Rainbow's End is a Play by E-Mail (PBEM) game that was created in 2001 by Russell Wallace. Because Russell, who created very successful games like Galaxy and Atlantis in the early nineties, liberally provided the C source of Rainbow's End, I ported the game to the then-new Ruby 1.6 in 2001 to learn the language. The pickaxe book was just published.
I haven't looked at the source for years, but I'll share it in (the unlikely)
case somebody is interested. The index.html has more information of how to
setup and run a game - these information are unfortunately written in German.
The rules.html file contains the rules, written in English by Russell.
The game isn't without flaws. I remember to play it only once. Tanks are superior to artillery and infantry. I'd suggest to change the rules so that only infantry can conquer cities. Still, it was fun.
Nowadays, it's probably just a blast from the past :)
Code should probably be moved into a lib and script folder. Setup and game
data should then go into another folder per game and should not be part of the
check-in. Using a web front end to send in orders and receive reports might be
a more modern approach and interesting ad-on. Reports could also use HTML.
Then, the game should be better balanced.
Copyright (c) 2001,2009 Stefan Matthias Aust
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