) contains three
tools functions which use the info in the database to generate empire
commands: "nova" (auto-explore all wilderness sectors), "xmvr" (it's a
civmover, uwmover, feeder, and more...), "setfood" (set food
thresholds for maximum civ growth). All three functions have been
coded and are currently being tested.hpc - harmless perl client
This perl client offers file redirection, piping, system escape,
execution of commands from files, readline support, and perl
evaluation. hpc will work with parse.pl and user.pl.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.pec - Perl Empire Client
This perl client offers aliases, csh-type history substitution (!abc),
file redirection, piping, system escape, execution of commands from
files, aliases, multiple commands separated by semicolon, sub-prompt input, and an an rc file for game definition and startup commands. Also included are a number of perl scripts to help you manage ships, planes, and land units.Win3 client:
Pat Loney is writing a Win3 client using winsock and tcpip.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:
Chris Farrel 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:system location works? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Unix (standard) /pub/Games/Empire/clients/empclient-1.1.tar.Z yes Unix (aliases) /pub/Games/Empire/clients/eif1.0.2.tar.Z yes Unix (perl) /pub/Games/Empire/clients/pec.2.0.sh yes Unix (perl) /pub/Games/Empire/clients/hpc.sh yes X-win /pub/Games/Empire/clients/xemp5.0.02.tar.Z yes X-win (sun4) /pub/Games/Empire/clients/xemp5.0.02.bin.sun4.gz yes VMS /pub/Games/Empire/clients/VMS yes VM_CMS /pub/Games/Empire/clients/VM_CMS yes Unix (multiplex)/pub/Games/Empire/clients/emp_mux.tar.Z not sureeif1.0.2.tar.Z "Empire InterFace" by Doug hay offers aliases and
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.pec.2.0.sh "Perl Empire Client" by Sean "Elven King" Eddy, Michael
"the Elf" Feuell, and Sam "Drazz'zt" Tetherow.hpc.sh "Harmless Perl Client" by Drake Diedrich.
emp_mux.tar.Z by Alan M. Levi is a client "multiplexer" to allow two
people to connect to the same country at the same time.
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.ZTinyEmpire:
Drake Deidrich proposes that the best way to rewrite the Empire Server
would be to start from scratch with a simple game having a bare
minimum of commands. He plans to begin this project soon.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: subscribeEmpire Server Team:
The Empire Server Team has made significant progress in the past two
weeks. Chad Zabel has fixed a number of bugs in the server. Ken
Stevens and Chad Zabel worked together to clean up the Empire options
(cutting down the number of options from 75 to 28). The official
source has now been moved to Dave Pare's machine where he will merge the three Empire processes into one "Monolith" server using a
threading package. He will also be examining the issue of database
integrity.Once Dave has finished making these major modifications to the server,
the Empire Server Team will begin going through the WISH LIST, fixing
bugs and adding new features.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.
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:80//empire/home.htmlDrake Diedrich has created a fantastic new WWW page which keeps an
up-to-date status report of all Empire games:
http://random.chem.psu.edu/cgi-bin/EmpireCheckWhat'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.
The cast in alphabetical order: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 Sean Eddy 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 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 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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