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 print 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 print 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
63 The server can take a -e config file as a command line option so that
64 it will read a specific config file. If not, it will default to
65 looking for a file econfig in the built in data directory, but it
66 won't mind if one is absent. Similarly, util/files and util/fairland
67 et al all take a -e config file to run from a different config.
68 Thus, to start two games on the same host, you might have
73 emp_server -e econfig1
78 emp_server -e econfig2
80 econfig1 might have the lines
83 info "/empire/info.nr"
86 and econfig2 might have the lines
89 info "/empire/info.nr"
92 You only need the lines in that file that you require to override the
93 compiled in definitions, however having all the definitions may help
94 you to understand what is on and off. You could do this with
96 pconfig econfig1 > e1 && mv e1 econfig1
97 pconfig econfig2 > e2 && mv e2 econfig2
99 which will fill in all the missing options and values with their defaults.
106 The simplest way to describe this is to step through how a new option
109 1. Think of the option name, say, "DUMB".
110 2. In src/lib/global/options.c define an integer and set it to 1 or 0
111 as appropriate. This is usually done as
119 3. At the end of that file, add an entry into the table so it is
120 configurable. This is done with a line like
122 { "DUMB", &opt_DUMB },
124 Make sure the table is still terminated by two NULL values!
126 4. In include/optlist.h add an external definition of this variable
130 5. Now the variable is defined, and configurable through the option
131 keyword in the config file. So you can go ahead and make changes
132 elsewhere in the code. This normally looks like
135 pr("You're being dumb\n");
137 pr ("You're being really dumb\n");
140 but it may call subroutines, return early from functions or whatever.