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Door Setup — Running Immortal Barons

This guide is for the BBS operator (the sysop). It explains how to set up the game on your board, and how to join an inter-BBS league. Players do not need to read this.

What you need

The game is one program: immortal-barons. It runs as a native door under BBS software on any platform Go supports.

The game keeps all its files in one data directory (default ./data). Point the -data option at it.

Run immortal-barons -help to see all the command-line options. The Command Reference explains every option in one place.

First-time setup

You must create the game once before anyone can play. Run -reset to open the Configuration Editor (starting from built-in defaults), choose your settings, and seed the world. Until this is done, the game reports "no game found" and refuses to start, so a caller never lands in an empty, unplayable world.

immortal-barons -reset -data /path/to/data

To create the game without the editor — using the current config.json as-is — use -reset-from-config instead.

This opens the Configuration Editor: a menu of every game setting (turns per day, protection turns, land and market settings, interest and investment rates, tax and region limits, costs and attack settings, number of AI barons, game length, and more). Change what you like, then press S to save config.json and start a fresh game, or Q to cancel. On a brand-new install there is nothing to clear, so this just writes your config and seeds the starting world. See "Starting a fresh game" below — it is the same command.

Registering the door

Set up the game as an external program (a "door") in your BBS software.

  • Run -set-dropfile once to tell the game which drop file your BBS writes. The supported formats are DOOR32.SYS, DOOR.SYS, PCBOARD.SYS, and DORINFO1.DEF. The Synchronet wiki keeps an index of drop file formats. DOOR32.SYS is the one most modern BBS software writes and the best choice when you have it. The setting is saved in door.json (separate from the game settings, so it is never changed by a reset). Until you set it, the door refuses to start. Only the door needs it: the web front-end and -local play do not read a drop file.
  • If you are updating from an earlier version, run -set-dropfile once after you install the update. Earlier versions did not have this setting.
  • Point the game at the drop file with -dropfile, or let it search the current directory for the configured format.
  • The caller's handle from the drop file becomes the name of their realm.

A typical command line (use the full path to immortal-barons only if it is not installed on your PATH):

/path/to/immortal-barons -dropfile /path/to/DOOR32.SYS -data /path/to/data

Example: Mystic BBS

In Mystic's menu editor, add a command of type D3 (Exec DOOR32 program) and set its Data field to the command line below. Mystic writes the dropfile into each node's own temporary directory and gives you %P for that directory (with a trailing slash), so the same line works for every node:

/path/to/immortal-barons -dropfile %Pdoor32.sys -data /path/to/game-data

Two things to note. Mystic writes the file name in lower case (door32.sys), which matters on Linux because file names there are case-sensitive. And the game's data directory should be a separate directory from the BBS's own files.

Before the first caller connects, seed the game:

/path/to/immortal-barons -reset -data /path/to/game-data

This opens the settings editor (see "First-time setup" above); when you save with S, it creates the data directory if it does not exist and writes config.json and the starting world into it.

How the game talks to the caller

The game connects to the caller in one of two ways, chosen automatically:

  • On Linux, macOS, and the BSDs, it reads and writes the caller through standard input and output. Synchronet (in its EX_STDIO mode) and Mystic hand the connection to the door this way, so this is the normal case. You do not need to set anything up for it.
  • On Windows, it attaches directly to the caller's socket. The socket handle is on line 2 of DOOR32.SYS (a Windows "winsock" handle). This is how a Windows door normally works.

Serial (FOSSIL) doors are not supported. Configure your BBS for a socket or stdio door.

Note: a sysop has run the Windows socket path with a live caller and reports that it works. If you run the game as a Windows door, please still report how it goes.

Character set

The game sends CP437 by default — the character set traditional BBS terminals expect. A door does not auto-detect the character set (only -local does), so it uses that default unless you pass -utf8 or -cp437. Set the option that fits your board (non-English languages need -utf8).

If your board serves callers on different character sets, and your BBS software can tell a program the caller's character set (for example, by setting a shell variable when it invokes a door), you can wrap the door in a small script that passes -utf8 or -cp437 to match each caller.

See the Character Set guide for the options and how to test each one.

Daily maintenance

Maintenance advances the game one day for every day that has passed. It lets the AI barons take their turns, runs pirate raids, and refreshes each player's turns.

You usually do not need to schedule this. Maintenance runs on its own the first time a player logs in on a new day. If several days passed with no play, the next login catches up all of them at once. A board that is not played every day needs no nightly event.

Run it by hand only if you want the game to move forward while no one is playing:

immortal-barons -maint -data /path/to/data

This is useful for a league board, where the AI barons, pirates, and inter-BBS packets should keep to a set schedule even on days when no local player logs in. For a solo or local game, you can skip it.

Starting a fresh game (reset)

There are two ways to start the game over. Both clear all empires (players re-create their realm the next time they log in) and re-seed the AI barons on a fresh day one. Neither picks a winner. Each one saves the old world to world.json.bak in the data directory first, so you can restore it if you reset by mistake.

Reset and choose the settings:

immortal-barons -reset -data /path/to/data

This opens the Configuration Editor starting from the built-in defaults, so it also resets config.json to those defaults. Adjust any settings, then press S to save and start the fresh game, or Q to cancel (which leaves the game untouched). Because it writes a clean default config.json, you can also use this to produce a config file to copy and reuse.

Reset and keep your current settings:

immortal-barons -reset-from-config -data /path/to/data

This starts the fresh game using the config.json you already have. It does not open the editor and does not change your settings. Use it when you are happy with the current settings and only want to clear the world.

The config file is portable

All the game settings live in config.json in the data directory. This file can be copied. You can back it up to another place, and you can copy it into any data directory to reuse the same settings there. To carry your settings to a new install or a fresh game, copy your saved config.json into the data directory, then run -reset-from-config.

Adding AI barons to a running game

To drop more AI opponents into a game that is already going, without resetting:

immortal-barons -add-ai N -data /path/to/data

This adds N new AI barons and exits. It leaves existing players and AI alone. (To set the AI count for a brand-new game instead, use the Configuration Editor via -reset.)

Inter-BBS (league) play

A league is a group of boards whose players compete against each other. To join one, turn on inter-BBS play and give your board a name.

Edit config.json and set:

  • "IBBS": true — turn on the inter-BBS menus.
  • "BoardID" — a short unique name for your board (your "planet").
  • "InboundDir" — the directory where packets from other boards arrive.
  • "OutboundDir" — the directory where the game writes packets for other boards.

Ask your League Coordinator for the node list and add it to your data directory as ibnodes.dat (see the format below).

How packets move (you choose the schedule)

The game never moves files between boards. It only reads and writes packet files in your inbound and outbound directories. Moving the files between boards is your job, and you choose how often it happens.

The inter-BBS step is:

immortal-barons -planetary -data /path/to/data

It reads every packet in your inbound directory, applies it, and writes new packets to your outbound directory. It also runs automatically inside -maint when inter-BBS play is on.

A common setup:

  1. A caller plays the game.
  2. After the caller exits, or on a schedule you pick, run -planetary.
  3. Your transport script copies each file from your outbound directory to the inbound directory of every other board (over FidoNet, a sync tool, scp, a shared mount — whatever you use).
  4. The next -planetary run on each board reads and applies those files.

Run it as often as you like. More often means shorter travel times between planets. The in-game "Travel Times" screen shows players how recently packets have arrived, so they know how fast operations move.

The node list: ibnodes.dat

The node list names every board in the league. It uses the same simple layout as the original BRE BRNODES.DAT. Each board is six lines, and a blank line separates boards:

1
Avalon
363/277
Orlando
FL
USA

2
Pier 7
106/477
Houston
TX
USA

The six lines are: node number, board (planet) name, network address, city, state or province, and country. Board number 1 is the League Coordinator.

League-wide rules (Coordinator only)

The League Coordinator sets the rules that must match across the whole league. These are all the fields marked with a star in the Configuration Editor: turns per day, protection turns, game length, land market and daily land, interest and investment rates, tax and region and player limits, buy-military mode, and the cost, damage, and reward levels. Set them in the Coordinator's own config.json, then broadcast them to every board:

immortal-barons -league-config -data /path/to/data

This writes a settings packet to your outbound directory. Each member board adopts the settings on its next -planetary run. Member boards accept these settings only from the Coordinator's board (node 1), so no one else can change the league rules. Only the Coordinator's board may send this packet.

The Coordinator

There are two different "coordinator" ideas, and they are not the same thing:

  • League Coordinator — the sysop of board number 1. This person keeps the node list and hands it out to the other boards.
  • BBS Coordinator — a player your board elects. Players vote in the System menu, and the player with the most votes gets the Coordinator menu. Votes can change at any time.