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Link to original content: https://web.archive.org/web/20090328201842/http://www.thousandparsec.net/tp/gettingstarted.php
Thousand Parsec : Getting Started
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20090328201842/http://www.thousandparsec.net:80/tp/gettingstarted.php
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About

Thousand Parsec is a bunch of games based on a common framework for building turn based space empire building games. Some of the games, such as our first demo game MiniSec, are developed by the Thousand Parsec developers themselves. In the near future we hope that other developers will create their own games using Thousand Parsec framework.

Some examples of games which Thousand Parsec draws ideas from are, Stars!, VGA Planets, Master of Orion and Galactic Civilizations. These games are often called 4 X's from the main phases found in the games, eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. If you haven't heard of them, other games which are a bit similar include, Civilisation, Hero's of Might and Magic and Starcraft.

Thousand Parsec includes everything you need for

  • play any of the currently running games,
  • set up your own game using already designed games, and
  • building your own space empire building game.
As Thousand Parsec is a rather large project it is easy to get confused when first starting out. This page has instructions on how to get started with Thousand Parsec.

Getting Started!

Before we can give you instructions on what to do, we need to figure out which part of Thousand Parsec you are interested in. Click the Link below which best describes you.

Most races don't survive finding out what lizard men eat.

I want to actually play a game!

To actually play a game which uses Thousand Parsec you need a client. Any Thousand Parsec client can connect to any Thousand Parsec server.

There are currently two primary clients for playing Thousand Parsec. The tpclient-pywx client is 2d based but gets new features first (such as single player mode), while tpclient-pyogre client is a snazzy looking 3d client.

After you have installed a client you should then head over to the metaserver which lists all the currently running public servers.

You can download the both clients here.

I want to run a game!

There are two servers that can be used, tpserver-py and tpserver-cpp.

tpserver-py

Real Instructions coming soon.

git-clone git://git.thousandparsec.net/git/scratchpad
git-clone git://git.thousandparsec.net/git/libtpproto-py
git-clone git://git.thousandparsec.net/git/tpserver-py

cd scratchpad
sh setup.sh
cd ..
cd tpclient-pywx

cp config.py-template config.py
./tpserver-py-tool --addgame tp minisec [admin email] "A test game"
./tpserver-py-tool --populate tp 0 10 10 2 2
./tpserver-py-tool --adduser tp [username] [password]

# Run the following to generate a turn
./tpserver-py-tool --turn tp

tpserver-cpp

The tpserver-cpp is written in C++. It should compile and run under most unix-like operating systems (Linux, MacOS X, *BSD).

The server is available for download from the download page.

tpserver-cpp has a number of command line arguments and config files. A man page is provided and a sample config file is in the source package. quickstart config files for the available games are also provided in the tarbal. The console when the server starts has a number of commands, and has help and tab completion.

I want to develop a game!

There are a number of small tasks in the TP bugs tracker that could be good for new programmer to start on, get involved and get familar with our code.

Some larger ideas are documented on the Ideas for Programmers page. This is also the place to start for Google Summer of Code project ideas.

Rulesets Development in tpserver-cpp

The tpserver-cpp game server supports plug-in rulesets that define new games. The draft of a book which talks about how to develop new rulesets can be found here.

The latest version of the document can be found in git here.