[net.games.emp] Empire under VMS

bcw (09/07/82)

From:	Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University
Re:	Empire problems

Recently I tried to get the VAX version of Empire running on VMS
under Eunice, and have some problems.  I'm not sure if they are
in the latest version of Empire (though some of the people I've
talked to who are running the VAX version of Empire claim that
they've never seen the problems), or if they are problems in
Eunice, or if I haven't brought the system up properly (I've done
everything the READ_ME file says to do, but there may be some
system-dependent customization necessary to get this beast to run
under Eunice which I've missed).

The major problem is that the empire command seems to get quite
corrupted as it runs.  Empfix seems to show an uncorrupted world
(at least before the Empire command gets through with it - then
things start to go haywire), but even the Empcre command does not
do everything quite right.  Empcre prints out a summary at the end
of the characteristics of the new world, and prints out a number of
Water, Land, and Mountain sectors which correctly sums to the size
of the world, but in addition it includes many Fortresses, Urban
Areas, etc. which don't exist when you take a map.

The Empire command will allow at most one "significant" command
(like move), but then it will terminate (no message, just back to
the % shell prompt) and when you get back on you find that you have
used up an incredible amound of login time and/or BTU's.  Also the
move doesn't seem to take place, and "census" doesn't work.  About
the only significant command which comes even close to working is
the "map" command.  In addition, doing a "nation" gives statistics
for your country (not the Deity) as if the country *were* the Deity!

Has anyone seen anything like this?  Is it possibly due to the fact
that Eunice does not copy file descriptors the way Unix does, or is
it possibly related to the fact that I had to rename a number of
files to make them conform to Eunice's idea of VMS names?  I'm not
much of a wizard on the internals of Empire (is anyone?), but has
anyone done this before or have any idea what's going on?

(naturally this is not of earth shattering importance...)

			Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University