Merc Release 1.0 Friday 18 December 1992 Kahn michael@web.berkeley.edu Hatchet mitchell@ocf.berkeley.edu Furey mec@garnet.berkeley.edu === Copyright and Disclaimer Thank you for choosing Merc Mud! Merc Mud is a Diku Mud with many enhancements and contributions. See our credits.txt and wizlist.txt for acknowledgements to all our contributors. Maybe someday you'll be in there too! Merc Mud is Copyright 1992, 1993 by Michael Chastain, Michael Quan, and Mitchell Tse. You can use our stuff in any way you like whatsoever so long as our copyright notices remain intact. If you like it, please drop a line to mec@garnet.berkeley.edu or michael@web.berkeley.edu. This is free software and you are benefitting. We hope that you share your changes too. What goes around, comes around. Original Diku Mud is copyrighted by the Diku folks, and their license is in doc_diku/license.doc. === What's in This Release This is our first release, and we didn't write a bunch of docs for it. Briefly, here's what's included: doc_diku The original diku docs. doc_merc Our merc docs. lib Tinyworld and auxiliary files. log Game logs. save Character save files. src All the source. The log and save directories are initially empty. === How to Install First, group with your highest level Unix guru, and have him or her tank. Merc is easier to install than other muds, but every site is different. (1) Get the release merc_10.tar.Z from one of these fine ftp sites: ucbvax.berkeley.edu ferkel.ucsb.edu wuarchive.wustl.edu (2) Unpack the release: uncompress merc_10.tar.Z tar -xvf merc_10.tar (3) Go into the src directory. Edit the Makefile to reflect your local C compiler name options. We use "gcc -O -c -Wall". Note: the source uses ansi C prototypes. (4) Run make. This recompiles everything: make -k >&! make.out (5) Fix all the errors listed in make.out. These will mostly be incompatible library declarations. Our declarations are for a Sun 4 running SunOS 4.1.2 with gcc and a Dec 5900 running Ultrix and GCC. You may have to fix them up for your own system. (6) Run "merc -g 9000 &" to start the game on port 9000 in god creation mode. Everyone who creates a char will be a god! (7) Shut the game down when you have enough gods. :) Use the "startup" script to start the game for normal operation. (8) Drop us some e-mail at one of these addresses. Tell us how you like it! mec@garnet.berkeley.edu michael@web.berkeley.edu mitchell@ocf.berkeley.edu (9) Of course you're going to change the title screen, info files, and so on. Don't just erase all the "Merc" references everywhere, ok? Leave us some lines of glory in the title screen and elsewhere. === KNOWN PROBLEMS The classes are not fully balanced, and the game is somewhat unbalanced in favor of mobs. :) There are other minor things, but they're not going to stop you from running Merc mud and having hundreds of mud-crazed players show up every night! If you find something bad, and fix it, or if you add something new and wonderful to the code or the worlds, we'd appreciate a copy. We just gave you 30,000 lines of fast, tight, reliable code and a megabyte of worlds ... now it's your turn. Join in and help make Merc the best mud on the planet! Of course, we credit all contributions ... look at the credits we already have. === OUR FUTURE PLANS We're still developing Merc. We are releasing again on June 1, 1993. We might release before then, depending on our mood and how many contributions we get. Original release, 12/18/1992. Updated for GCC4 compatibility 2/22/2006 by Samson. This archive was damaged. Most of utility.c and all of weather.c have been salvaged from Merc 2.