7 ms·

Anyone play TradeWars 2002? That's what I was doing in '93 on my BBS.

Jemaclus 10y ago
Yes! I've tried over the years to create a TW2002 clone, but I always stall out at the economic system. I've also tried to recreate Barren Realms Elite / Solar Realms Elite, but Amit lost the source code to that, too. Reverse engineering BBS games is hard! Maybe Legend of the Red Dragon would be easier... [Edit: I'm aware that there are TW2002 games out there right now, but those tend to be web-based, and I wanna do a legit BBS-style game. Telnet, probably.]
- exogeny 10y ago
  LORD is available here: lord.nuklear.org
- ddunkin 10y ago
  You can find the Majorbbs Entertainment Edition out there. Has TW, SoC, trivia, etc. Supports telnet.
- ryanobjc 10y ago
  Ditto actually. I mean, ultimately that's what Eve Online is, a massive TW2002 "clone". Only everything made better. I think the problem with an economic system is you need enough people to do it properly, or you have to figure out some kind of 'fake' where it can be dynamic enough for the concept of cross-space trading work, but also not be entirely unrealistic. I did learn a lot about event-driven programming, state machines, and the telnet protocol however.
- hoodwink 10y ago
  What are the TW games out there right now? I was not aware! I've dreamt for years about licensing TW to make a mobile version consistent with the gameplay of the BBS days. Before scripts. I don't know if you fall in love with the first games you play as a kid, but 25 years later, I still yearn for a 6 month TW bang with a corp of 4 friends.
  - xenophonf 10y ago
    There are all kinds of game servers running! See my other post up-thread for two of my favorites. You can find more at http://www.classictw.com/ http://www.classictw.com/. They're only web-enabled as a convenience to people without old-school ANSI.SYS terminal emulators and DOS fonts. You can TELNET into all of them. SWATH is probably the best modern helper and runs well under WINE on FreeBSD, Linux, and Mac OS X.
- amitp 10y ago
  I agree, reverse engineering some of this stuff is hard. I had been studying economics & systems design and put lots of interacting feedback loops into SRE so it's sometimes hard to tease out the individual effects. I've put some notes up here for anyone who wants to clone it http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/Articles/SRE-Design.html http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/Articles/SRE-Desi... For a quick “where are they now”: - Barren Realms Elite --> Mehul (my brother) moved from BBS games to web games, with Earth 2025 and then Utopia, and then a web portal Swirve.com, and then he got out of the games business and ran a coffee shop, Dominican Joe in downtown Austin (but it was just sold) - Legend of the Red Dragon --> Seth Robinson (who I finally met this year) moved on to PC games, then mobile games, and now runs a successful MMO called Growtopia (but it was just sold) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Technologies - Solar Realms Elite --> I got out of the BBS door world and went to grad school, interested in teaching. I now write interactive tutorials at redblobgames.com, starting with game development but I want to expand into math and computer science. SRE's wikipedia page got wiped by the deletionists http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/922 http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/922 but was preserved by http://breakintochat.com/ http://breakintochat.com/
  - Jemaclus 10y ago
    Yep yep, I've studied your notes before. Great resource. :) You're a rock star. Nice "Where are they Now" notes, too! Very cool!
AndyNemmity 10y ago
So much tradewars. That and Legend of the Red Dragon were my jam.
- nvahalik 10y ago
  A few years ago I found the original letter from (was it Seth?) about my LOTRD registration... Ah, violet...
grumblestumble 10y ago
Anyone remember LOD (Land of Devastation)? It never gained much traction but was an awesome idea at the time with it's downloadable tile packs. Unfortunately the really shitty gambling system made it godmode all around.
specialist 10y ago
My (online) social network got hooked on Diplomacy. Originally adjudicated via email. Then we found an automatic adjudicator, that ran as a door, but it kinda sucked. And someone in the group wrote a better one, which then got reasonably popular. I still miss those days.
deepakhj 10y ago
One of my all time favorite games. I miss those days so much.
LVB 10y ago
Oh yeah. I recall writing Telix scripts to traverse the galaxy and then calculate the shortest path from a->b based on the portals it discovered. I also recall quite the scandal when a sysop peeked into the admin console and gave an advantage to someone.
- icelancer 10y ago
  There was also custom TW2002 Telix-based software that had an overlay with macros you could use. Made things so fast.
- yakk0 10y ago
  Telix scripts were great! Easy to learn and useful, I had mine set up to automatically upload and download my QWK mail packets.
xenophonf 10y ago
Dude, I still play TW2002! SWATH is the best modern helper I know about: http://swath.net/ http://swath.net/ My meagre collection of SWATH scripts: https://github.com/irtnog/swath-scripts/tree/master/src https://github.com/irtnog/swath-scripts/tree/master/src The ICE9 game server: http://www.oregonsouth.com/ice9/ http://www.oregonsouth.com/ice9/ I don't know if ICE9 still does this, but they used to have a bunch of interesting customizations, like where sectors 1-2000 were a lightly regulated federation space were connected to a small 10-sector neutral zone, with the Star Dock sector being the jumping-off point into the wider universe. I loved playing there! Cruncher's Trade Wars server: http://cruncherstw.blogspot.com/ http://cruncherstw.blogspot.com/ https://www.facebook.com/CrunchersTW https://www.facebook.com/CrunchersTW Cruncher's is small but fun, with a variety of games and regular resets.
- hoodwink 10y ago
  Ah yes, I've seen SWATH before. Here's my issue: when I started playing, it was on a BBS where everyone played manually. There were no helpers or scripts. We'd manually keep track of sectors and port pairs and potential bubbles and so on. It was great. I belong to the camp that believes the scripts ruined the game :-/
  - xenophonf 10y ago
    You don't have to use the helper bits of SWATH! Just turn that stuff off and enjoy it's near-perfect terminal emulation. I've played several games like that (these were old school 5000-sector games with rate limits, like how God intended you to play).
- fma 10y ago
  Oh man...TW2002...brings back memories....damn. I remember playing with Cruncher. I played heavily on the Fament BBS... I was in middle school...so this would have been mid 90's. I was connected to the Internet using a freenet that was provided by SEFLIN (South East Florida Library Information Network)...text based. People who had real internet ran applications, and using ICQ to chat (since you can scan the in network chat for teams chattering!) I was using plain ol text based Internet...and Pine was my email program. I still use nano very often as my editor of choice :) One time my local BBS moved to Miami...but the area code was still 305. It was considered long distance, even though the area code was the same. I racked up quite a telephone bill.

Yes! I've tried over the years to create a TW2002 clone, but I always stall out at the economic system. I've also tried to recreate Barren Realms Elite / Solar Realms Elite, but Amit lost the source code to that, too. Reverse engineering BBS games is hard! Maybe Legend of the Red Dragon would be easier... [Edit: I'm aware that there are TW2002 games out there right now, but those tend to be web-based, and I wanna do a legit BBS-style game. Telnet, probably.]

exogeny 10y ago
LORD is available here: lord.nuklear.org
ddunkin 10y ago
You can find the Majorbbs Entertainment Edition out there. Has TW, SoC, trivia, etc. Supports telnet.
ryanobjc 10y ago
Ditto actually. I mean, ultimately that's what Eve Online is, a massive TW2002 "clone". Only everything made better. I think the problem with an economic system is you need enough people to do it properly, or you have to figure out some kind of 'fake' where it can be dynamic enough for the concept of cross-space trading work, but also not be entirely unrealistic. I did learn a lot about event-driven programming, state machines, and the telnet protocol however.
hoodwink 10y ago
What are the TW games out there right now? I was not aware! I've dreamt for years about licensing TW to make a mobile version consistent with the gameplay of the BBS days. Before scripts. I don't know if you fall in love with the first games you play as a kid, but 25 years later, I still yearn for a 6 month TW bang with a corp of 4 friends.
- xenophonf 10y ago
  There are all kinds of game servers running! See my other post up-thread for two of my favorites. You can find more at http://www.classictw.com/ http://www.classictw.com/. They're only web-enabled as a convenience to people without old-school ANSI.SYS terminal emulators and DOS fonts. You can TELNET into all of them. SWATH is probably the best modern helper and runs well under WINE on FreeBSD, Linux, and Mac OS X.
amitp 10y ago
I agree, reverse engineering some of this stuff is hard. I had been studying economics & systems design and put lots of interacting feedback loops into SRE so it's sometimes hard to tease out the individual effects. I've put some notes up here for anyone who wants to clone it http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/Articles/SRE-Design.html http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/Articles/SRE-Desi... For a quick “where are they now”: - Barren Realms Elite --> Mehul (my brother) moved from BBS games to web games, with Earth 2025 and then Utopia, and then a web portal Swirve.com, and then he got out of the games business and ran a coffee shop, Dominican Joe in downtown Austin (but it was just sold) - Legend of the Red Dragon --> Seth Robinson (who I finally met this year) moved on to PC games, then mobile games, and now runs a successful MMO called Growtopia (but it was just sold) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Technologies - Solar Realms Elite --> I got out of the BBS door world and went to grad school, interested in teaching. I now write interactive tutorials at redblobgames.com, starting with game development but I want to expand into math and computer science. SRE's wikipedia page got wiped by the deletionists http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/922 http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/922 but was preserved by http://breakintochat.com/ http://breakintochat.com/
- Jemaclus 10y ago
  Yep yep, I've studied your notes before. Great resource. :) You're a rock star. Nice "Where are they Now" notes, too! Very cool!

AndyNemmity 10y ago

So much tradewars. That and Legend of the Red Dragon were my jam.

nvahalik 10y ago
A few years ago I found the original letter from (was it Seth?) about my LOTRD registration... Ah, violet...

grumblestumble 10y ago

Anyone remember LOD (Land of Devastation)? It never gained much traction but was an awesome idea at the time with it's downloadable tile packs. Unfortunately the really shitty gambling system made it godmode all around.

specialist 10y ago

My (online) social network got hooked on Diplomacy. Originally adjudicated via email. Then we found an automatic adjudicator, that ran as a door, but it kinda sucked. And someone in the group wrote a better one, which then got reasonably popular. I still miss those days.

deepakhj 10y ago

One of my all time favorite games. I miss those days so much.

LVB 10y ago

Oh yeah. I recall writing Telix scripts to traverse the galaxy and then calculate the shortest path from a->b based on the portals it discovered. I also recall quite the scandal when a sysop peeked into the admin console and gave an advantage to someone.

icelancer 10y ago
There was also custom TW2002 Telix-based software that had an overlay with macros you could use. Made things so fast.
yakk0 10y ago
Telix scripts were great! Easy to learn and useful, I had mine set up to automatically upload and download my QWK mail packets.

xenophonf 10y ago

Dude, I still play TW2002! SWATH is the best modern helper I know about: http://swath.net/ http://swath.net/ My meagre collection of SWATH scripts: https://github.com/irtnog/swath-scripts/tree/master/src https://github.com/irtnog/swath-scripts/tree/master/src The ICE9 game server: http://www.oregonsouth.com/ice9/ http://www.oregonsouth.com/ice9/ I don't know if ICE9 still does this, but they used to have a bunch of interesting customizations, like where sectors 1-2000 were a lightly regulated federation space were connected to a small 10-sector neutral zone, with the Star Dock sector being the jumping-off point into the wider universe. I loved playing there! Cruncher's Trade Wars server: http://cruncherstw.blogspot.com/ http://cruncherstw.blogspot.com/ https://www.facebook.com/CrunchersTW https://www.facebook.com/CrunchersTW Cruncher's is small but fun, with a variety of games and regular resets.

hoodwink 10y ago
Ah yes, I've seen SWATH before. Here's my issue: when I started playing, it was on a BBS where everyone played manually. There were no helpers or scripts. We'd manually keep track of sectors and port pairs and potential bubbles and so on. It was great. I belong to the camp that believes the scripts ruined the game :-/
- xenophonf 10y ago
  You don't have to use the helper bits of SWATH! Just turn that stuff off and enjoy it's near-perfect terminal emulation. I've played several games like that (these were old school 5000-sector games with rate limits, like how God intended you to play).
fma 10y ago
Oh man...TW2002...brings back memories....damn. I remember playing with Cruncher. I played heavily on the Fament BBS... I was in middle school...so this would have been mid 90's. I was connected to the Internet using a freenet that was provided by SEFLIN (South East Florida Library Information Network)...text based. People who had real internet ran applications, and using ICQ to chat (since you can scan the in network chat for teams chattering!) I was using plain ol text based Internet...and Pine was my email program. I still use nano very often as my editor of choice :) One time my local BBS moved to Miami...but the area code was still 305. It was considered long distance, even though the area code was the same. I racked up quite a telephone bill.