mac4's software

PyIPC serves as a Python interface to the Unix Inter-Process Communication services. Python can send messages and share memory with programs written in any language. If all programs are Python programs, then it is possible to send python pickled objects as messages which greatly simplifies things.

The three main components (messaging, shared memory, semaphores) are all accessible with the basic interface. If you need a special feature, you may need to use the C library directly. See the README in the package for details.

I have been using the code for a couple months now, and it works fine. I have received a few suggestions for improvements that have been added. There is no version for the package since it pretty much worked since the first time I released it. I do make changes infrequently, so I list the date it was last modified here: Thu Feb 28 21:34:43 PST 2002

For those of you who are not used to downloading unix tar.gz files... Download the file, and try the following command:

            prompt $ tar xvfz PyIPC.tar.gz

Then go into the directory and read the README for more detail...

            prompt $ cd PyIPC   
            prompt $ less README

Get the package! PyIPC.tar.gz

P.M.M.P.S. stands for Persistent Massively Multi-Player Strategy game. The goal is to create a strategy game, such as Warcraft, which is user programmable, such as RoboWars. The architecture will support player numbers never seen before because it will be fully distributed to handle a growing world size. Most importantly though, this is a game for programmers. Each 'unit' in the game will be controlled by a program written to act as the brain. Units will be able to communicate, reproduce, acquire goods, fight, and many other things. And finally, the game rules can be changed for different games to allow for different play. Kill 'em All, Capture the Flag, Get Rich; whatever the game administrator feels like.

Note that all of the statements above are forward looking statements. PMMPS is only in very early prototype stages. The pmmps group has lofty goals, and we are pretty damn sure we can accomplish all of them; it may just take awhile.

In addition to the project having lofty technical goals, we are also encouraging the growth of gaming on the unix platform. We won't put much effort toward getting this to run on Windows. If you are interested in such a project, feel free to take our code and modify it. This project's source code it freely available, following the Open Source tradition.

If you are interested in the project, you can checkout our page hosted on sourceforge.net. The page there is just an introduction, but it does have a link to our project page where you can find information about our mailing lists, CVS tree, and so forth.

I started pmmps because I wanted to play a game like pmmps. I was playing Starcraft one day and realized that I don't like the act of playing the game, I like the idea of how to solve the puzzle to beat the other guy. When you play against the computer, it is still exciting, but they have advantages over you, and disadvantages as well. I wanted to be able to write an AI component to play against the computer. It just becomes much more interesting when you have hundreds of people's scripts playing against each other. And that is the goal! This is a labor of love, and I would like to see others get excited about it. Send me an email if you too would like to see a game like this come to fruition.

leeps.timemachine is a java component of a larger project I have written for the Learning and Experimental Economics Project at UC Santa Cruz (leeps). It allows us to have many clients connected to a server and have accurate knowledge of when events happened on the client machines. For example, if two players click a button at the some time, the delay in the network or the difference in client clocks may make it so one player is always favored. The timemachine package allows you to track when everything happened in universal time.

The timemachine also allows you to send messages to the clients and gaurentee that they will get the message at the time that you want them to. For example, if you want all clients to start their countdown clock at the same universal time, then timemachine can take care of it for you.

This code was written under a grant paid for by the National Science Foundation, so it is technically the property of any United States tax payer. So the code is yours to use and modify. That said, I was not really encouraged to release this code, but was told it would be tolerated. The other parts of the project would be of little use to anyone, so I have decided to not to distribute them.

This package is part of a much larger project, so I don't really have a good compilation system set up for it. All the code is in java, so it should be pretty easy to compile if you have experience with java.

Enough said, get the code.

problems, questions, suggestions? mac4-wp@theory.org