The Grendel Project - Win32 MUD Server (c) 2000,2001 by Michiel Rook
= Last minute information =====================================================
1. Introduction
It has been a month since the 0.3.3 release, and here is 0.3.4!
The biggest changes since 0.3.3:
- the OLC system is pretty much back now, still a wee bit unstable,
some features missing, but already quite usable, with one big
cool plus: spell checking! (only english language supported now)
To use this, please download dicts.zip from the website,
as this contains the needed dictionaries.
- Some beautifications on info commands by Xenon
- Integrated debug routines, helps us (and maybe you) to trace
wicked bugs, also features a nice Dead Thread Detector (tm);
should players blow up your server, the system will detect this,
catch & kill the thread and set the offending player in a linkless state.
- race format has been revamped and updated, with a corresponding raceinfo
command - this has also opened up the way to a few nice features
like spell/skillslots etc.
- holywalk, peek, keylock, last; to just name a few cool new commands.
- timers are much more stable (and much more generic, but that's code issue),
enabling better recovery from a bug, and better tracing of such a bug.
- string sharing (with the string hash table) was fixed, reducing memory usage
- inventory handling was updated
- copyover more stable
- tintin/jmc and other clients should work again
2. Features
Grendel requires Winsock2 to be installed. Windows 98, Me, NT4 and 2000
all come with this preinstalled, Windows 95 users will have to download
an update from the Microsoft site.
- Copyover system: Grendel can respawn itself without dumping all the
connections, e.g. users stay online during the reboot process,
more info below
- IPv6 support: Grendel natively supports the new internet protocol,
however, only on NT4/2000 machines that have the MSRIPv6 preview
from Microsoft installed. Don't worry if you don't have this,
Grendel will auto-detect your settings and use them appropiately
- Way better OOP design: greatly increases stability, looks better,
works better
- Old code removed: no more pchars, thus no more buffer overflows,
no more wicked crashes, no more strange things - lot clearer,
lot better
- Tracking system: not totally finished, but tracking people
already works pretty nice
- New immortal commands
- Hashing of important tables: commands/socials tables are
searched faster, and use less memory
- Smaug area convertor: converts most information from a smaug
.are file to the Grendel format
- Password encryption: player passwords are encrypted using
the MD5 Message Digest Algorithm
- OLC support: design and builds your area without leaving the MUD!
3. The team
One new member has been added to the team since the 0.3.3 release,
which makes it a 5 man team, with currently on board:
Michiel Rook (Grimlord) manager, website, code
Hemko de Visser (Nemesis) code, field testing
Roeland van Houte (*new*) (Xenon) code
Oscar Martin (Jago) code
Jeremiah Davis (Woodstock) documentation
4. Compiling & running
The executable comes with the zipfile, but if you wish to (re)compile grendel.exe,
use the compile.bat file, located in the root dir. You can ofcourse also use
the Delphi IDE.
After that, simply type 'grendel' and hit ENTER. Grendel defaults to port 4444,
so get a telnet client and connect.
5. Copyover
Grendel sports a neat copyover system, which I think is relatively uncommon on
Win32 servers. The copyover procedure also supports copying a new grendel executable
into the dir and starting that (hence the name :P).
This only works if you start grendel from the base directory and compile new
executables in a bin\ subdirectory. This is already done in the compile.bat and
other scripts in the distribution, so your best shot would be to keep it that way.
The copyover system is very itchy, which means that if *anything* goes wrong,
it immediately dumps everything and starts a normal reboot instead - there shouldn't
be any endless loops.
6. Known problems
As of this release, most of the OLC commands are back. Any stability issues with
these will be fixed ASAP.
There are still a few things left unfinished, like the affects system.
These, and other outstanding issues, can be found in todo\todo.txt.
It could be that there still are other things not re-implemented from the
original source, afaik everything is back in there, but if you see anything
missing, contact me about it.
Again, there were a lot of stability fixes, and the server has become even more
skilled at fixing its own problems, so uptime should have been increased greatly.
However, I'm sure there are still some things left that could bring the server
down to its knees. If you find such a thing, notify me about it, and I'll get
on it ASAP.
You will very likely need Delphi 5 to (re)compile the source. Delphi 4 might
work, but then again, it just might not. Delphi2/3 are seriously obsolete
and should be removed from your harddisk anyway.
7. Contact information
Announcements on new versions etc. will be made available to:
grendel-announce@egroups.com
For general questions, please refer to the mailinglist:
grendel-mudserver@egroups.com
Please use this mailinglist as much as possible, as I do not
have the time to respond personally to each and every message.
However, for personal contact (and postcards!) use:
druid@takeover.nl, or:
Michiel Rook
Louis Saalbornlaan 63
3584 GA Utrecht
The Netherlands
