Behind the Curtain

Paradise Netrek Development

What's this? You're whining about some aspect of the game. I know, you're thinking "I could reduce the amount of communication between client and server to twenty bytes per second," or, "Hey, this new monster phaser bolt weapon I've been thinking about would be cool to implement." Well, here's your chance. Both the server and client sources are freely available. In fact, the few libraries that they depend on generally come with the system you're working on, can be installed easily, or are available from the GNU mirrors around the world.

Stable Client and Server Sources/Libraries

The current server and client sources are available as shown below. Libraries that may be required are also shown below. Note that whatever the current server, client, or library versions are, the links below will always point to the latest stable release. Everything else you find in the directory is either a previous version or a BETA (work in progress), which you should use only if you know what you do.
The items under RSA are not required unless you are compiling an authorized binary or if you are building a server that does RSA authentication (currently no Paradise servers have this implemented, although the code is there to do it). Unless you are one of the primary client developers , you aren't building an authorizing binary and don't need RSA. Besides, unless you have the crypt(1) key, you won't be able to get at the RSA code anyway.

One final word about RSA: Since RSA is cryptography software, it is subject to United States military export regulations on cryptography and other national security issues. This means that RSA software cannot be exported outside the U.S. or Canada. So, unless you are a United States or Canadian citizen, and living within the United States or Canada, don't ask me for the crypt(1) key. You won't get it.

(ed: is this still valid?)

Current stable server version: 3.1
Current stable client version: 3.3
DOWNLOAD: client and server sources
RSA (see note above)
(Editor: the links below are pointing to nowhere. Where is the stuff ?)
GNU MP library: ftp://paradise.sourceforge.net/pub/paradise/RSA/gmp-1.3.2.tar.gz
RSA library (encrypted!): ftp://paradise.sourceforge.net/pub/paradise/RSA/rsa-paradise.tar.gz.crypt
GNU Compression library: http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/zlib/

Contact us!

We need more active developers

We need a next generation of players and coders to pick up the code and maintain a noteworthy offspring of a noteworthy classic game.
Get the code, check it out, get your friends to play it with you, and improve where necessary. Get in contact with the project admins to inform them about your interest to join the dev-crew. Join the mailing-lists and ask!

Discussion about Paradise Netrek development, game play, and league play occurs on these mailing lists, forums and hopefully soon on the newsgroup again, too.

The newsgroup is hosted by your ISP, the Paradise SF-project is hosted by SourceForge.net (with code, forums, homepage). The mailing list paradise-workers is graciously hosted by Bob Tanner via "@lists.us.netrek.org".

Paradise development homepage
Paradise mailing-list
- paradise-workers: the only one left for Paradise interested folks
- You might also join the core netrek community, maybe it's of interest for you, too. See the Netrek Mailing lists homepage.
IRC in #paradise or #netrek on 'irc.freenode.net'
news:rec.games.netrek
The USENET newsgroup for discussion regarding Netrek in general. Once there was a special Paradise NG, but since the fall of Paradise several years ago it's only polluted by SPAM. Therefore, if you want to use the USENET, try it in the general Netrek group. You could very well meet long-ago fellow Paradisers there. Not moderated.

Specific Paradise Workers

Here's a list of (formerly) active Paradise Workers and what they're up to currently. It's alphabetical because I like it that way. Note that with the apparent demise of most Paradise activity, most of these people have moved on to other things, so if you poke them and your email bounces, don't blame me. (Editor: if somebody knows of up to date informations, either correct eMail-adresseses or if they want to be removed from this list, let me know)

Note: The address-parts around @ are swapped to keep away robot-grabber spammers.

Ola Andersson (cs.umu.se@dvloan): - Client developer (Internationalization)
Mike Darweesh (radix.net@jaromir): - Client developer (Mac client--retired)
Eric Dorman (paradise.netrek.org@edorman): - FTP/Web Site Maintainer
- Deepspace server hacker
Bill Dyess (dyess.com@Bill): - Client developer (Beta client)
Chip Edwards (sun.com@chip.edwards): - Solaris x86 client
Rob Forsman (thoth.purplefrog.com@paradise): - Linux X11R5 client
- SunOS client
Stephen Franks (mit.edu@sdfranks): - NetBSD client
Ken Germann (digibd.com@keng): - Skypoint Server hacker
- BSDI client
Tom Hanson (prism.gatech.edu@gt4908a): - Server developer
- Client developer

Heath Kehoe (icaen.uiowa.edu@hakehoe): - Apollo client
- HP700-800 client
James E. King, III (ariessys.com@jking): - Client developer (Mac client)
Mike McGrath (epx.cis.umn.edu@mcgrath): - Server developer (terrain code)
Matt Mead (goof.com@mmead): - Solaris client
Eric Mehlhaff (crl.com@mehlhaff): - Ultrix client
Rick Nickel (vox.trystero.com@rick): - FreeBSD client
- OS/2 Warp client
Gary Parnes (digibd.com@garyp): - Alpha client
Sujal Patel (wam.umd.edu@smpatel): - Client developer (sound servers for Linux, FreeBSD)
Joe Rumsey (netcom.com@ogre): - Amiga client

Wed Jun 20 15:26:03 MEST 2007