From Thousand Parsec Wiki

Contents 1 Overview 1.1 Protocol 1.1.1 Protocol libraries 1.2 Clients 1.3 Servers 1.3.1 Rulesets 1.3.1.1 Milestone rulesets 1.3.1.2 Working rulesets 1.3.1.3 Designs in progress 1.3.2 Further Reading 2 Artwork pages 3 How To pages 4 Other pages

Overview

Thousand Parsec project could be divided into several parts. This is a quick overview of them, to help you find a way around the project and see how it all fits together.

Protocol

One could say that the Thousand Parsec protocol is the basis on which everything else in Thousand Parsec project is built on. It defines the features that are available to ruleset writers, it defines how servers should work and what clients should be able to handle and how clients and servers communicate.

Protocol libraries

Once you have a protocol defined you need some code, which implements various objects from the protocol. You also need some functions to handle these objects and various information. For example how to get planet properties and how to pack data for transmission over the internet. This code is usually contained in a protocol library, which can then be used by clients and servers.

Clients

Now that we have a library that can “talk” as defined in the protocol we also need an easy way to make the library actually communicate. That's where a client comes into play. A client is usually a nice graphical user interface which makes it easy for a player to connect to a game server, see status of his galactic empire and issue orders to various objects in the game.

Servers

Games that people play are hosted on computers which are running special programs which are called game servers. To be able to provide various types of game-play each server can load separate modules, each containing different set of rules.

Rulesets

At the beginning of each turn a server has to execute orders from players and compute the new status of objects. Rulesets define, inside boundaries of the protocol, what are the properties of the universe and objects in it, how do they behave and interact. Victory conditions are also part of the ruleset.

Milestone rulesets

Milestone rulesets are special rulesets designed to exercise certain features of Thousand Parsec.

• MiniSec, the first milestone game. Simple test of being able to issue orders and perform simple combat.
• MTSec, the second milestone game. It is designed to both be a fun game and to exercise the object design capabilities of the framework.

Working rulesets

• RFTS Clone

Designs in progress

Links to ruleset designs in progress.

• Traders
• TIM Trader
• Codename Elvis

Further Reading

• Getting started with development
• Ideas for Programmers

Artwork pages

Pages describing needed artwork for projects/rulesets.

• Art for MTSec

Pages describing aspects surrounding media.

• Media.gz
• Thoughts on Mapping objects to media in the server

How To pages

Pages which describe how to do something specific.

• Getting started with development
• Compiling tpserver-cpp
• Setting up tpclient-pywx development environment on Ubuntu
• Setting up tpclient-pywx development environment on Mac OS X
• Setting up tpclient-pywx development environment on Windows
• Steps to do a release of tpclient-pywx

Other pages

Until they get sorted, other pages can be linked from here:

• Game Publications
• 4X on Blogs
• NewLayout of website
• FAQ - Where the FAQ will end up.
• LCA08 Dev Meeting - Discussions at LCA08 about various TP things.