Mirroring Alter Ego

For those who are unfamiliar, to "mirror" a web game means to make it available via your own web server. If you just want to play the game offline by yourself, you can download the old MS-DOS versions from the Yahoo Group. You can download either the male version or the female version separately.

To mirror Alter Ego, you'll need your own dedicated web server. Ideally this would be a machine you control completely, because Alter Ego can use a lot of system resources.

Alter Ego requires that you install a Java web application server, such as Tomcat. If you only have "web space", i.e. disk space for serving up simple static web pages, you won't be able to mirror the game.

As for "other requirements":

• Bandwidth: There are no 'minimum bandwidth' requirements... and since the game is just simple text and graphics, a slow connection is fine. If you're worried about the game using up too much bandwidth, I recommend you throttle your web server using mod_throttle or some similar utility.
• Memory/CPU: Alter Ego is a small application, and runs fine under the default Java memory settings, which cap out at 64m. It doesn't require much in the way of CPU either; in my experience, it's mostly bandwidth limited (especially when the bandwidth is throttled).

If you can satisfy those requirements, setting up AE is (or should be) relatively simple.

1. If you don't already have a Java application server, download Tomcat and install it. (Please, don't e-mail me with questions about how to do this... Read the Tomcat documentation or google for "Tomcat installation" if you're having trouble.)
2. Join the Alter Ego Yahoo Group. It's free.
3. Download the Alter Ego war file from the Yahoo group.
4. Shutdown Tomcat if it's already started, then put the war file in your Tomcat "webapps" directory, and start Tomcat.
5. Finally, try browsing to "/alterego" on your Tomcat port! You should see the welcome page there.

I'm afraid that I have precious little free time these days, so I may not be able to help you set this up if you get confused. Furthermore, these directions may be incomplete or inadequate... I've never tested them myself. If you didn't understand these directions at all, I'd probably recommend against trying to set up a mirror. But if you have a small question, feel free to address it to me and I'll see if I can get around to helping.

Good luck!

Dan Fabulich
dfabulich at warpmail dot net