Otherware/Otherware_1_SB_Development.iso/amiga/games/empire22.lzh/Doc/Hosting

Text File | 1990-08-26 | 13.5 KB | 289 lines

            Amiga Empire by Chris Gray - Hosting an Empire Game


Hosting an Amiga Empire game is fairly straightforward in the normal cases,
and can be done on a floppy based Amiga with no expansion memory. Hosting a
large game requires a hard disk because of the size of the data files.
The first step is to decide where you want the data files to go. All of the
files will be generated when the world creation program, EmpCre, is run.


Summary of Hosting

1) Decide where the game files are to go. For a first try, just have them
    in the 'Game' directory.

2) Create the world. For a first test world, a 16 x 16 world will do just
    fine. From a shell, CD to the Games directory and type:

        EmpCre < 16x16

    From WorkBench, open the Game drawer and double click on the 16x16
    icon. A window will be opened for output messages. In either case you
    will get a lot of output as EmpCre tries to randomly create a world as
    defined by the parameters in the '16x16' file. The world will be 16
    sectors high by 16 sectors wide, and will have 3 countries, a deity
    called 'god' with password 'godpassword', and space for 2 regular
    countries. The country creation password will be 'creationpassword'.
    A compressed map of the created world will be shown. The 'I's mark rich
    iron deposits, the 'G's mark rich gold deposits, and the 'X's mark
    sectors rich in both iron and gold. The data files for the world will
    be created. Any files left over from a previous game in the same
    directory will be deleted.

    It is possible that EmpCre will fail to satisfactorily create a world,
    due to lack of connected space for santuaries, lack of accessible rich
    deposits, etc. In this case, no map will be shown and no files will be
    created. Just run EmpCre again to try again with the same parameters.

    If you run EmpCre directly, it will prompt you for all of the
    parameters it needs. Everything defaults, so you can just hit RETURN
    for each one. These parameters are described in more detail later.

    NOTE: If you are creating a world in the same directory as a previous
    world, you MUST delete the old news and propaganda files yourself.
    The best way to do this is to type:
            delete news.#?
            delete prop.#?
    If you fail to do this you may get news articles that are nonsensical,
    or that cause great confusion.

3) Run the server. From a shell, type

        Run EmpServ

    From WorkBench, double click on the EmpServ icon. There will be some
    disk activity as the server starts up, and reads in the basic world and
    country information. It will then be ready to accept requests from
    client programs.

4) Run client programs. From a shell, CD to the Progs directory and type:

        Run SEREmp
        Empire

    From WorkBench, find and open the Progs drawer, then double click on
    the SEREmp icon and then the Empire icon. When the first one is
    started, it will have to load 'Empire.libary' from your LIBS directory
    (you did copy it to there didn't you?), so there will be a fair amount
    of disk activity. It is not necessary to run both SEREmp and Empire,
    but doing so shows the multi-player nature of this release of Amiga
    Empire. SEREmp will attempt to open the serial port (it will need
    DEVS:serial.device in order to do this), for a 2400/1200/300 baud
    connection at either no or even parity. If you have a modem connected
    to your regular serial port, you should see the DTR light come on.
    Empire will open a window for WorkBench, or use your shell window. You
    should see:

         Running Amiga Empire Version 2.1 by Chris Gray & David Wright

         Enter country name:

    At this point you can either log in as country 'god' with password
    'godpassword', or create a new country with whatever name and password
    you want. Empire will then ask you for the country creation password,
    which is 'creationpassword' if you used EmpCre as above. File 'Intro'
    contains a log of a sample session of starting up a new country.

    NOTE: a couple of commands in Amiga Empire, notably 'map', 'power', and
    'radar', require a large amount of stack space. The client programs
    check the stack size given to them and will not run if it is less than
    25000. My guess is that this is at least twice as much as needed, so it
    should be quite safe.

5) Shut down the game. If you are running Empire locally, type 'bye' to
    exit. This will leave you in the shell or will close the window and
    leave you back in WorkBench. SEREmp and the server will still be
    running, however. To shut them down, from a shell type:

        EmpShut

    From WorkBench, double click on the EmpShut icon. In a second or two
    all SEREmps running and the server should shut down. If someone is
    connected to a SEREmp and is playing, the shutdown of that SEREmp and
    of the server will be delayed until that player leaves.

    From the shell, the effect of an EmpShut can also be done by sending a
    control-C signal to the server. Issue the 'Status' command to see the
    various CLI processes running (WorkBench tasks do NOT show up), and
    note the CLI number for EmpServ. Use the 'Break' command to send the
    signal, as in

        Break #

    where '#' is the appropriate CLI number. This technique can also be
    used to shut down individual SEREmps. In cases where it appears a
    SEREmp may have locked up, or you want the remote user to get off NOW,
    you can use 'Break # f' to force an immediate disconnect. This is not
    a very nice thing to do, however, and may not work with all non-
    standard serial ports.

6) Logfile, etc. Empire writes a logfile, normally 'RAM:empire.log',
    showing connections, disconnections and country changes that have
    occured. It is also possible that error comments from the server could
    appear. You can delete this logfile between runs, or you can let it
    accumulate, in order to collect statistics on country usage, serial
    port usage, etc. When you want to restart the game from where it left
    off, just go back to step 3 above. Note that there is no problem with
    leaving the SEREmps and the server running at all times - they use very
    little CPU time.


File Space Needed

The files would normally be all in one directory, but the capability exists
of storing them in several directories, and across multiple disks. Files
used by the game are:

    empire.files - lists paths to the various files/directories. Normally
        not present, in which case everything defaults to the current
        directory.
    empire.world (.5K) - various constants defining the world, its weather,
        update factors, damage factors, etc.
    empire.country (13K) - an array of 45 country structures. Each country
        structure contains the country name, password, realms, user flags,
        wealth, fleet indicators, etc.
    empire.sector (varies) - an array of the sectors in the world. Each
        sectors occupies about 40 bytes, so a 16 x 16 world will have a 10K
        sector file, and a 256 x 256 world will have a 2.6 Meg file.
    empire.ship (varies) - an array of the ships in the world. Each ship
        occupies about 20 bytes. A small game will probably top out at 100
        ships or less (2K), but a large world can have thousands.
    empire.fleet (varies) - an array of the fleets in the world. Each fleet
        occupies about 200 bytes. Most countries use no more than half a
        dozen fleets at the most. A very long game with a lot of naval
        activity could have more, however.
    empire.loan (varies) - an array of all loans offered in the world. Each
        loan occupies about 17 bytes. Loans are very infrequent.
    empire.offer (varies) - an array of all sales offers in the world. Each
        offer occupies about 4 bytes, so this file is quite small.
    empire.power (varies) - the current power report for the game. It is
        quite small (about 80 bytes per active country).
    telegrams.XXX - a telegram file for each country. The size will be
        determined by the maximum size of undeleted telegrams the country
        has. These are only a problem for a country that hasn't deleted them
        for a long time (perhaps the player has left) and the country is
        under heavy attack. In these cases a deity can log on to the country
        and delete the telegrams.
    news.XXX - news files. News items are automatically generated by the
        program as events occur. Each item is small (8 bytes), and a new
        file is started for each "day". Old news files can be deleted - if
        someone asks to read them they will get no news.
    prop.XXX - propaganda files. Each item can only be at most 900 bytes,
        and a new file is created for each day. They may be deleted if
        desired.

Four files can be created in the base directory and will be used by Empire
if they are present. They are:

    empire.conMess - printed as soon as a connection is made, before the
        country name prompt is given

    empire.logMess - printed after a country has logged in

    empire.logMess - printed when a country logs out

    empire.bulletin - printed as the first part of the newspaper

    empire.access - printed if someone tries to log in, but is unsuccessful.
        It is used to tell people how to join the game.


Alternate File Placement

If you do not have space in one directory for EmpCre, EmpServ and all of
the data files for a world (plus all of the online help files in a
directory beside the one the game files are in), then you can split them up
by using an 'empire.files' file. Also, you can move EmpCre and EmpServ to
different directories, and then tell them where the Game directory is.
Running a 128 x 128 world on a two-floppy system should be possible. To
have EmpCre and EmpServ in a directory other than the base directory which
will contain the game files, you can run them directly from a shell, or,
from WorkBench, you can use the WorkBench Info menu item to add a Tool Type
that looks like:

    PATH=directory

Note that if 'directory' does not end in a ':', it must end in a '/', since
EmpCre and EmpServ just add their specific file names onto the end of it.
For example, if you want to use a floppy in drive DF1 for the files, you
would use:

    PATH=DF1:

If you wanted to use directory 'Empire.Game' on your 'DH0' hard disk
partition, then you would use:

    PATH=DH0:Empire.Game/

You must use the same path for both EmpCre and EmpServ, or the server won't
be able to find the files that EmpCre created. Also, the default path for
find finding help files is '/Help/', so the help files are normally in a
directory called help which is beside the directory the game files are in.
Similarly, the doc file directory defaults to '/Doc/'.

To split the files across multiple directories or drives, you must use a
text editor (e.g. Ed or Emacs) to create a file called 'empire.files' in
your base game directory. It should contain one path per line, with the
paths being given in the following order:

    full path for the log file
    full path for the world file
    full path for the country file
    full path for the sector file
    full path for the ship file
    full path for the fleet file
    full path for the loan file
    full path for the offer file
    full path, ending in '/' for the help directory
    full path, ending in '/' for the doc directory

The telegram, news, and propaganda files will always be in the same
directory as the 'empire.files' file. As an example, here is an
'empire.files' file which puts the log file on RAM, the sectors file on
DF1, the help and doc directories on DF2 and everything else on DF0:

    RAM:empire.log
    DF0:empire.world
    DF0:empire.country
    DF1:empire.sector
    DF0:empire.ship
    DF0:empire.fleet
    DF0:empire.loan
    DF0:empire.offer
    DF2:empire.help/
    DF2:empire.doc/

With this file, you would want the PATH to be 'DF0:'.

The client programs SEREmp and Empire, along with EmpShut, do not need to
know where the data files are since they communicate only with the server
through an Amiga Exec message port. There are many options that you can
give to SEREmp, so it is described in a separate file. Similarly, the world
creation parameters of EmpCre are described separately. If Empire is run
from a shell, it can have a single flag, '-a', which tells it that it is
running in a non-standard environment, typically over the serial port using
the AUX: device. Normally, it uses control sequences understood by the
Amiga console windows to turn off character display when reading passwords.
This likely does not work for a terminal connected over the serial port (it
locks the keyboard on mine!), so with '-a' specified, no password blanking
will be done. This same flag applies to EmpCre as well.

Running a test game while the main game is still up.

If you need to run a test game while keeping the main Empire game running,
you can use the "-t" flags when starting EmpServ and Empire. Note that you
MUST have a seperate area, and seperate files for the test game. You can
NOT have 2 EmpServ's running which use the same files. (Of course help
and doc files may be shared).

Options for EmpServ

If you are running a fast game (2 or 3 sec update periods), it is quite
possible for you to fill the entire disk up with news files, as every 48
update periods count as one day. To prevent this, you may use the option
NONEWS on the command line or from the workbench. This will prevent the
server from creating any news files, but if you are playing a game that
fast, you probobly don't need to read the news anyway.