empserver

Wolfpack Empire - mirror of https://git.pond.sub.org/empserver http://wolfpackempire.com/

Find a file

Markus Armbruster 90de24d038 New path finder We've been using Phil Lapsley's A* library to find land paths since Chainsaw 3. It's reasonably general, and uses relatively complex data structures to conserve memory. Unfortunately, it occasionally leaks a bit of memory (see commit `86a187c0`), and is unsafe for long paths (see commit `e30dc417`). To speed it up, v4.2.2 added two caches: the neighbor cache and the path cache. The neighbor cache attempts to speed up lookup of adjacent sectors. It allocates 6 pointers per sector for that. In my tests, this is more, sometimes much more memory than the A* library uses. See commit `7edcd3ea` on branch old-astar for its (modest) performance impact. The path cache attempts to speed up the update's computation of distribution path costs. There, A* runs many times. Each run finds many shortest paths, of which only the one asked for is returned. The path cache saves all of them, so that when one of them is needed later, we can get it from the path cache instead of running A* again. The cache is quite effective, but a bit of a memory hog (see commit `a02d3e9f` on branch old-astar). I'm pretty sure I could speed up the path cache even more by reducing its excessive memory consumption --- why store paths when we're only interested in cost? But that's a bad idea, because the path cache itself is a bad idea. Finding many shortest paths from the same source has a well-known efficient and simple solution: Dijkstra's algorithm[]. A is an extension of Dijkstra's algorithm. It computes a single path faster than Dijkstra's. But it can't compute many shortest paths from the same source as efficiently as Dijkstra's. I could try to modify Phil's code to make it compute many shortest paths from the same source efficiently: turn A* into its special case Dijkstra's algorithm (at least for distribution path assembly), then generalize it to the many paths problem. Of course, I'd also have to track down its memory allocation bugs, and make it safe for long paths. Instead, I'm replacing it. This commit is the first step: a rather unsophisticated implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm specialized to hex maps. It works with simple data structures: an array for the hex map (16 bytes per sector), and a binary heap for the priority queue (16 bytes per sector, most of it never touched). This is more memory than Phil's A* uses, but much less than Phil's A* with v4.2.2's caches. [*] To fully exploit Dijkstra's "many paths" capability, we need to compute distribution paths in distribution center order.		2011-04-12 21:44:22 +02:00
doc	Update change log for 4.3.26	2010-05-24 18:38:35 +02:00
include	New path finder	2011-04-12 21:44:22 +02:00
info	License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later	2011-04-12 21:20:58 +02:00
m4	Rename m4/my_termlib.m4 to m4/my_terminfo.m4	2009-04-25 13:57:45 +02:00
man	License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later	2011-04-12 21:20:58 +02:00
scripts	License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later	2011-04-12 21:20:58 +02:00
src	New path finder	2011-04-12 21:44:22 +02:00
.gitignore	Fix unintentionally broad patterns in .gitignore	2008-02-07 08:01:53 +01:00
bootstrap	Replace other occurences of git-FOO by git FOO	2008-12-03 07:57:14 -05:00
compile	Replace the build process. The new one requires GNU Make, Autoconf	2005-12-20 20:25:35 +00:00
config.guess	Replace the build process. The new one requires GNU Make, Autoconf	2005-12-20 20:25:35 +00:00
config.sub	Replace the build process. The new one requires GNU Make, Autoconf	2005-12-20 20:25:35 +00:00
configure.ac	License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later	2011-04-12 21:20:58 +02:00
COPYING	License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later	2011-04-12 21:20:58 +02:00
CREDITS	Fix trailing whitespace	2008-09-17 21:31:40 -04:00
depcomp	Replace the build process. The new one requires GNU Make, Autoconf	2005-12-20 20:25:35 +00:00
GNUmakefile.in	License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later	2011-04-12 21:20:58 +02:00
INSTALL	Replace the build process. The new one requires GNU Make, Autoconf	2005-12-20 20:25:35 +00:00
install-sh	Replace the build process. The new one requires GNU Make, Autoconf	2005-12-20 20:25:35 +00:00
Make.mk	License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later	2011-04-12 21:20:58 +02:00
README	License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later	2011-04-12 21:20:58 +02:00

README

Welcome to Empire 4, code-named Wolfpack.

Empire is a multi-player, client/server Internet based war game.
Copyright (C) 1986-2011, Dave Pare, Jeff Bailey, Thomas Ruschak,
Ken Stevens, Steve McClure, Markus Armbruster

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License (in file
`COPYING'), or (at your option) any later version.

See file `CREDITS' for a list of contributors.

Directory `doc' has additional information.  File `doc/README'
describes the files there and what they talk about.

To build the server and set up a game, follow the steps below.

(1) Unpacking the source tree

    If you downloaded a tarball, unpack it.

    If you cloned a git repository, run bootstrap.  This requires
    recent versions of Autoconf and Automake to be installed.

(2) Building a server

    Prerequisites: IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (POSIX.1-2001), GNU make, a
    curses library, Perl, and either nroff or GNU troff (`groff').

    See file `INSTALL' for detailed compilation and installation
    instructions.  Quick guide for the impatient: run configure; make;
    make install.  The last step is optional; everything runs fine
    right from the build tree.

    If make fails without doing anything, you're probably not using
    GNU make.  Some systems have it installed as `gmake'.

    Solaris supports POSIX.1-2001, but you need to set up your
    environment for that.  Try passing
        SHELL=/usr/xpg4/bin/sh PATH=/usr/xpg6/bin:/usr/xpg4/bin:$PATH
    to make.  See standards(5) for details.

(3) Creating a game

    * Create a configuration for your game.  make install installs one
      in $prefix/etc/empire/econfig ($prefix is /usr/local unless you
      chose something else with configure).  You can use pconfig to
      create another one.

    * Edit your configuration file.  See doc/econfig for more
      information.

      Unless you put your configuration file in the default location
      (where make install installs it), you have to use -e with all
      programs to make them use your configuration.

    * Run files to set up your data directory.

    * Run fairland to create a world.  For a sample world, try
      `fairland 10 30'.  This creates file ./newcap_script, which will
      be used below.  You can edit it to change country names and
      passwords.

      Check out fairland's manual page for more information.

    * Start the server.  For development, you want to run it with -d
      in a debugger, see doc/debugging.  Do not use -d for a real
      game!

    * Log in as deity POGO with password peter.  This guide assumes
      you use the included client `empire', but other clients should
      work as well.

      For help, try `info'.

      To change the deity password, use `change re <password>'.

    * Create countries with `exec newcap_script'.

    Your game is now up!

Naturally, there's more to running a real game than that, but that's
beyond the scope of this file.

Please report bugs to <wolfpack@wolfpackempire.com> or via SourceForge
http://sourceforge.net/projects/empserver (registration required).

For more information or help, try rec.games.empire on Usenet, or send
e-mail to <wolfpack@wolfpackempire.com> and we'll try to answer if we
can.  Also check out our web site at "http://www.wolfpackempire.com".

Have fun!

Wolfpack!