"On air. On sea. On land. Still the Internet's greatest wargame simulation."
"All the news that fits, we print."
September 16, 1994
In This Edition
o The next few issues of the EMPIRE NEWS will be featuring interviews
with the personalities that have shaped Empire over the years. This
week, I had the priveledge to interview Dave "Human Decompiler" Pare
who was a key player in the early years of Empire (see "Interview").o Ken Huisman and Bob Beck have announced a new game called "UAlberta NUKEFEST" (see "New Games Announced").
o Chad Zabel has announced a new game to test the new Server code (see "New Games Announced").
o "ARCTIC BLAST" and "HIDDEN III" have started up (see "Long Term Games").
o "European Empire VI" has ended (see "Long Term Games").
o I've added a new section which lists winners of past games
(see "Hall of Fame").o Ken Stevens and Sam Tetherow have released pei.1.2.1, a new "smart" Empire client (see "Clients").
o The server team is running a test game to test the new Server and will
be starting the WISH LIST once the new code survives its first big test.
(see "Server").o Since the "Player Tools" and "Deity Tools" sections have not been
changing much, I have moved them to the ksu archive as
/pub/Games/Empire/tools/Player/README and
/pub/Games/Empire/tools/Deity/README respectively.
"UAlberta NUKEFEST"
Ken & Bob have announced a new long term Empire game with a twist.
All players will start at tech 190 and the first nuke will be
available at tech 235 and the first "good" nuke will be available at
tech 300 (there will be some very large nukes in this game). Start
islands will be 80 sectors (so you won't get taken completely out by
a single 100mt blast) using the Riverworld setup (see "Blitzes"). Every
country will start with $100K. Continents will be 4-6 sectors apart
(i.e. not bridgeable). The game will be played with the MAD option
(auto nuke retaliation). 48 ETU updates at 22:00 EDT. Will start on
or around 6 October. Send Country name and password to:
empire@forsci.ualberta.ca
(please put 'nukefest registration' in the subject line)"Test"
Chad Zabel will be running a blitz game to test the new server code
starting on 16 Sep at 20:00 EDT with the first update at 20:30 EDT.
20 countries will start at 40 tech on a 64x32 world, and try to break
the new server code. If you'd like to get in on the fun and help test
the new server, connect to:
host: agassiz.cas.und.nodak.edu port: 3000
with country/rep 1-20/1-20.
The game will run until 17:00 EDT 17 Sep. pei 1.2.1 has been modified
to work with the new server.
Name: Dave "Human Decompiler" Pare
Age: 31
Location: Berkeley (the city not the campus)
Occupation: computer consultant and game writer
Computers Owned: a Pentium, and a pair of Sparc 2's
Car: 1988 Toyota supercharged MR2 (gathering dust)
Claim to Fame: Author of socket/plane/distribute code and much more
What follows is an excerpt from an interview with Dave "Human Decompiler" Pare which took place at midnight EDT on 13 September 1994. The interview was recorded using YTalkV3.0 Patch Level 2.
EN: When did you first start playing Empire?
DP: 1982
EN: What was Empire like back in those days?
DP: Well, my first memories were of a dreadful plane bug. Planes back in those days were commodities, and they could carry shells. The reason why "petrol" is called "petrol" is because it had the same letter as "plane",
which it replaced. A little Empire trivia.
EN: so sectors would have a certain number of "p" commodity which were planes?
DP: Right. The number of planes. No fighters. Just bombers.
EN: and did there used to be weather?
DP: uh, yeah, weather. Force nine hurricanes. I have vague memories of a technique that would let you hurricane someone else, but I never really
got that one wired down. The '!' was a weather station.
EN: what was this "dreadful plane bug"?
DP: Oh, you could take off from a carrier, and land on the carrier again
(carrying shells with you) and you would end up adding shells to the
carrier. We were all very offended by it. I think it was the first
thing I fixed.
EN: What was this original Empire called?
DP: PSL Empire.
EN: Anything else different about it?
DP: PSL Empire didn't used to have updates. People would log on,
do a census, and as they examined their sectors, the update would happen to the sectors they looked at. Peter called it "update-as-you-look-at", which was a real performance pig.
EN: so people would type "cen" a million times to grow faster?
DP: Oh, no, that's where ETU came from. Sectors would have timestamps on them, and when an etu went by, it would be updated.
Empire also didn't used to have clients and servers. You had to have an
account on the machine to play.
EN: Who added the socket magic?
DP: that was all me. Most of my job was performance-related. You
have to understand, to get a large game running on a 0.5 mip machine
took real effort. Given my machine here is 32 mip, and my PC has 80
mip...EN: do you know anything about the authors of the game back then?
DP: Oh sure, Peter. I don't know anyone older than him. I first met him when he was working at Lucasfilm.
EN: so I understand that sometime between then and now you got involved in the coding of Empire.
DP: Right. It was probably the plane bug that did it for me.
I didn't exactly "get involved". Peter refused to distribute source,
(heedless of my pleading) and so step by step I reverse engineered it.
EN: REALLY!!
DP: I say step by step because I started out doing it just to fix problems
that he wouldn't (or didn't have the inclination to) fix. He was nice
enough to write the code so that it was modular, so I could excise individual problem sections. If he'd released the source, I'd have never gone and done it at all, and we'd have PSL Empire today as the staple.
EN: Is that, by any chance, how you got your nickname?
DP: Uh, my nickname came from the Internet Worm. Way back in 1988 there was this little worm that ran around the net connecting to suns and vaxes and basically causing problems because it had bugs. There were security holes in fingerd and a few other places that I forget about right now, and it would break in, scan the hosts, look for nearby machines, try
and crack the passwords on the local machine, and ... oh, wait, that might have been a later different thing. But anyhow, the worm was a
bad thing, because it had a big, bug which caused it to use up huge amounts of CPU and replicate itself multiple times on the machine.
EN: so what was your connection to this Internet Worm? DP: Well, the people at UCB knew I'd done some reverse engineering work before (my empire experience, and hunt, and sun's ND protocol) and they wanted to know what the worm did, but only had the binary. So Chris Torek and I sat in a room for 14 hours and did the whole worm.
EN: What's hunt?
DP: hunt is a screen-based game where you hunt each other in a maze.
You can shoot, slime, throw grenades. Kind of like a doom but ascii,
and where the bad guys are all other players.
EN: So how did you reverse engineer the Empire Server?
DP: If you've ever looked at Empire source, you'd see the commands are broken into individual .c files (which the compiler turns into .o files). I
reverse engineered individual commands, compiled them, and that worked. I had them all.
EN: I see. so you had the other .o files? or did you do some fancy
linking?
DP: Nah, Peter supplied all the .o files in empcom.a.
EN: ah. Did he know what you were up to?
DP: Well, he did after a while. I may have mentioned to him my request
for the source together with the implicit threat that I could *get*
the source if I really worked at it.
EN: So are you the original author of most of the .c files in Empire?
DP: I guess it depends on what you mean by "original".EN: So after you had a complete Empire source, what was it called?
DP: I think I called it UCSD Empire. Because I did it at UCSD, naturally.
EN: And what happened after that? You released the code, and others
made some mods?
DP: Yes, I released it to the net, Dave Sharnoff took it and let a cast
of hundreds hack on it. The code was unpleasant (lots of variables
looked like "register int r11" -- the vax history)
EN: When did this happen?
DP: 1986-1987
EN: When did you add sockets, planes, and distribute to Empire? Was
that before or after Sharnoff?
DP: Before. UCSD Empire came complete with them.
EN: but there used to be deliver before distribute right?
DP: Yes, that was original equipment.
EN: I understand that the reason that deli now costs more than dist dates back to that time--because people were being "encouraged" to switch over.
DP: Yep. Players were very conservative.EN: So you introduced UCSD Empire. When did Empire first start
getting version numbers?
DP: Sharnoff version numbering went 0.X.Y. The last version of
Sharnoff's UCSD Empire distribution was 0.9.32, which was played for
quite some time.
EN: then I understand you regained control?
DP: There was a major rewrite for Empire 1.0 which was done at UCB
through the help of some friends of mine. Everyone took various
commands and cleaned them up, creating reasonable variable names,
and all that.EN: So what happened after Empire 1.0?
DP: Oh, well we ran a huge game on a sequent (16 386's -- a monster machine for it's day) with 70-80 players, and beat the bugs out of it. Jeff Wallace ran the game, and helped fix bugs, and that eventually caused Empire 1.1. Then I just released patches. My objective was "a stable bug-free empire" which meant "no new features".
EN: and what was the last version number on that quest?
DP: Empire 1.1.5 (after that, the MERC code was a follow-on release
with the same objective).EN: Now how do we get from 1.1.5 to Chainsaw?
DP: Hmm. I think people at Kent State did stuff, but since I wasn't
in control I didn't keep close track. The major new things I've seen
since 1.1.5 were land units and better automated defenses,
improvements in plane combat, attempts at navigation automation. The
bestpath came from my abortive Empire 2.0 release.
EN: abortive 2.0 release?
DP: Yes, my 2.0 release had interesting things in it, but it had some
serious flaws that required the database code to be rewritten, which
I had no time or inclination to do. There were some really bad bugs
in it.
EN: what were some of the good features in 2.0 that have been lost?
DP: Let's see...well I liked the naval combat code. It made ship
combat like plane combat.
EN: aha. so groups of ships engaging groups of ships...
DP: right. To do that I had to remove mines, which I never liked much
anyway. :-) Anyhow, that's gone now. Very sad.EN: I've heard of BSD Empire.
DP: That's Empire 1.1.5. I originally called it BSD Empire because I was
going to release it with a version of BSD...which was scheduled sometime
in 1990 or so. I think it's called BSD 4.4 now, and actually was
three years late or something.
EN: Do you mean that your version of Empire was going to be released
as a standard part of the BSD Unix operating system like "adventure",
"wumpus", and "rogue"?
DP: that's right. Every BSD would have an Empire. :-) I knew some
people there. Keith Bostic (through the Internet Worm thing).
EN: what's MERC? A modification of BSD that got left behind?
DP: No, mainly bugfixes. I think MERC is standard now. Very important.EN: what do you think of recent directions Empire is taking?
for example, threading, possibly going asynchronious...
DP: well, from my experience with threads, it will be difficult for
people who aren't experienced to debug. Empire right now is massive.
60k lines is a big program. To understand threading, you have to have
a basic understanding of multiprocess models -- that things can change
out from under you. There's one level of understanding --
understanding intellectually -- but there's no substitute for
experience. I'm very concerned that I've gone and made it too tough
to maintain for the weekend Empire hacker.EN: When's the last time you played in a game of Empire?
DP: Well, my last solo country was in a UC Davis Empire game in...1989?
EN: WOW! and last co-rule?
DP: It was with Jim Griffith (an old roommate) in, say, 1991 or 1992?EN: I read in r.g.e that you're working on a BIG new game where
you can pay money per update or somesuch?
DP: yes, that's right, it's for money. basically, when I was working back
at my old company, I was no longer able to play empire anymore, and also wasn't able to find a substitute that was any good. That is, multiplayer, but nonrealtime strategic conquer-the-world game. And so my partner and I went off to write one...to fill this need, as it were.
EN: will it be play-by-mail?
DP: yes, that's the nonrealtime aspect.
EN: so when do you project 1.0.0.0 release date?
DP: That will start happening on Oct 9. This year.
EN: will people be able to connect to something realtime if they want?
DP: nope.
EN: neat. your game could get quite popular. how much will it cost?
DP: it will be around $3.50 per "update", less if updates are more frequent.EN: well I must say I learned a heck of alot I didn't ever know
before! Thank you very much for your time.
DP: Okay. I'm not sure how much of this is useful, but some of it might
well be interesting. It's all history, though. I'd definitely be
interested in reading about Peter and what he had to say, but I'm not
quite sure where he's to be found.
EN: bye
DP: bye
These blitzes reset every day:
Name host port coun pass updates resets --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riverworld random.chem.psu.edu 1618 1-10 1-10 10 min 20:00 EDT Levante zwetsche.ethz.ch 3000 1-15 1-15 10 min 03:30 EDTThe first update is at 20:30 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". One neat thing about the
Riverworld blitz is that every night, the game gets videotaped, and
the next day you can download a video of the game (see "World Wide
Web" for more details). This game now has HUGE nuclear weapons with
bleed to sanctuary nations enabled, so if you connect in the
afternoon, you should be able to try out the big nuke toys.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-request@engg.ksu.edu with the subject line "subscribe".
These are the long term games currently being run:
game name host port country password started ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Outremer essi2.essi.fr 1737 CIA FBI 28 Jun 94 UAlberta Open brule.forsci.ualberta.ca 1617 Visitor Visitor 7 Aug 94 PP Romulus gsbux1.uchicago.edu 1617 Visitor Visitor 16 Aug 94 PP Remus gsbux1.uchicago.edu 3000 Visitor Visitor 16 Aug 94 ARCTIC BLAST isumataq.eskimo.com 13715 Visitor visitor 12 Sep 94 Hidden III spoke.law.cornell.edu 1617 12 Sep 94game name deity updates: frequency ETU's time ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Outremer sp@essi.essi.fr 1/day 64 06:00 EDT UAlberta Open empire@forsci.ualberta.ca 1/day 48 22:00 EDT PP Romulus ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu 1/3 days 60 00:00 EDT PP Remus ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu 1/3 days 60 00:00 EDT ARCTIC BLAST davef@eskimo.com 1/2 days 60 23:30 EDT Hidden III waffen@spoke.law.cornell.edu 3/week 60 18:00 EDTEuropean Empire VI
was won by Arkhangel.Outremer
is french for "Ultramarine". The top two countries have grown by
about 100 sectors since the last posting of the EMPIRE NEWS. Here's
the top of the power chart:sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money Partyland 510 98% 384K 15K 12K 1.5K 22K 72K 5.3K 12K 420 210 110 760K C.L.P.I.A 570 93% 436K 21K 11K 1.3K 13K 71K 8.6K 14K 370 230 150 125K Ephtal 255 93% 183K 7.2K 7.5K 530 7.2K 38K 1.6K 4.1K 160 170 70 105KUAlberta Open
is being run by Bob Beck and Ken Huisman. This game is all but over.
Two weeks ago, Redline had 185 sectors, Khazad'ur 100 and Park Place 130. Here is the complete power chart:sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust food oil pln ship money Redline 405 96% 361K 18K 8.4K 2.6K 17K 77K 4.0K 250K 12K 220 30 200K Khazad'ur 230 98% 210K 14K 7.8K 1.1K 2.7K 51K 5.8K 115K 5.8K 140 30 330K Park Plac 235 95% 198K 9.9K 3.5K 665 6.2K 61K 1.9K 77K 7.7K 120 20 270K Voittamat 4 73% 2.0K 200 0 0 0 350 400 1.2K 250 0 5 30K BigFish 15 66% 2.9K 150 75 10 800 150 14 1.6K 400 0 4 4.1K Annuurn 5 85% 1.7K 250 125 25 350 0 0 200 1 0 7 -3.5K"PuddlePlanet"
As start islands were around 12 sectors apart, it has taken this long
just for countries to discover one another. So far the only fighting
that has occurred is that children attacked CCCP in Remus and
ShaoLinVulcans attacked Napa in Romulus. Players began with small
start islands with limited resources. Updates of the two games are
staggered. The games will run until 15 December at which time the top
20 countries (by power chart rating) taken from both games will be
thrown into a new 128x128 world with larger start islands."ARCTIC BLAST"
has experienced some net problems of late. The temporarly host for
connecting is 204.122.16.3. 3.31 Chainsaw, SLOW_WAR, NEUTRON, log
tech 2.05 (slow), 40 sector start islands, lots of wilderness, 160x80
world-size. As the game has just begun, there's not too much to report.Hidden III
is played on 140x100 medium resources world with 26 sector start
islands. Other countries are "hidden" from you in the sense that:
Power: Will only display your country's power.
Report: Will only report on contacted countries, and no status.
Relat: Will only display contacted countries.
News: Will only show news about contacted countries.
Accep: Will only display contacted countries.
Tele: Only allowed with contacted and deity countries.
Hidden III has the following "non-standard" parameters:
- Ships gain a max of 60% eff per update.
- Civs suffer higher damage from shelling, etc.
- Mob used in an attack is: 10 (normally 5)
- Research must be 50% of tech for nukes.
- Mob costs to place units on a mission is: 32
- Tech is lag base 2.55, with 1 easy tech.
- Tech bleed is higher than normal.
- War declaration costs: $100, not $1000. (sneak attacks are still
$5000)If you want to receive mail regarding new games starting up, send mail
to empire-announce-request@engg.ksu.edu with the subject line "subscribe".
This is the first time I've attempted to write up a list of winners of
past games and I'm *sure* that I've made a few errors. So please send
me email with "EMPIRE NEWS" in the subject line informing me of the
winners of any past games that you know of. Please use the following
format for your submissions:Game Started Ended Winner(s) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- European Empire V spring 1993 Sioux Junkiefest II Apr 94 30 May 94 BLT Hidden II Jan 94 30 May 94 Lothlorien/Mantarr/duckland/ children/Kaos Riverworld Nov 93 23 Jul 94 Mirkwood JunkieFest IV 17 Jun 94 8 Aug 94 Darkland Dwarven Chowder I 17 Jun 94 8 Aug 94 LV426/Pepsi/Fodderland Smorgasboard 22 May 94 8 Aug 94 LV426/Lothlorien European Empire VI 19 Jul 94 30 Aug 94 Arkhangel
These are the projects that Empire coders are currently working on:
project coder language status ------------------------------------------------------------------------- pei.2.0 Ken & Sam perl 1 mo Win3 client Pat Loney C 6 mo Users.Guide Geoff Cashman 1 year WISH LIST Ken Stevens ongoingpei.2.0
Ken Stevens and Sam Tetherow are working together to improve pei. They hope to add many new features which may be found in the "WISH_LIST" file in the package. The big change from the pei 1.* series to the pei 2.* series will be the way pei communicates with the socket. The most recent version of pei is always available on euromath.dk in /pub/incoming.Win3 client:
Pat Loney is writing a Win3 client using winsock and tcpip. He is
currently looking for someone with win3 programming expertise to help him finish the project.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:
Geoff Cashman 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.
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 Sep 16 1994 pei.1.2.1.sh.Z 125 Ken & Sam 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 (not on ksu) GENIE ??? Markus Armbruster Emacs elisp 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 ??? Aug 16 1994 baseemp.tar.Z 7 Sam Tetherow IBM PC C noTo 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.1.2.1 - Perl Empire Interface
is a port of eif to perl based on hpc. It was written by Ken Stevens
with many tools added by Sam Tetherow. Pei has all the functionality
of eif, plus it has built in auto-explore, civ-mover, auto-feed,
distribution, unit management, and mailer tools. The most recent
version of pei may always be found on euromath.dk in pub/incoming.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.gz
He will put version 0.3 on the ksu archive when it is ready. Due to a
recent disk-failure, this could take longer than expected.GENIE - GNU Emacs client
Markus Armbruster has released his GNU Emacs Empire client. It has
the basic functionality of emp_client, Emacs comint mode features
(like shell mode), plus a map window, variable and function
substitution. Function substitution remotely resembles shell
functions, but the functions are written in Emacs Lisp, of course.
Predefined functions include one to define ordinary aliases.
The most recent version is available at:
i44ftp.ira.uka.de:pub/misc/empire/emacs/genie.*
(This description was written by Markus)emp_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).baseemp.tar.Z
is a bare-bones client for the IBM PC which coders can use as a base
for writing their own clients.
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://random.chem.psu.edu/empire/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
If you do not have GNUmake or mkmf on your system, then you will also
need to get
/pub/Games/Empire/tools/Deity/emptools.tar.Z
so that you can compile the server.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) Chad Zabel added HIDDEN mods and new plane mods.
3) Ken Stevens and Chad Zabel worked together to clean up the Empire
options (cutting down the number of options from 75 to 28).
4) Dave Pare has merged the three Empire processes into one
"Monolith" server using a threading package.
5) The Server team has discussed the Wish List and made some preliminary prioritizations of the wish list items.Chad is now running a test game to try to find bugs in the new server.
If it seems to be relatively bugless, then the code will be moved to a
location with RCS, and the Server Team will split up the coding work
for implementing the changes on the Wish List. It is expected, that
the first version (Empire 2.0.1) will be released by the end of
October. From then on, new versions will probably be released monthly
until the Team wraps up it's job at Christmas with Empire 2.1.0.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
Karl S. Hagen maintains an Empire WWW page at:
http://www.engg.ksu.edu/empire/
which includes the Empire FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), back
issues of this newsletter, and a WWW interface to the KSU Empire
software archives.Drake Diedrich maintains an Empire WWW page at:
http://random.chem.psu.edu/empire/
which includes the up-or-down status of currently running games, the
Chainsaw 3.31 info pages (in hypertext format), and reports and mpeg
videos of recent Riverworld blitzes.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/w3Other ftp locations for WWW browsers:
info.cern.ch:/pub/www
ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu:/Web
cs.indiana.edu:/pub/elisp/w3
www.ufl.edu:/pub/vm/wwwThere 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)
David Fish Imzadi ARCTIC BLAST davef@eskimo.com
Drake Diedrich harmless Riverworld dld@random.chem.psu.edu
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)
Monte Freeman Fizban (P.I.N.G) empire@empire.ping.com
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
Stefan Hauser Rohan etienne@imp.ch
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 EvilEmpire (BBN) david_nye@wellfleet.com
Jim Ortlieb CrackHouse PuddlePlanet 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
Chuck Simons (retired) Metzada c/o Chad Zabel
Ken Stevens children (Kaiserdome) stevens@math.toronto.edu
Sam Tetherow(Drazz'zt) Khazad'ur (Dwarven) tetherow@cse.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 with "EMPIRE NEWS" in the subject line.
Ken Stevens a.k.a. Buster, ruler of children
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = The Empire News is a publication of Wolfpack Empire, bringing = = you the best in Empire since 1996. If you would like to add = = content (new games, games ending, new web sites, hints, = = Anno of the Month submissions, etc. to the next edition of = = the Empire News, please contact the editor at = = empnews@wolfpackempire.com = =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Copyright © 1998-2013 Wolfpack. All rights reserved.
Maintained by Wolfpack and Hosted by www.wolfpackempire.com.
Questions and comments