Regarding the ongoing Empire game at 198.190.228.6, to play enter:

HELLO <yourname>,PLAYER.EMPIRE

Up to 255 players allowed.

The game is "supposed" to put new players on new islands by themselves.
Sometimes a new player is placed in the middle of an island that is
already heavily owned by another player.  Such cases are hopeless, if so,
sign on as a new player and new password and try for a new island.  (Even
so, these "abandoned" civilizations can be a thorn in the craw of an
existing player, as they are protected for 200 time units.)

For new players, an intereting command is the SPREAD command, helps you
expand quickly.  The "V" commands prints your Island, and the "MAP"
command provides more detail, but in smaller x,y chunks.  (MAP C displays
civilians, MAP M displays military, MAP D shows industries.)  DATA shows
possible ship types, which can only be built at industries DEsignated as
"Docks".  To show available commands type "COMMANDS", for help on an
individual command type "HELP followed by the command.  To abort a command
either a zero (0) or two slashes (//) backs you out.

A change was implemented that does a batch update every two hours.  This
means that the COURSE command set for ships will now work.  You can now
use the COURSE command and your ship will move to the destination while
you sleep.  Previously the SAIL command was the only way to move ships
online.

I'm interested in the TELNET performance of the machine.  This first week,
I've had a number of problems with users sessions getting hung.  I
apologize for the inconvenience.  I reconfigured and rebooted the machine
today in order to make TELNET and the Network Interface a little more
forgiving:

1)  There are more retries before time-outs on IP packets.
2)  The time-out wait period is 5 seconds longer per retry.
3)  I decreased the default packet size per segment.

Hopefully, this should decrease the number of users getting hung.  Even
so, I've found out the game picks up where you left off if you just log on
again (in most cases).  I've also noticed that the W/95 version of Telnet
that you get with W/95 seems to hang more easily than Telnet versions you
get with a purchased terminal emulator.  Not only that, but W/95 Telnet
displays the DC1 and LF as two unsightly blobs after the prompt.

Other than that I'm still awaiting a beta patch from HP regarding their
implementation of Telnet on the HP3000 host.

Tracy Johnson
Justin Thyme Productions
"Trust No One" - Semper Gumby