Evennia Proof-of-Concept
------------------------
Evennia is a proof-of-concept MUD server written entirely in Python, backed
by SQL. The project rises from a general dissatisfaction with the limitations
of softcode in MUX and MUSH, and the generally inflexible Diku-derivatives and
relatives. 

Evennia represents a combination of several technologies, and most importantly
of all, my first venture into codebase design. You may find things within
the source that look strange to you, perhaps not ideally designed. I'm open
to suggestions, but this really is largely an experiment and a learning
experience.

Design Objectives
-----------------
1) To create a MU* server that serves as a great foundation for capable admins
to craft into their respective games. It is not my intention to provide a
full-fledged, ready-to-run base, I'm releasing the means to make such games.

2) Development of games on Evennia must be easy for anyone with some degree
of Python experience. Building needs to be easy, and per-room, per-object,
and environmental customizations need to be simple to do.

3) The server must utilize SQL as a storage back-end to allow for web->game
integration. See the details on Django later on in the document for more
details.

4) Any and all game-specific configuration must reside in SQL, not
external configuration files. The only exception is the settings.py file
containing the SQL information.

How it all Works
----------------
Python (Including the SQL driver of your choice)
  |-Twisted (http://twistedmatrix.com)
  |-SQL (MySQL, SQLite, Postgresql)
  |-Django (http://djangoproject.com)

Evennia is built on top of Twisted, a networking engine that handles a lot
of the guts and lower-level socket stuff for us.

Serving as our storage medium, SQL is one of the more important and unique
features of the codebase. It allows for very simple code in many cases, and
can lead to a game being a lot more scalable due to the inherent speed of
most modern SQL servers. Another extremely important benefit is that by
storing everything in SQL, we make the entire game accessible from other
means, such as a website. Which leads us to the next component.

Django is perhaps one of the most interesting introductions to the codebase,
since I'm not aware of any other server using it to run MU*'s. Django is
technically a Python web framework, but it also includes a great data modeling
and database abstraction module. This means that things like Players or
Objects can be represented by a very short class, then related to one another.
This allows us to add, remove, delete, and manipulate things in our database
very easily. Another huge benefit is the admin interface that Django more
or less automatically generates for us. Instead of a bunch of clunky admin
commands, you can fire up your web browser and administer pretty much 
everything from there, although equivalent in-game commands may be offered.
The possibilities for developing your game's website are nearly endless with
this tandem of MU* server, SQL, and Django.

Support
-------
The best place for support is the Evennia website, located at:
	http://evennia.com

Reporting Bugs
--------------
Make sure to report any bugs you encounter on the issue tracker on our Google
Code project. This is easily reached at:
	http://code.evennia.com