1 This is a short note on the empire configuration stuff. Some of this
2 is for deities to enable them to configure things, some of it is for
3 coders to see how this stuff works.
5 Julian Onions <j.onions@nexor.co.uk> 15/7/95
8 Also, the Empire config files are now self-documenting (to a point.)
9 Each option/variable now has a comment associated with it to hopefully
10 make life easier on deities wanting to change things.
12 -- Steve McClure, 10/21/1998
18 To find out the current configuration, the simplest method is to
19 compile up util/pconfig and the run it. It can be run either with no
20 arguments, in which case it will printout in config format the current
21 compiled in options. Otherwise with a file containing a configuration
22 it will first read in this file, and override any compiled in
23 variables and then printout the merged options.
25 So the first method shows you what's compiled in, the 2nd how a config
26 file would modify this.
28 Blank lines are ignored, as are lines starting with a # character.
30 Most of the options are straight forward, they take either a string
31 (quote using " to get spaces in it) or a number - integer or floating
32 point depending on the option.
36 sets the internal privname variable to that string, and
38 sets the empire port to 7777.
40 sets the internal floating point number for btu building rate,
43 The only other type of variable currently defined are the
44 options. These may be specified as one or more lines starting
45 "option" and turned off with the keyword "nooption".
56 To turn off an option that is compiled in, you can similarly have
64 As a check, pconfig will printout some of the internal file names as
65 comments at the end just to check they are in the right place.
67 The server can take a -e config file as a command line option so that
68 it will read a specific config file. If not, it will default to
69 looking for a file econfig in the built in data directory, but it
70 won't mind if one is absent. Similarly, util/files and util/fairland
71 et al all take a -e config file to run from a different config.
72 Thus, to start two games on the same host, you might have
77 emp_server -e econfig1
82 emp_server -e econfig2
84 econfig1 might have the lines
87 info "/empire/info.nr"
90 and econfig2 might have the lines
93 info "/empire/info.nr"
96 You only need the lines in that file that you require to override the
97 compiled in definitions, however having all the definitions may help
98 you to understand what is on and off. You could do this with
100 pconfig econfig1 > e1 && mv e1 econfig1
101 pconfig econfig2 > e2 && mv e2 econfig2
103 which will fill in all the missing options and values with their defaults.
110 The simplest way to describe this is to step through how a new option
113 1. Think of the option name, say, "DUMB".
114 2. In src/lib/global/options.c define an integer and set it to 1 or 0
115 as appropriate. This is usually done as
123 3. At the end of that file, add an entry into the table so it is
124 configurable. This is done with a line like
126 { "DUMB", &opt_DUMB },
128 Make sure the table is still terminated by two NULL values!
130 4. In include/optlist.h add an external definition of this variable
134 5. Now the variable is defined, and configurable through the option
135 keyword in the config file. So you can go ahead and make changes
136 elsewhere in the code. This normally looks like
139 pr("You're being dumb\n");
141 pr ("You're being really dumb\n");
144 but it may call subroutines, return early from functions or whatever.