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                     THE ARK DISTRIBUTION
                   " Ark Roleplaying Kernel "

          Copyright (C) 1999-2000 Contributors of the Ark project
      Please have look at the "AUTHORS" file for a list of contributors.

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1. License (or "Legal Stuff")
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This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to:

	Free Software Foundation, Inc.
	59 Temple Place, Suite 330
	Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

See file COPYING for license details.


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2. Goals
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	The first goal of the Ark libraries and associated
programs is to create a powerful and flexible framework to create
(networked/single player) role playing games.

	For the players, there is an unique client executable. This one
is used to run games from several packages ; each package is specific to
an environnement, it contains models, world (heightmap), textures ; each
game can also have its own GUI look'n'feel etc... Finally it tells the
program which server is to be used for internet playing.

	The same for server admins, except that they can only run one
server for one package on a computer (of course). Their package also
contains the code, which defines the different type of entities in the
world, the rules of the game, and the code for artificial intelligence
(AI).


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3. Can I help ?
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	Well... Sure, you're welcome to give us any help you can, as
for now we're only two in the group who can program, and the task
is really hard, as there's three big part : making a good client/server
framework, creating a good scripting engine, and having a decent 3D
engine for the client.

	There are already a basic 3D client and a server, but they
really need improvement, as they are really far from being complete :
the rendering engine needs to be really improved, and it lacks several
features (cache for terrains textures, the terrain stuff needs to be
polished, there's no skel models, no particle systems); the scripting
stuff is still to be written.

	So, what do we already have ? Have a look at NEWS..
If you want to help, you definitely should contact us at mrq@nekeme.net
There is also a TODO list for the project.

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