			BSD Empire 1.1

	Copyright (c) 1989, David Pare, Peter Langston


This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but without any warranty of any kind.  It is supplied "as-is".
It may be freely redistributed, but any changes to the original
must be identified and marked as such.  The copyright notices
and credits in all sections of this code must be left intact.

For instructions on how to install the code, and how to create
a world, look in the doc subdirectory.

This game was originally decompiled from the Feb 1985 PSL
(PSL = Peter S. Langston) empire distribution.  Since then, it
has been written, overwritten, and rewritten to the point where
much of the original (decompiled) code has vanished.  Specifically,
this version has gone through a major rewrite, with all of the
low-level code written from scratch.

If you have a problem with Empire, and want some semantic changed,
change it yourself!  In the past, changes to the master copy of the
source came fast and furious, and were mostly untested.  A stricter
policy is now in force, with major semantic changes requiring
significant playtesting, discussion, and documenation before being
integrated to the main game source.

Without doubt there are dozens if not hundreds of bugs left in the game.
Empire was playtested at Berkeley this past summer (1989), but many bugs
still remain.  Major bugs (something that causes a core-dump or other
dramatic termination, or results in players being able to arbitrarily
manufacture game items) will be fixed and integrated as quickly as
possible, and patches will be distributed.  Major bug reports should
include all possible information, preferably with a fix attached.  
Reproduction of bugs that depend on your particular machine and empire 
game will be difficult if not impossible for me to perform.

Bugs which are not classed as "major" will be noted, but not integrated
or distributed until a major release occurs.

The current documentation is definitely out-of-date.  We're working
on it.  (One thing you should know about Empire -- the documentation
is *always* out-of-date).  Documentation patches will be sent seperately
from code changes.

If you have a bug report, you should send it to me.  If the bug report
is unclear, it probably won't be fixed unless I have the time to eyeball
the code in question.  My mail address is

	mr-frog@scam.berkeley.edu

A final note; the fact that my name (and Peter's) appears at
the top is because we've done the most work.  This should not take
away from the contributions which dozens of people have made to
the game over the four years it has been around.  The list of
contributors is located in the doc directory, entitled CREDITS.

Dave Pare
Sat Sep 30 00:02:06 PDT 1989
