Info: Clients

Level
Basic

Empire Clients
A Brief (and outdated) Introduction to Empire4 Compatible Clients

What follows is a list of clients which support the new Empire4 protocol. All of these clients may be found on the Wolfpack Empire

Archives located at: http://www.wolfpackempire.com

empclient-2.8 and later - full support

If you are using one of these clients, then you should type "toggle inform" once you have broken sanctuary. These clients are fully asynchronous, which means that they are able to respond immediately when an unexpected message arrives from the server. So, for example, if someone sends you a "flash" message, then the message will be printed on your screen immediately. Similarly, with "inform" toggled on, you will be informed the moment a telegram arrives. Note, the server remembers your toggle flags when you log out, so you do not have to type "toggle inform" again the next time you connect.

Most other clients should work fine with the Empire4 server, however they may get confused if a flash message comes in. Users of other clients should keep the "inform" flag toggled off, and ask a friend to send them a "flash" message to see how the client handles it (note, you must declare friendly relations towards them in order to receive the flash message). If the flash message confuses your client, then I recommend you type "toggle flash" to turn flash mode off.

In addition, there are a list of commands which have been added to the server to help the development of clients. They are: See the various info pages on these for complete documentation on how they work and how you can use them to help improve your clients.
 * xdump - Dump everything, designed to replace the following
 * dump - Dump sector information
 * ldump - Dump land unit information
 * sdump - Dump ship information
 * pdump - Dump plane information
 * ndump - Dump nuclear stockpile information
 * lost - Report lost items

In addition, there is a "timestamp" field on each object (sectors, ships, land units, planes, nuclear stockpiles, lost items) that you can use to compare against to keep data between clients and the database in sync with each other. These timestamps are kept in systems seconds, so they should be accurate down to 1 second. Every time an object is changed, it's timestamp is updated.