Let me first give brief introduction to Atlantis and some basic terms that are used in the project. Atlantis is a multi-player turn based game, and is suitable for off-line play involving large numbers of players. Play-by-email is a common way to play Atlantis games, though its off-line nature is suitable for web-based play, or other off-line methods you can think of. Atlantis games are generally highly interactive; each player's game will depend on many of the other players in the game, and how they interact, whether they cooperate or compete.
Generally, turns will run at some interval; for a play-by-email game, one turn per week is common. When a turn is run, a report is generated for each player. In the time between turns, the player submits a set of orders, which define his actions in the upcoming turn. Once the time between turns has elapsed, the next turn is run using the orders submitted by each player, a new report is generated for each player, and the process repeats. Note that Atlantis does not specify the manner in which reports are received or orders submitted. The gamemaster will commonly use another program to automatically handle this via email, but there are many other methods in which a game can be run.
The Atlantis Engine is the basic program which is responsible for running a game of Atlantis; it contains code to process orders, run turns, and generate reports. An Atlantis Rule-Set must also be used to run a game; a rule-set contains code which defines the world, the items in the world, and the other specific rules which control the actions a player can take in the game. Note that you need both an engine and a rule-set to run a game of Atlantis.
The source code for Atlantis is now distributed under the GNU Public License. Visit this document for more information on how this applies to Atlantis, or visit the GNU home page for full details on the GNU project.
The Atlantis Project has a discussion forum set up on Deja-News for discussion of the Atlantis source code, and other project related topics. Whether you are actively working with the Atlantis source-code, running Atlantis games, or just interested in the Atlantis Project, I encourage you to use this forum as the primary communication channel on Atlantis.
Last Modified: December 19, 2002
This page maintained by Geoff Dunbar (gdunbar@prankster.com).