Portable Space Engine

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INTRODUCTION

The Portable Space Engine is a source code add-on to a number of text based multi-user games. It provides a three dimensional event driven environment. The aim of this code is to enhance the role playing arena to include space travel, commerce, and the odd battle here and there.

The main source framework was written by Cameron Smith, and is based in part on previous work by Jason Skiles and Donald Bindner. The code is under the GNU General Public License, which more or less means it's free to use, so long as any modifications made to it are also freely available to anyone who wants them (though you should read the licence carefully).

Current development is being done by Cameron Smith and Mark Cooke, though any contributions are more than welcome.

REQUIREMENTS

The basic requirements for using the Portable Space Engine are as follows.

• A machine running a varient of Unix to host the site. (Note that Nick Gammon has combined PennMush and PSE for Windows).
• A working C compiler, and associated utilities, including the 'patch' program.
• A copy of the source code for either TinyMUX, TinyMUSH or PennMUSH.
• A copy of the source code for the Portable Space Engine.
• A copy of the sample PSE database script, unless you want to build from scratch.

All of these requirements can be met at little to no cost, by downloading the appropriate files from the internet. See the links section for pointers

INSTALLATION
will make the assumption that you have an installation of unix up and running, a working C compiler, and a working version of gzip and tar. The current step by step process is included in the Portable Space Engine distribution. A summary would run as follows.

• Uncompress, and untar the TinyMUX, TinyMUSH or PennMUSH source code into a directory.
• In a different directory, uncompress and untar the Portable Space Engine source code.
• Create a symbolic link called 'space' from the server source directory to the Portable Space Engine source directory.
• Apply the appropriate patch from the PSE patches directory to the server.
• Check that the patch applied correctly by searching for rejected patch hunks.
• Configure and build the server.
• Start the server, and check that the PSE appears in version information.

For Further Reading,