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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

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!

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!