How to run your own Moonlapse server [Arch/Manjaro]

12 Oct 2020 - saltytaro

Interested in playing by your own rules? You can download the code to run your very own MoonlapseMUD server.

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need a machine running an operating system with access to Arch Linux official repositories. In this example, we will be using pacman which is standard in most Arch-based distributions.

Prerequisites

  1. Firstly you will need Python 3.6 which should be installed by default on most Arch-based systems.
  2. Update the package list using the following command:

    sudo pacman -Syyu
    
  3. Install PIP, the Package Installer for Python, which is what we will use to obtain the rest of our prerequisite Python libraries:

    sudo pacman -S python-pip
    
  4. Install PostgreSQL the database server the game will need to read from and write to.

    sudo pacman -S postgresql
    
  5. Next, the drivers required to let Python and PostgreSQL talk to each other.

    sudo pacman -S python-psycopg2
    sudo pip install psycopg2
    
  6. Install git and clone the MoonlapseMUD source from the current repository

    sudo pacman -S git
    git clone https://github.com/trithagoras/MoonlapseMUD
    sudo cp MoonlapseMUD/Moonlapse.sql /var/lib/postgres
    
  7. Initialise the database cluster.

    sudo -iu postgres
    initdb -D /var/lib/postgres/data
    exit
    
  8. Enable and start the PostgreSQL service.

    sudo systemctl enable postgresql
    sudo systemctl start postgresql
    
  9. Enter a new shell environment logged in as the postgres user:

    sudo -iu postgres
    
  10. Set a password for the operating system user postgres, which is created when you install postgresql by default. This will be used to create your database.

    psql 
    \password postgres
    

    You’ll see the following prompts at which you enter the desired password:

    Enter new password:
    Enter it again:
    
  11. Now exit from the psql environment:

    \q
    
  12. While still logged in as the postgres user, create a new user to run the Moonlapse database and create the new database itself.

    createuser --interactive --pwprompt
    Enter name of role to add: MoonlapseAdmin
    Enter password for new role:
    Enter it again:
    Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) y
    createdb Moonlapse
    
  13. Now logout of the shell environment controlled by the postgres user to return to your own shell:

    exit
    
  14. While logged in as your own user, install Twisted, the networking library for the server.

    sudo pip install twisted
    
  15. Install Django, the library used for the ORM.

    sudo pip install django
    
  16. Create the database connection string and place it in the MoonlapseMUD/server directory.

    MoonlapseMUD/server/connectionstrings.json

    {
       "user": "MoonlapseAdmin",
       "password": "myPassword",
       "host": "localhost",
       "port": "5432",
       "database": "Moonlapse"
    }
    
  17. Initialise the database.

    python MoonlapseMUD/server/manage.py makemigrations server
    python MoonlapseMUD/server/manage.py migrate
    python MoonlapseMUD/server/manage.py flush
    python MoonlapseMUD/server/loaddata.py
    
  18. Run the server!

    python MoonlapseMUD/server