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
19 To find out the current configuration, the simplest method is to
20 compile up util/pconfig and the run it. It can be run either with no
21 arguments, in which case it will printout in config format the current
22 compiled in options. Otherwise with a file containing a configuration
23 it will first read in this file, and overright any copmiled in
24 variables and then printout the merged options.
26 So the first method shows you whats compield in, the 2nd how a config
27 file would modify this.
29 Blank lines are ignored, as are lines starting with a # character.
31 Most of the options are straight forward, they take either a string
32 (quote using " to get spaces in it) or a number - integer or floating
33 point depending on the option.
37 sets the internal privname variable to that string, and
39 sets the empire port to 7777.
41 sets the internal floating point number for btu building rate,
44 The only other type of variable currently defined are the
45 options. These may be specified as one or more lines starting
46 "option" and turned off with the keyword "nooption".
57 To turn off an option that is compiled in, you can similarly have
65 As a check, pconfig will printout some of the internal file names as
66 comments at the end just to check they are in the right place.
68 The server can take a -e config file as a command line option so that
69 it will read a specific config file. If not, it will default to
70 looking for a file econfig in the built in data directory, but it
71 won't mind if one is absent. Similarly, util/files and util/fairland
72 et al all take a -e config file to run from a different config.
73 Thus, to start two games on the same host, you might have
83 emp_server -e econfig2
85 econfig1 might have the lines
90 and econfig2 might have the lines
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 lib/global/options.c define an integer and set it to 1 or 0 as
115 appropriate. This is usually done as
122 3. At the end of that file, add an entry into the table so it is
123 configurable. This is done with a line like
124 { "DUMB", &opt_DUMB },
125 Make sure the table is still terminated by two NULL values!
127 4. In h/optlist.h add an external definition of this variable
131 5. Now the variable is defined, and configurable through the option
132 keyword in the config file. So you can go ahead and make changes
133 elsewhere in the code. This normally looks like
136 pr("You're being dumb\n");
138 pr ("You're being really dumb\n");
140 but it may call subroutines, return early from functions or whatever.