Meridian 59 v1.0, September 2012.
Andrew Kirmse and Chris Kirmse

Copyright 1994-2012 Andrew Kirmse and Chris Kirmse
All rights reserved.  Meridian is a registered trademark.


LICENSE

This project is distributed under a license that is described in the
LICENSE file.  The license does not cover the game content (artwork,
rooms, audio, etc.), which are not included.

Note that "Meridian" is a registered trademark and you may not use it
without our written permission.

The license requires that if you redistribute this code in any form,
you must make the source code available, including any changes you
make.  We would love it if you would contribute your changes back to
the original source so that everyone can benefit.


WHAT'S INCLUDED AND NOT INCLUDED

The source to the client, server, game code, Blakod compiler, room
editor, and all associated tools are included.  The source code to the
compression library and audio library are not included.


BUILD INSTRUCTIONS

The code has been built successfully with Microsoft Visual Studio
2008.  It hasn't been tested with any other compilers.

1. Make sure Visual Studio's binaries are in your path, e.g. by using
the vcvars32.bat script that comes with Visual Studio.

2. Go to the top-level directory (the one that contains this README).

3. Type "nmake" to build debug versions, or "nmake RELEASE=1" to build
release versions.

The room editor requires Borland C++ 4.5 to build.  We've gotten it
compiling, but unfortunately it doesn't yet link, probably because of
an incompatibility with Visual Studio's lib format.  We've included a
prebuilt version of the room editor.

RUN INSTRUCTIONS

After building the code, a server install is available in the
run\server directory.  Type "blakserv.exe" in that directory to run
the server.

A client install is available in the run\localclient directory.  You
will need to retrieve the artwork, rooms, and audio files from
elsewhere and copy them into the resource subdirectory.

The first thing you'll probably want to do is create an admin account
on the server so that you can log in.  Go to the "Administration" tab
on the server's interface and enter the command:

create account admin joe.smith password
 
(Don't use this default account name or password, or people will
likely take over your server. You'll get back a message like "Created
ACCOUNT 4".)

Then create a character slot on that account with

create admin 4

You'll now be able to log in with this account name and password.  Be
sure to "save game" from the server interface to save this new
account.

You can point your local client at your local server by running the
client (meridian.exe) with command line flags, like this:

meridian.exe /U:joe.smith /W:password /H:localhost /P:5959 


THIRD-PARTY CODE

Meridian uses zlib and libarchive.  zlib was installed from binaries.
libarchive was built from source, with the following cmake environment
variables set to use zlib:

ZLIB_INCLUDE_DIR points to the include directory
ZLIB_LIBRARY points to lib/zdll.lib


CONTACT INFORMATION

You can contact us at [email protected].  Our Web site is
http://meridian59.com, where you can also read about the history of
the game.