Njudge

In computing, Njudge is an implementation of a Diplomacy adjudicator, receiving orders and sending messages and results via email.

It works on a variety of Linux and Unix platforms.

Njudge was originally written in the late 1980s by Ken Lowe as a project to learn C as well as to serve local interest in Diplomacy. It then expanded and was installed on several servers internationally. With the advent of free email access for all, its use has boomed and the most active judge has in excess of 10,000 registered players and more than 100 games active at any one time.

It is an email based system, and uses its own special syntax for commands, surrounded by a signon/signoff sequence, with a password verifying the user. No web interface at present exists, although there does exist Alain Tésio's mapping service that uses a modified mapit program to interpret move results onto a graphical map. Commands not only allow orders for units to be made but messages to be sent to other players. A master is normally also appointed (usually the creator of the game) who can use a whole set of special commands to alter game parameters.

Many different variants, both of rules and of maps are also implemented. Among this are Modern, Youngstown, and Colonial Diplomacy. In addition, Njudge supports the play of Machiavelli Diplomacy, a game similar to standard Diplomacy but with significant rule changes.

The code is free for non-commercial use, and players of judges are not charged for their use, so that a steady increase has been seen both in the judges and the players that use them.

Ken Lowe's original Judge software had been written as a project to help him learn to program in C. As a result, other programmers who saw the code, while thrilled that it worked, were somewhat less glowing in their praise of the quality of the coding. Eventually some of them undertook to rewrite the code more elegant.

The name Njudge comes from the fact that the person to start the process of re-writing Ken Lowe's original C code was Nathan Wagner of Madison, WI. He called it njudge to distinguish it from the original Judge software which Ken Lowe had written.

Some of this can be read at:

http://devel.diplom.org/Zine/S2002R/Miller/What_is_njudge.html