Installation¶
The Evennia server is installed, run and maintained from the terminal (console/CMD on Windows). Starting the server doesn’t make anything visible online. Once you download everything you can in fact develop your game in complete isolation if you want, without needing any access to the internet.
Evennia requires Python 3.9 or 3.10. Using a Python virtualenv is highly recommended in order to keep your Evennia installation independent from the system libraries. Don’t install Evennia as administrator or superuser.
Warning
pip install evennia is not yet available in develop branch. Use the git installation.
Important
If you are converting an existing game from a previous version, see here.
pip install evennia
Once installed, make sure the evennia command works. Use evennia -h for usage help. If you are using a
virtualenv, make sure it’s active whenever you need to use the evennia command.
Alternatively, you can install Evennia from github or use docker. Check out installation troubleshooting if you run into problems. Some users have also experimented with installing Evennia on Android.
Initialize a new game¶
Use cd to enter a folder where you want to do your game development. Here (and in
the rest of the Evennia documentation) we call this folder mygame, but you should of course
name your game whatever you like.
evennia --init mygame
This will create a new folder mygame (or whatever you chose) in your current location. This
contains empty templates and all the default settings needed to start the server.
Start the new game¶
cd mygame
evennia migrate
This will create the default database (Sqlite3). The database file ends up as mygame/server/evennia.db3. If you
ever want to start from a fresh database, just delete this file and re-run evennia migrate again.
evennia start
Set your user-name and password when prompted. This will be the “god user” or “superuser” in-game. The email is optional.
You can also automate the creation of the super user.
If all went well, the server is now up and running. Point a legacy MUD/telnet client to localhost:4000 or
a web browser at http://localhost:4001 to play your new (if empty) game!
Log in as a new account or use the superuser you just created.
Restarting and stopping¶
You can restart the server without disconnecting players:
evennia restart
To do a full stop and restart (will disconnect players):
evennia reboot
Full stop of the server (use evennia start to restart):
evennia stop
See server logs¶
Log files are in mygame/server/logs. You can tail them live with
evennia --log
or
evennia -l
You can start viewing the log immediately when running evennia commands, such as
evennia start -l
To exit the log tailing, enter Ctrl-C (Cmd-C for Mac). This will not affect the server.
Server configuration¶
The server configuration file is mygame/server/settings.py. It’s empty by default. Copy and change
only the settings you want from the default settings file.
Register with the Evennia Game Index (optional)¶
You can optionally let the world know that you are working on a new Evennia-based game by registering your server with the Evennia game index. You don’t have to be open for players to do this - you just mark your game as closed and “pre-alpha”.
evennia connections
See here for more instructions and please check out the index beforehand to make sure you don’t pick a game name that is already taken - be nice!
The Next steps¶
You are good to go!
Evennia comes with a small Tutorial World to experiment and learn from. After logging in, you can create it by running
batchcommand tutorial_world.build
Next, why not head into the Starting Tutorial to learn how to start making your new game!