SunderMud 2.1a
--------------
File Updated: November 24, 2003
By:           Lotherius (lotherius@yahoo.com)

=== For the impatient

Read the "README.BEFORE.COMPILING" file. It isn't there for nothing.

There is are no Immortal accounts setup by default.

To create an immortal account:

1) Login to the game, and create a Master Account and character.
2) Quit the game. This will save your file.
3) Edit your pfile in the player/ directory. (Its name is the name of
   the character)
4) Change the level on the line that begins "Levl " to 110.
5) Change the security on the line that begins "Sec " to 9.
6) Edit the accounts.DAT file in the data/ directory. Be very careful here.
7) Find your email address (If you were the first to login, it will be the
   second entry).
8) Go down 2 lines, and there will be 4 numbers. Change the first of these
   to 45. This will set your account to Implementor level.
9) You may delete the first account (sample@samplehost.com) if you like
   after this. It is okay to leave it, since nobody can access it without
   a proper password (which doesn't exist).

At this point, you should be able to login with full rights.

=== About this README

This readme is for SunderMud 2.1a. All other README files and various
LICENSE files can be found in ./docs/ and ./docs/old-docs/.

It is required for you to read and agree to everything in the file
./docs/LICENSE before you use this program.

=== SunderMud 2.1a

This is Release 2.1a of SunderMud. 

=== Version History
2.1a: These are the changes from Sunder 2.1 to 2.1a:
	Severe Bugfixes:
	* Groups were very unstable. Hopefully less so now :) (many people had problems here, the biggest bug)
	* declan would crash the mud in some cases. Fixed.
	* clan petition join bug - fixed thanks to Dregnus (jholt@acom.us)
	* If a socket blocked, it would disconnect the offending user. Fixed.
	* Several files were being left open during the boot process. Would show as a crash after numerous copyovers. Fixed.
	* Fixed a bug that set a decay timer on any items that went through the "put" command. Woops.

	Minor Bugfixes:
	* Notification sent possibly to wrong clan on declan and setclan. Fixed.
	* Typo command also logs to wiznet bug channel now so online imms can see notices.
	* MXP Users can no longer disable colour with colour command There was a reason for this.
	* More changes to ignore broken zMud's Pueblo support (MXP is preferred for zMud users)
	* Some possible bugs in notication fixed.

	Features:
	* Intermud-3 (i3) network has been implemented. Edit the config file in i3/ directory.
	* clients.c New Functions (neither used in 2.1, but you can find uses for them):
	  tag_secure - sends secure line tag for MXP or </xch_mudtext> for pueblo.
	  tag_close  - closes secure line or pueblo tag.
	* Can now do "wiznet all" to turn on all wiznet events.
2.1: This release mostly just fixes a few minor bugs, and adds more complete MXP 
     support, as well as adding Pueblo back to the MUD.

    1) MXP, MSP and Pueblo support enhanced strongly beyond that available in 2.0. 
    Images may now be sent to the client inline on both MXP and Pueblo clients (Need 
    a very recent version of ZMud for these features on MXP, or the Pueblo client). 
	Pueblo was returned to the code because of recent development of the
	open-source Pueblo client that has made it again a viable option. (To see how to 
	send images, see the code in clients.c).         
	2) Functions have been added to support easy addition of "context menus". 
	Again, the related code is in clients.c and act_click.c. Currently, only 
	characters (mobs and players) have context menuing enabled, but wrapper 
    code makes it easy to add more. The code in clients.c handles the actual 
	client requirements for the clickable links, allowing quick development
	supporting either MXP or Pueblo.
	3) A typo in strings.h prevented compilation (How'd that get in there?)
	4) Makefile changed. No longer launched from that silly Make.Sunder script. 
	It also will now compile on Cygwin with minor changes (documented in the 
	Makefile itself). Also puts object files in a subdirectory to prevent main 
	src directory clutter.
	5) MSP & MXP functions previously located in act_comm.c moved to clients.c.
	6) Option added for is_safe to be quiet (boolean "backtalk" ).
	7) Added function to list all shops in the game "shoplist".
	8) Cleaned up some of the WIN32 defines in comm.c (Still doesn't compile under 
	Win32 without work. Windows platforms need to use the Cygwin environtment which 
	does work).
	9) Various other barriers to compiling and portability have been addressed,
	partly in documentation, otherwise in configuration.
	10) Fixed a crash bug with istat.
2.0 Beta 2: Many changes from 1.0, attempts to address many of the problems
            of the first 1.0 release, as well as provide a more complete
            product that delivers on the promise of Version 1.0.
            I would like to say I could document all the changes that led to the 
            release of 2.0, but with 5 years of hacking on the mud, I can't list
            everything. Help changes inside the mud shows only a small portion of
            the work that went on.
2.0 Beta 1: Seen only by a few, basically the same as Beta 2, but had some
            portability problems when compiled on Linux platforms (it was
            developed on FreeBSD).
1.0         1996 Release. Incomplete and buggy. Hopefully we've improved.
            upon the Dark Times mud code, which was a modified Rom 2.3.

=== Support

No guarantees of support, but do feel free to contact me at
lotherius@yahoo.com. If I have time, I'll help you out, and maybe put a
fix into the main distro.

You may also now contact me on the sunder_chat or sunder_code channels on 
intermud-3. These have been pre-configured inside sundermud to be "chat"
and "code" respectively.

You'll have to connect to the i3 router first before using the channels.

=== Supported Platforms

Linux:   Most recently compiled in Suse 8.2 with Gcc 3.3
Cygwin:  Well tested. Change the OSEXT variable in the makefile .exe for this
         and you should be set. The startup script runs in cygwin although it
         gives an error or two at the start. You won't get corefiles, so if
         you need to debug, run the mud with "insight".
FreeBSD: Primary Development platform for 2.0. At that time, no errors on
         compile. The shell scripts do not work on FreeBSD. 2.1 has not
         been tested here.
Windows: SunderMud once compiled with Borland 5.5, but this was prior to the
         2.0 Beta release. Win32 compiling is currently known to be broken,
         but is possible with some work. The best bet is to run the mud under
         Cygwin if you're using windows.

=== About Formatting

This is a hotly debated contest in many camps: How do you properly format C
code.

For the first several years I worked on Sunder, I stuck by using PICO. My
reasons were simple: Emacs was too difficult, VI too arcane, and nothing
else seemed to work over telnet correctly.

However, I now use Jed. It did not work in telnet for me before, but I have
finally found a decent telnet client that with a little minor tweaking to
the key definitions, now operates Jed (as well as others) over telnet with
little to no problems.

Using Jed prompted me to fix the formatting which had suffered years of
abuse and inconsistent tabstops on various platforms and different coders
from Merc to Rom to Sunder.

The worst insult to the formatting came when I attempted to use GNU "indent"
once, and thinking it worked fine didn't have an un-indented copy of the
source to go back to that contained any of my recent changes, so I stuck
with the messed up formatting. Apparently "indent" doesn't respect neatly
formatted tables ( most of which I've fixed now ) and by default it breaks
lines at a very short length.... and these linebreaks result in some very
wierd outcomes sometimes if the indent level is deep ( one statement per
line type stuff.)

I have now set Jed to "K&R" style indentation, and have reformatted all the
files using this new setting as best as I can. I may have missed some of the
strange linebreaks however. I highly recommend Jed as its auto-indent
features are very slick and will keep us all on our toes, plus it has syntax
hiliting. If you're having to telnet from windows, try "Dave's Telnet"
(dtelnet) which can be found on sourceforge, and it will emulate the
terminal better than anything I've found.

Good Luck!

=== If you have problems (Linux/FreeBSD):

If the mud crashes, the included startup script will dump a corefile in the
areas directory, with a number appeaned to it so that if you crash many times,
you will not lose any previous corefiles.

To read this, cd to the areas directory and type:
gdb ../bin/sundermud
Once gdb is open, type:
core <corefile>

Depending on your version of Linux/FreeBSD, your corefile may go by another
name which either includes the process ID (newer Linux versions) or the name
of the executable which generated the core (FreeBSD)

The screen should show some information about the crash. If you are
positive that the crash was not caused by changes you made to the code,
email me at: elf_inside@operamail.com

Include the output of GDB as well as the results of typing "up" several
times in GDB (this backs up to previous commands in the stack) and any other
information you know how to get out of GDB.

Warning! Documentation in the DOCS directory could be way out of date, I have
not maintained it and many changes have been made to sundermud.

=== If you have problems (Win32):

The win32 port was quick-n-dirty and has received VERY minimal testing. It
was done for demonstration purposes mostly, and if you wish to use it, be
prepared to find your own debugging tools :)

=== If you have problems (Cygwin):

The "stackdump" file isn't very useful. You may wish to refer, however to the
cygwin newsgroups on "gmane" (www.gmane.org) for help on debugging here. The
best way is to run the mud under the "insight" program, but this may or may
not have a performance hit, and you can't use "insight" with the startup
script.