I'm thinking as much server development as active servers with
games. (A look at stalled/abandoned clients tells me the story on the
other side, but you can have a perfectly active wargaming community
without having fancy KDE-based clients for desktops and tablets.)
I've been hovering on the sidelines for a while, but I now have far
too much free time, a Linux development+gaming box and an interest in
seeing if Empire is the correct direction to move in.
Good to see the blitzes and repeating games still being played.
Lots of changes to the server too.
Marcus,
Good to see the blitzes and repeating games still being played. Lots of changes to the server too.
Tom (aka Ski)
Good to see the blitzes and repeating games still being played.
I just learned this weekend that the "changeling" blitz is
exactly that -- running a different option/rule set every game.
D'oh!
Lots of changes to the server too.
And I fired up my client again after about two years just because
"empserver" is one of the projects where I learn how to use git(1) :-)
[It's a tight race between empire and git which of them has more
options to learn :-) ]
I have been wanting to get into Empire. I am using the bare-bones
command line client, out of preference and lack of options on Linux. I haven't managed to do much more than claim a little territory in the
daily blitzes, but I thought about writing up an informal tutorial
covering my understanding as I gain it. It would be a synthesis of old
guides and new information (like how "res" is no longer automatic
shorthand for "resources").
I think if there is better documentation and introductory resources,
then it will likely help with attracting more players and
volunteers. I am sort of in the same boat as Jonathan, far too much
free time right now, so I will try to get started on some
stuff. First, I need to figure out how to play.
I'm thinking as much server development as active servers with
games. (A look at stalled/abandoned clients tells me the story on the
other side, but you can have a perfectly active wargaming community
without having fancy KDE-based clients for desktops and tablets.)
I've been hovering on the sidelines for a while, but I now have far
too much free time, a Linux development+gaming box and an interest in
seeing if Empire is the correct direction to move in.
Patches are welcome! Although I have to admit that I'm still sitting on
a rather nice one that adds readline support to the client, because it >doesn't quite work for a few corner cases, and making it work has turned
out to be a bit of a puzzle.
jonathan.day.jobs@gmail.com writes:
I'm thinking as much server development as active servers with
games. (A look at stalled/abandoned clients tells me the story on the
other side, but you can have a perfectly active wargaming community
without having fancy KDE-based clients for desktops and tablets.)
I've been hovering on the sidelines for a while, but I now have far
too much free time, a Linux development+gaming box and an interest in seeing if Empire is the correct direction to move in.
Empire has been made and is kept alive 100% by volunteers. It isn't as lively as it used to be, because we've done a bad job attracting
volunteers.
We have the Wolfpack Fever series of repeating games, eight per year.
People play them and have fun, but they can't be compared to a real
thematic game.
We haven't had a thematic game in quite some time. Volunteer deities
wanted. I'd be happy to advise and assist. I think this is our most
serious immediate problem.
The Empire community has always congregated right here, in r.g.e. Unfortunately, Usenet has become moribund. Few people find us here, and
even bona fide Empire players don't bother to keep their Usenet access
going beyond Google's service (which is at the "better than nothing"
level, to put it kindly). Moving elsewhere risks splitting the forum
unless we can bridge it both ways somehow.
I've been maintaining the server since 2003. Others have made useful contributions, but the bulk of the work is mine. Nowadays, my Empire
hacking happens in spurts, with long pauses. We need to get more people involved in the code.
The server implements a system of game rules. Thus, we get two kinds of issues: with the implementation and with the rules.
The implementation part is in decent shape. A lot of effort has gone
into catching the kind of abusable bugs that used to plague Empire.
These have become quite rare now. Of course, there's more to do (there always is, in any useful program), but priority has shifted away from implementation bugs.
We now have the beginnings of a test suite. It needs lots of work.
In my opinion, the rules need substantial work, but we have to be
careful to keep it Empire. There's a lot of accidental complexity that doesn't contribute to the game. I could (and perhaps I should) write
several essays on this. Not today.
There's a lengthy list of known bugs[*], but it's a bit of a dump. If
we had a real server coding community going, we'd have to do a better
job tracking issues. Anyway, patches welcome. Bug reports, too.
Our documentation is in an archaic format: roff, with our very own
macros. Few people understand this stuff. Formatting to HTML is a
total hack. It should be converted into a more accessible format.
A Wiki could be useful. Ideally supporting the documentation's format directly, so we can keep documentation editable in the Wiki, too. I'd
like the Wiki to be backed with git, to make merging back into the
server code easier.
We have a web site[**]. In its current form, it was originally created
by Geoff Cashman, and he also maintained it for quite a while. Then it drifted along on auto pilot until I broke down and renovated it in 2013. Another opening for volunteers.
Yet another cool project that never got beyond the dreaming stage is
"Empire Bootcamp": create a series of canned scenarios for solo play, to serve as a tutorial.
Writing smart clients is hard. The most complete one is still WinACE.
Would be nice to have it run on non-Windows systems, too. Other than
that, I can't tell you what kind of work it needs.
Vita brevis, ars longa.
[*] https://sourceforge.net/p/empserver/bugs/
[**] http://www.wolfpackempire.com/
On 05/02/16 02:58, Markus Armbruster wrote:
The Empire community has always congregated right here, in r.g.e.
Unfortunately, Usenet has become moribund. Few people find us here, and
even bona fide Empire players don't bother to keep their Usenet access
going beyond Google's service (which is at the "better than nothing"
level, to put it kindly). Moving elsewhere risks splitting the forum
unless we can bridge it both ways somehow.
There's always eternal-september.org + your favorite news reader (Thunderbird, nn, etc.)
Yet another cool project that never got beyond the dreaming stage is
"Empire Bootcamp": create a series of canned scenarios for solo play, to
serve as a tutorial.
I found empire as a curiosity, but I'm still determining which bit of
the elephant to start eating.
How does one get started?
The Empire community has always congregated right here, in r.g.e. Unfortunately, Usenet has become moribund. Few people find us here, and
even bona fide Empire players don't bother to keep their Usenet access
going beyond Google's service (which is at the "better than nothing"
level, to put it kindly). Moving elsewhere risks splitting the forum
unless we can bridge it both ways somehow.
Yet another cool project that never got beyond the dreaming stage is
"Empire Bootcamp": create a series of canned scenarios for solo play, to serve as a tutorial.
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 296 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 76:36:37 |
| Calls: | 6,657 |
| Calls today: | 3 |
| Files: | 12,203 |
| Messages: | 5,332,734 |
| Posted today: | 1 |