Tornado, StarLite and Prodigy

Following the re-discovery of backups for StarLite and Prodigy I have started slowly converting StarLite and Tornado (the front end) to run via sockets under Linux. Although the cost of leased lines is currently prohibitive, hopefully this will change eventually and it will be possible to get them running again.

Tornado

Tornado is currently about 90% operational, although for most purposes this is enough. The system allows users to Telnet into it, and although currently reliant on the Telnet client performing local echo, this is enough to log into the system and actually use it. Most of the work left is in adding functionality to the supported Telnet protocols (echo suppression, mode negotiation etc.), and in the Tornado<->Host protocol, as most control packets are currently not supported.

Tornado II

Tornado I I (T2) is a complete, from the ground-up rewrite of Tornado designed to use sockets from the start. Tornado was originally written to use serial ports, and the necessary code to get it to communicate over the internet was added after the event, breaking much of the original communication code, and introducing more bugs than was desireable! More information about Tornado II can be found on the Tornado pages.

StarLite

StarLite is almost entirely functional, as most of the changes have simply been to the communications layer, changing it from working over a single serial line to a single socket. Although some control packets are still not implemented, this does not interfere with the game itself.

Recent changes have included the ability for StarLite to re-connect to Tornado in the event of socket closure, which will allow StarLite to recover from Tornado crashing (although there should be little likely hood of this). A couple of changes have also been made to the StarLite language to optimise running on a time-shared host.

Prodigy

Very few changes have been needed to Prodigy itself, except where I have cleaned up or altered game code to balance the game better. Combat has been altered, adding a critical hit system, and the score given for killing other players and mobiles has been increased.