The Mana World Athena

Welcome to The Mana World Athena! This is an MMORPG server used by The Mana World, based on a protocol that was inspired by the project named "Athena". In 2004, it was forked from eAthena, a Ragnarok Online clone.

If you are interested in contributing, please take a look at our wiki for user instructions. It provides detailed information on how to get started.

Important note: Building from a GitHub-generated tarball does not work! You must either build from a git checkout or from a 'make dist' tarball.

The rest of this file contains information relevant to distributors and contributors.

1. Distributors

Important notes

• Please read version.mk for important version information.
• TMWA requires git to build by default. Use 'make dist' to get a tarball.

Platform dependencies

Architecture

• Tested: x86, amd64, x32
• Likely to work: all architectures (patches welcome if they don't)

Operating system

• Known bad: Linux 2.6.26 and earlier
• Maintained: Linux 3.2 and later
• Likely to break: Cygwin, BSD

Filesystem

• Must support symlinks

Build dependencies

Python

• Required: 2.7.x only, installed in $PATH as 'python'

C library

• Recommended: glibc 2.17 or higher
• Supported: glibc 2.13
• Known bad: glibc 2.8 or below
• Unsupported: anything that's not glibc

C++ compiler

• Required: g++ 4.7.2 or higher
• Recommended: g++ 4.8.1 or higher
• Not recommended: clang++ 3.3 or higher (all versions have unfixed bugs)

C++ library

• Recommended: libstdc++ to match g++; may need patch for clang++
• May work: libc++

attoconf

• Special: see below

Runtime dependencies

glibc

• Depends on what it was built against

libstdc++

• Depends on what it was built against

Instructions

Configuration

• Run ./configure to configure the build. Most of the options are similar to GNU Autoconf's configure. For example, you can create a build directory and run ../configure from there to keep the source directory clean.

Build

• Run make -j$(nproc) to build the project.

Build test

• Run make test to run the build tests. This requires Google Test available - it's added here as a submodule. Note that test coverage is not yet complete.
• Run make format to format the code.

Install

• Run make install DESTDIR=/whatever to install the project. See what is installed below.

Install test

• Not implemented

Distribution tarballs

• Run make dist or make bindist to create distribution tarballs.

Note about attoconf

TMWA's ./configure script is implemented using a python package called 'attoconf'. It provides a simpler alternative to GNU autoconf. Attoconf is available at Github and is a well-behaving python package. Please note that attoconf requires Python 2.7, however efforts to bring it to Python 3 are in progress.

What is installed

Overview

Currently, make install installs 5 binaries, along with libraries, headers, data files, config files, and debug files. Each component has a specific make install-something target.

The 4 main programs listed below are typically running on the same machine, but they can be configured to run on different machines in a fast LAN. Please note that the internal protocol between the programs may change without notice, so it's important to upgrade them simultaneously.

• tmwa-admin: Formerly known as ladmin ("local"). This tool is used to maintain the server's flatfile "databases". It connects to tmwa-login to make changes.
• tmwa-login: Formerly known as login-server. This server handles account checks and accepts internal connections from tmwa-admin and tmwa-char.
• tmwa-char: Formerly known as char-server. This server handles character persistence, connects to tmwa-login, and accepts connections from tmwa-map. Multiple instances of tmwa-char can connect to the same tmwa-login. If this is the case, the client will be presented with a choice of worlds before leaving the login server. The Mana World sometimes runs a test tmwa-char server connected to the main tmwa-login for ease of access.
• tmwa-map: Formerly known as map-server. This server connects to tmwa-char. Multiple instances of tmwa-map can connect to the same tmwa-char, with clients able to switch servers if they move to a map handled by a different map server. This has not been used by The Mana World, and may not work properly.

About server data

To run the server, you will need a complete set of content including config files, game scripts, savefiles, and client updates. We strongly recommend setting up a web server to serve the updates. You can find a compatible set of server data at https://git.themanaworld.org/legacy/serverdata. Please follow the instructions in the How to Develop article for more information.

2. Contributors

We welcome contributions from developers like you! If you are interested in maintaining this server, please get in touch with the currently active maintainers first. It's important to make changes with extreme care and ensure that each change is thoroughly tested and reviewed before it goes live.

If you have become familiar with the codebase, we encourage you to stick around and help fix issues or review changes made by others. Your contributions are greatly appreciated!