"On air. On sea. On land. Still the Internet's greatest wargame simulation."
"All the news that fits, we print."
May 13, 1994
In This Edition
This is what's happened in the Empire world since the last edition of EMPIRE NEWS:
A new game called "Smorgasboard" (ed. intentional misspelling?) has been announced! (see "New Games Starting Up").
There is a new blitz called "Levante" running every day (see "Blitzes").
Two new perl clients (pec and hpc) and three new tools (autofeed, chitools, and simu) have been uploaded to the ksu archive (see "Clients" and "Player Tools").
Kevin Leco's beautiful new plane code has arrived in the ksu archive (see "Server Code"). Deities are encouraged to recompile their servers using this code (it is a 800% improvement over the old plane code).
Drake Diedrich has uploaded to the ksu archive a kit of all the tools he uses to run the Riverworld games (see "Deity Tools"). He has also uploaded bug fixes for the Chainsaw 3.31 code (see "Server Code").
Karl S. Hagen (the keeper of the ksu archives) has set up a WWW page for empire (see "World Wide Web").
I have decided to use people's real names in this newsletter, even though you may know them better by their country name (see "Who's Who?").
"Smorgasboard"
40 etu updates every day, update at 3:30am EST (*yawn*), hard tech,
NO NUKES. Starting at the end of May. Mail your country name and
password to:
sharp@alderaan.lanl.gov"Denver Flatland"
No sea, no mountains, 100% resources (except for dust which is 50%),
hard tech (log 2.75 after 3) game starting on the 13th of May (first
update May 14). Send your country name and password to:
alasda@nyx.cs.du.edu"Hidden 3"
Kevin Leco will announce the third Hidden game sometime early in the
fall. He is presently looking for a machine to run it on. If you
have a machine that he'd be able to use, then please email him at:
kleco@netcom.com
These blitzes reset every day:
Name host port coun pass updates resets --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riverworld opus.chem.psu.edu 1618 1-10 1-10 10 min 7:30pm EST Levante zwetsche.ethz.ch 3000 1-15 1-15 10 min 3:30am ESTYou can login to the Riverworld blitz as a visitor using either
"Visitor/Visitor" or "visitor/visitor".The "Tilo" blitz runs modified code which decays commodities every update.
These are the long term games currently being run:
Name host port country password updates started --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riverworld opus.chem.psu.edu 1617 visitor visitor 1/4 days Nov 93 Hidden indigo.imp.ch 1617 1/day Jan 94 Junkiefest 2 gsbux1.uchicago.edu 1617 Visitor Visitor 3/day Apr 94
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/eif1.0.1.tar.Z yes Unix (perl) /pub/Games/Empire/clients/pec.2.0.sh yes Unix (perl) /pub/Games/Empire/clients/hpc.sh yes X-windows /pub/Games/Empire/clients/xemp5.0.02.tar.Z not sure VMS /pub/Games/Empire/clients/VMS yes VM_CMS /pub/Games/Empire/clients/VM_CMS not sureeif1.0.1.tar.Z "Empire InterFace" by Doug hay offers aliases and
access to system files and programs. It's a great client!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.
The advantage of a perl client is that it is easier to integrate other
tools directly into it.
Empire documentation is available at ftp.cis.ksu.edu:Empire FAQ:
/pub/Games/Empire/FAQ.12.May.1994Empire 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 (3 years out of date--currently 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.ZThomas Ruschak, the author of the most recent version of empire
(called "chainsaw"), expects to finish fixing the last of the bugs in
the Chainsaw code and release it as "Empire 2.0" sometime this summer
or next fall.Kevin Leco 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.Z
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 greyhelm@engg.ksu.edu
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.
chitools.sh contains 7 tools including a civ mover, production delta
program, 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!*). Don Harper is currently fixing it.
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 Bennet C no Apr 9 1993 xland-chain3.0.tar.Z Dan Bennet & 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.
If you have access to the World Wide Web, you can connect to Empire's
new WWW page at: http://www.engg.ksu.edu:80//empire/home.htmlWhat'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/w3
There 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 macs client, you should be able to find out where they are.
The cast in order of appearance:
Name Country Deity of ---------------------------------------------- Kevin Leco Waffen Hidden Drake Diedrich harmless Riverworld Doug Hay (retired) Alien Sean Eddy Mirkwood Michael Feuell Krikkit Carnage Sam Tetherow Khazad'ur Thomas Ruschak The_Scum Chainsaw Jim Gillogly Banzai, POE Ken Stevens children Don Harper Duckland Dave Nye (retired) EvilEmpireI do not know the names of the countries usually played by Lynn
Slater, Cowboy Bob, King Craig, Scott Yelich, Matthew Diaz, Michael
Baldwin, Bill Jones, Jim Knutson, Ken Montgomery, Dan Reynolds, Jeff
Wallace, Julian Onions, and Dan Bennet. If you know the name of the
country that any of these people usually play, don't hesitate to email
it to me.
If you have any additions/corrections/changes 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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