Hello,

this is the play by (e)mail game Prometheus. Everything except the
graphics has been made by Mathias Kettner (prometheus@mathias-kettner.de)

Graphics have been made by Michael Dragovic.


The good things about Prometheus are:

- It's a really interesing strategical game for 8 to 20 players

- It can be played via mail or email, it creates printouts
  in PostScript and/or HTML

- It creates high-quality printouts

- It is finished and complete!

- It has run in a commercial environment for several years,
  hundreds of players have played it for money, so it has very few bugs!

- It has a complete and very nice players' manual

- You can play in English or German. The game if fully translated.

- It runs on GNU/Linux. It's written in C++.

- It's totally free and open source

- It's fully automizable


The bad things about Prometheus are:

- The source code is written in German language.

- The build system is quite ugly

- It's tested only on SuSE Linux. But this should 
  be no great problem, since it once run even under DOS and
  Windows and it only need ncurses and libstdc++, no other
  libs, no graphical stuff.

- There is no developers documentation

- There is only few game administration documentation

- I have no time to develop the game further.


So maybe there are some things where you can come into play...

To make life a little bit easier for you, here are is a small
guide for getting started to run the game:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

How to compile prometheus:

Do a 'make' and a 'make install'. Sorry for not having an autoconf
build system.

You also can create an RPM by issuing:

make rpm

This is the preferred way. You do not need to be root for making the rpm.
You can install the rpm with 

rpm -hUv prometheus-1.2.1-3.i586.rpm

For this you *must* be root, of course.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Creating a game

For creating a new game you have first to choose a name, for example
'game1'. Then you create a world with:

prometheus-en game1.session -w game1 50 30

That world will be 50 squares around the equator and 30 squares
from north to south.

You will get:

game1.session: The session file. It stores the name of the game and 
the current turn.

game1/: A subdirectory conaining all data of the game

emailkeys.game1: An empty file. It will contain keys for sending 
orders via email.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Adding players

You can add players by:

prometheus-en game1.session

You will get a menu:


                               P-R-O-M-E-T-H-E-U-S




              >>>     A ... Add new player                     <<<
                      W ... Generate world maps               
                      F ... Change square                     
                      Q ... Quit program                      


Wenn adding a player you have to enter the coords where he starts.
You'll find a number of maps in the game1 directory where you can
choose good starting positions. Choosing starting positions must
always be done manually.

After choosing coords, enter the remaining paramters:

    Player  Attributes  Nr. 1            Empire Attributes

    Name:____________________              Abbreviation: EMA
 Surname:_______________                Name of  Empire:________________________
  Street:_________________________      Title of leader:________________________
    City:_________________________       Name of leader:________________________
   Phone:____________________           Name of capital:________________________
 Account:________
   email:____________________________________________________________________


          Printout                             Starters

    HTML-Printout: no__            1. Development:Wheel_______________
 Path symbol (%p): _______________ 2. Development:Wheel_______________
      Packer (%z): _______________ 3. Development:Wheel_______________

 CTRL-E: Finish editing           Modify values with cursor keys <- and ->


In HTML-Printout you probably want to select "yes". Otherwise only a PostScript-
Printout is created.


After adding one or more players you menu looks like this:



                               P-R-O-M-E-T-H-E-U-S




              >>>     A ... Add new player                     <<<
                      C ... Change player attributes          
                      R ... Remove player                     
                      T ... Table of players                  
                      S ... Start setup turn                  
                      W ... Generate world maps               
                      F ... Change square                     
                      Q ... Quit program                      


             Choose with cursor keys/enter or by typing the letters


----modified--------------------------------------------------------------------
                      Game "game1" in turn 1 with 2 players
                  Messages for all players in game1/privat/001
                    0 commands of 0 players have been entered


Now you can start the first turn by pressing S. Printouts will be
created. You'll find them in the game directory.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Starting a turn

When starting the next turn just invoke prometheus-en game1.session.
You can enter player's order here. You also can put emails containing
players orders into the directory emailin. Prometheus will scan them
for correct oders.

The email must contain something like this:

Customer:10
Emailkey:887754981199-926141768481-379
Game:demo
Gametype:PROMETHEUS
Turn:4
Position:EMJ
Address:promo@arlg.co.uk
Commands:

STARTOFCOMMANDS

EMJ
CPJ BU1:SL BU2:MP BU3:MP BU4:CG BU5:MP BU6:MP BU7:MP BU8:MP BU9:MP BU10:MP
CPJ1 BU1:SL BU2:MP BU3:MP BU4:CG BU5:MP BU6:MP BU7:MP BU8:MP BU9:MP BU10:MP
EMJ1 MVS FC
EMJ2 DF CS
EMJ3 MVN DF CS
EMJ4 MVS,S MVNW EXW
EMJ5 EXW
EMJ6 MVS,S,S EXE

ENDOFCOMMANDS


The Emailkey is unique for each player an for each turn. You'll find it in the
file emailkeys.game1. The HTML-printout contains a web form creating an email
with the upper syntax and has all parameters including email key already encoded,
so the player has just to enter the orders and push the send button.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry, for not having a better manual for you. It's just I have so
few TIME! Anyway: please drop me a mail if you are interested in
the game and need help.

Have fun with the game!


Mathias Kettner
prometheus@mathias-kettner.de