README FIRST! (last modified 4/25/96) Hi! Thank you very much for your interest in the Internet MahJong Server. Before you download the software package, please be aware of several things. 1. You do NOT need to download anything if you just want to connect to a server and play MahJong games. You only need to fire up your favorite Java-capable Web browser, and connect to the MahJong Meta- Server site at: http://www.math.princeton.edu/~ztfeng/mj_servers.html and follow the URL links to the server closest to you. The current browser of choice is Netscape Navigator 2.0 (or later), which you can get at: http://www.netscape.com/ Sun's Javasoft will probably soon release HotJava, another Java- capable browser. There site is: http://www.javasoft.com/ 2. Read this if you plan to run a public MahJong server. The software package contains a server and a client. The server is a Java application that needs to be run under a Java VM environment, e.g. an interpreter, or a JIT. I have only tested it under JDK 1.0 and 1.0.1 under Solaris 2.4. I expect it to run pretty much as is on other Java platforms. The client is a big applet together with a bunch of gif images. You will need to run a web server (e.g. httpd) and let users download it from an html document. I've written one for you, the file mj.html which should be modified according to your site. The README file in the MJ_dist.tar.gz distribution has more detailed information on how to set up a server. Before you set out on such a task, you should be aware that there are already several public servers out there, while not many people on the Internet has discovered the game. Go to the Meta-Server site listed above to see how many servers there are. If you just want to run a server for your private circle of friends, please go ahead. If you plan it for general public use, I ask you to contact me first, we can try to gauge supply and demand. Too many servers with a small player base would cause too many partially full tables and eventually do more harm than good. Also, if you do run a public server, please take the initiative to publicize it, as well as the other MahJong servers. The more players you can introduce to the game, the more visitors you will get on your server! This package comes with a default scoring system that I wrote. It is mostly a hybrid of various conventions that I know of or has been suggested to me. It is by no means complete, or `scientific' even. And also for the sake of variety, you are encouraged to design and implement other scoring systems. The basic supporting code is there, you probably just need to build on it. I will provide help too. In any case, please contact me, so that at least I can keep track of all the servers with my Meta-Server page, and know who to send my updates and bug fixes to. If you come up with any bug fixes or new features, please also send it to me. 3. If you want to study my code, be forewarned that I started my project on the second day I heard about Java, and built up my Java knowledge as I worked on it. Therefore, much of the code is probably ugly and kludgy. It will perhaps get better when I make more revisions, but don't count on it :-) Well, there you are. Have fun! Zuwei Thomas Feng, ztfeng@math.princeton.edu