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Yeah! Trade Wars rocked/rocks!

I wish they would open the source to that in as much as they are probably not making much selling it at http://www.eisonline.com/TradeWars/ anymore.

One of them was http://www.cc-game.net/ but they fixed it after many people complained. It used the "`" character instead of single quotes for the link to the VIP section of the game. They changed it back to single quotes. CC has good programmers and web designers who make changes for bugs and things that are found.

There are other sites out there, but I do not know off the top of my head what they are. Most people just tell me that Firefox won't work with their gaming site, and that the people who run the site refuse to change for Firefox or follow web standards.

http://www.eisonline.com/twforum/forum.asp has a messed up look in Firefox and Mozilla, but renders fine in IE. It is a web forum for Tradewars. Use that to compare, they refuse to change for Firefox and claim anyone who wants to use their forum must use IE.

You can still play Tradewars 2002 online, which I was pleasantly surprised to find out about a year and a half ago. The downside to this was that I found myself spending a lot more of my free time playing, not to mention the game has changed since then.

The basic mechanics remain the same, but sysops can now open games that allow for unlimited turns, unlimited time limits, etc.

http://www.twgs.org/ is a good place to find currently running games (you can telnet into the server with any telnet client). http://www.eisonline.com/ is the home of the new TW2002 and also has user forums.

At least these days I'm not running up a $100 phone bill over 9600 baud modems to play.

About time for a new release, Trade Wars 2002 has been rather old since the early 1990s. Trade Wars 2112 seems to have never made it to this side of reality.

Trade Wars 2005 - MS vs EU

It would be even nicer if they did this in lieu of monthly subscription rates.

This has been seen before, and seems to be working rather well for the makers of Gunbound. You can play (for free) for hours and hours to accumulate "gold" wealth, or pay a nominal fee directly to the company to receive an injection of "cash". "cash" could be thought of as a service which increases the enjoyment (and thus has "value", considering that games are a vehicle for selling fun) of an otherwise free game.

The interesting thing about Gunbound's model is that "cash" and normal "gold" are not the same, nor are they directly interchangeable, as I recall. I haven't played for so long that I can't remember, but I believe you aren't able to directly transfer "cash" in Gunbound. "cash", which can only be bought, generally has (IIRC) 10 times the value of "gold", which is earned by playing matches.

This reminds me of the old, old days when BBS sysops would sell Trade Wars credits for real cash. That never seemed fair at all, however, since Trade Wars is a long-term strategy game which generally has an eventual "winner". Giving one player money would unbalance the game terribly. Note that Gunbound, however, is a simple shooting game that revolves around matches, and not an RPG or long-term strategy game. Items gained by long-term players give them a slight advantage in matches on high-ranked servers, but it is possible to play the game without worrying about economics at all.

The choice is left up to the user -- live in "high society", where (real) money and (virtual) possessions are quite important, or just play the game on the casual servers, where items are simply status symbols of cosmetic value.

Considering that the game still seems to be alive and kicking, I would say that this is a viable model for "legalizing" and regulating the currency trade in online gaming.

Perhaps an expert player of Gunbound could give an estimate of the real world value of cash, in terms of roughly how much grinding time worth of wealth one US dollar buys.

otherwise, maybe some of the text based adventure games, or even something like the old Trade Wars on Telnet, or webified versions.

These are meant to be safe suggestions, as I imagine that things that require fancy key combos and timing might be frustrating

Tradewars 2002

Official Site

Trade Wars was/is an excellent strategy type game. (old style graphics, tho)

Fortunatelly, Tradewars is still alive and kicking: http://www.eisonline.com

You can sometimes still play it online, often via telnet:

The Home Sector: Lots of Tradewars news.

Tradewars: Dark Millenium: Large-scale multiplayer game in development. Seems to be based on Tradewars 2002 under an agreement with EIS Online.

tradewars.org: Tradewars news, links, and more.

EIS Online: The current owners of Tradewars 2002, the best known Tradewars clone. They also market Tradewars Gold and and the Tradewars Game Server for online play. TradeWars 2002 is up to version 3

Hekate's TW Links: News, links, and everything else.

TWAR Homepage: Home of the TWAR helper.

I only wish that the article was more technical since others may have thoughts on multi-player online game ranking systems.

AppleScript is very slow when it comes to processing massive amounts of data. But it's the only language for playing TradeWars, a telnet game that was originally a dialup BBS door game, with a macintosh client, TWScripter 3. I've written a 93 page (118,388 characters) AppleScript bot for playing TradeWars (not publically available yet-- the help documentation would probably be longer than the code itself). But I still think AppleScript is too slow.

There are lots of BBSs on today's internet in the form of telnet systems. To this day I still play TradeWars on quite a few of them. The BBS movement is alive and kicking, it's just taken a new form.

TW2k2 is still very much alive. It now is up-to-date as a TCP/IP gaming server which can be connected to with telnet and custom clients. Several clients exist for your favorite platforms (Win, Linux, Java) and many offer much more robust scripting than was available during BBS days. SWATH (and I believe J-TWAT) uses Java, and TWXProxy (which isn't really a client) uses a proprietary language. Clients also collect information which can then be processed (e.g., mapping the universe, finding deadends, bubbles).

Also, the fact that multiple users can possibly be continuously on the server 24/7 has changed how the game works. A common technique called planet dropping is frequently employed on tollfig killers, which requires the planet dropper to be online so they can transwarp a nice level 6 volcanic planet on top of an enemy. Barricading Stardock can be automated (although that is considered extremely risky), as well as other tasks. In that respect, the game is a bit more realtime than before.

Strategy can be conducted through email and instant messenger clients. Group chat features in IM clients and IRC are more secure than the only "group" option in TW which is to use subspace radio which can be scanned by enemies.

In a sense, it's not the same game, but to me it's a great example of transitioning from the BBS world to the internet.

sorry for replying to my own post. I found the TW 2002 & Gold site

http://www.eisonline.com/products/default.htm

TradeWars.

Because Trade Wars 2002 and TWGS will now be ported to Linux! See the old Slashdot discussion about this.

Now I don't have to fiddle around with crazy dosemu hacks or depending on Win9x machines to have a real Trade Wars server. :)

zsazsafrazs

Because Trade Wars 2002 and TWGS will now be ported to Linux! See the old Slashdot discussion about this.

Now I don't have to fiddle around with crazy dosemu hacks or depending on Win9x machines to have a real Trade Wars server. :)

zsazsafrazs

I've been working with PHP for a while now, and it just seems to me like the wrong language to program a web-based game in. PHP is still very much in a development stage, and running any sort of web-based game in which the page refreshes for every command just seems like a lot of overhead processing.

I've actually been running my own telnet-based tradewars server for a while now, and the lack of configuation options in TWGS has really made the game quite repetitive. I'd gladly welcome any open-source initiative for a new telnet/applet based tradewars clone.

Trade Wars 2002 owner and programmer John Pritchett has said that he'd release a Linux version when Delphi for Linux comes out... and now it's on its way!

Yipee!!!

Trade Wars 2002 official forum

For those of you interested in checking out the latest version of Trade Wars, you can download the beta TWGSv1.01 (Win32 TW server) at http://www.eisonline.com/twgs/beta. Keep in mind that this is a 4 meg distribution, and since I don't have mirror download sites it might be slow during peak hours. We had a wave of hits coming as a result of this post :( If you're not getting a few K per second, come back later.

Here are a few answers to common questions:

Who are you?

EIS is just one person, John Pritchett (me). Because of my circumstances, it is impossible for me to relocate and seek employment at a computer game company. Therefore, I am trying to build my own company around my vision of online gaming. I am not a fan of "massively multiplayer" games, and am trying to promote an online game style based on the strengths of the BBS door model. My TW server project barely scratches the surface, but it'll be slow going as long as I'm the only developer on the team :(

What's new in TW these days?

In my current project (TWGS), I have worked hard to retain the classic gameplay while adding some new twists through the Gold features. If you played TW back in the early nineties, you'll be able to jump right into a modern game. Games today are multiplayer, can have up to 20,000 sectors, can have customized aliens, ships and planets, can be played in classic, MBBS emulation, or Gold customized modes, and can be hosted from a computer without a BBS.

What is TWGS?

My goal with this project is to provide a more modern parallel to the BBS. It's not supposed to provide all of the features that a BBS provided, since the web already does a better job of that. All it is meant to do is provide a cheap, accessible multiplayer online game platform where small, amateur developers can target their games. I've started with Trade Wars, and TWGS is a devoted server for that game. I intend to generalize the server in coming months, and plans are in the works to bring LORD to the server as the second game. At that point, I intend to open the market to any interested developers (royalty free).

Anyone with a Windows-based PC can run a server, and a cable-modem connection or better can host a decent sized game. The game is built from the original code, so it isn't as optimized as a game of this type could be. But on the other hand, it's much more efficient than any other implementation of Trade Wars 2002.

Why Delphi?

Trade Wars was originally written by Gary Martin in Borland Pascal. When I decided to do a port, it was either a rewrite or a recompile. I wanted to keep the game as close to the classic as possible, so I simply recompiled it under Delphi, then added sockets code. I've added a considerable amount to the game, but the classic mode is nearly identical to the game you played as a BBS door.

Can I please write a Linux port?

I get this question quite frequently. I want to wait on the Inprise (Borland) port of Delphi first, because that would save a great deal of effort. If that fails, I will consider letting another programmer do the port. Please don't swamp me with requests at least until Borland's port is out and I've tried that approach ;)

What is the future of Trade Wars?

I am very interested in bringing some ideas for a more mainstream game to some of the computer game publishers. I believe the name still has a solid recognition factor, and a modernized game that retains the essence of the original could do very well.

Finally, I'd like to comment about the history of Trade Wars. Clearly, Gary Martin was not the first person to develop a game of this kind. The first, as mentioned in other posts, was outlined in a book on BASIC, and is nearly as old as the modern computer. Early BBS versions were developed by Sherrick and Morris CONCURRENT to Gary's efforts. Mr. Martin explains that there was a friendly race between these two early versions, until Sherrick started to make negative comments about Martin's version. He was able to put a stop to the claims made by Sherrick simply because they were not true.

There is little dispute that Gary's final version, Trade Wars 2002, was the most popular, and it continues to have a solid following. It is my hope to continue the Trade Wars tradition, both with the classic running under TWGS, and a future, mainstream version of the game.

Thanks for your interest in TW2002. To keep up with the developments, go to http://www.eisonline.com/twgs and follow the forum or add yourself to the mailing list. And I'm always available for comments at jpritch@eisonline.com.

John Pritchett
Epic Interactive Strategy

For those of you interested in checking out the latest version of Trade Wars, you can download the beta TWGSv1.01 (Win32 TW server) at http://www.eisonline.com/twgs/beta. Keep in mind that this is a 4 meg distribution, and since I don't have mirror download sites it might be slow during peak hours. We had a wave of hits coming as a result of this post :( If you're not getting a few K per second, come back later.

Here are a few answers to common questions:

Who are you?

EIS is just one person, John Pritchett (me). Because of my circumstances, it is impossible for me to relocate and seek employment at a computer game company. Therefore, I am trying to build my own company around my vision of online gaming. I am not a fan of "massively multiplayer" games, and am trying to promote an online game style based on the strengths of the BBS door model. My TW server project barely scratches the surface, but it'll be slow going as long as I'm the only developer on the team :(

What's new in TW these days?

In my current project (TWGS), I have worked hard to retain the classic gameplay while adding some new twists through the Gold features. If you played TW back in the early nineties, you'll be able to jump right into a modern game. Games today are multiplayer, can have up to 20,000 sectors, can have customized aliens, ships and planets, can be played in classic, MBBS emulation, or Gold customized modes, and can be hosted from a computer without a BBS.

What is TWGS?

My goal with this project is to provide a more modern parallel to the BBS. It's not supposed to provide all of the features that a BBS provided, since the web already does a better job of that. All it is meant to do is provide a cheap, accessible multiplayer online game platform where small, amateur developers can target their games. I've started with Trade Wars, and TWGS is a devoted server for that game. I intend to generalize the server in coming months, and plans are in the works to bring LORD to the server as the second game. At that point, I intend to open the market to any interested developers (royalty free).

Anyone with a Windows-based PC can run a server, and a cable-modem connection or better can host a decent sized game. The game is built from the original code, so it isn't as optimized as a game of this type could be. But on the other hand, it's much more efficient than any other implementation of Trade Wars 2002.

Why Delphi?

Trade Wars was originally written by Gary Martin in Borland Pascal. When I decided to do a port, it was either a rewrite or a recompile. I wanted to keep the game as close to the classic as possible, so I simply recompiled it under Delphi, then added sockets code. I've added a considerable amount to the game, but the classic mode is nearly identical to the game you played as a BBS door.

Can I please write a Linux port?

I get this question quite frequently. I want to wait on the Inprise (Borland) port of Delphi first, because that would save a great deal of effort. If that fails, I will consider letting another programmer do the port. Please don't swamp me with requests at least until Borland's port is out and I've tried that approach ;)

What is the future of Trade Wars?

I am very interested in bringing some ideas for a more mainstream game to some of the computer game publishers. I believe the name still has a solid recognition factor, and a modernized game that retains the essence of the original could do very well.

Finally, I'd like to comment about the history of Trade Wars. Clearly, Gary Martin was not the first person to develop a game of this kind. The first, as mentioned in other posts, was outlined in a book on BASIC, and is nearly as old as the modern computer. Early BBS versions were developed by Sherrick and Morris CONCURRENT to Gary's efforts. Mr. Martin explains that there was a friendly race between these two early versions, until Sherrick started to make negative comments about Martin's version. He was able to put a stop to the claims made by Sherrick simply because they were not true.

There is little dispute that Gary's final version, Trade Wars 2002, was the most popular, and it continues to have a solid following. It is my hope to continue the Trade Wars tradition, both with the classic running under TWGS, and a future, mainstream version of the game.

Thanks for your interest in TW2002. To keep up with the developments, go to http://www.eisonline.com/twgs and follow the forum or add yourself to the mailing list. And I'm always available for comments at jpritch@eisonline.com.

John Pritchett
Epic Interactive Strategy

For those of you interested in checking out the latest version of Trade Wars, you can download the beta TWGSv1.01 (Win32 TW server) at http://www.eisonline.com/twgs/beta. Keep in mind that this is a 4 meg distribution, and since I don't have mirror download sites it might be slow during peak hours. We had a wave of hits coming as a result of this post :( If you're not getting a few K per second, come back later.

Here are a few answers to common questions:

Who are you?

EIS is just one person, John Pritchett (me). Because of my circumstances, it is impossible for me to relocate and seek employment at a computer game company. Therefore, I am trying to build my own company around my vision of online gaming. I am not a fan of "massively multiplayer" games, and am trying to promote an online game style based on the strengths of the BBS door model. My TW server project barely scratches the surface, but it'll be slow going as long as I'm the only developer on the team :(

What's new in TW these days?

In my current project (TWGS), I have worked hard to retain the classic gameplay while adding some new twists through the Gold features. If you played TW back in the early nineties, you'll be able to jump right into a modern game. Games today are multiplayer, can have up to 20,000 sectors, can have customized aliens, ships and planets, can be played in classic, MBBS emulation, or Gold customized modes, and can be hosted from a computer without a BBS.

What is TWGS?

My goal with this project is to provide a more modern parallel to the BBS. It's not supposed to provide all of the features that a BBS provided, since the web already does a better job of that. All it is meant to do is provide a cheap, accessible multiplayer online game platform where small, amateur developers can target their games. I've started with Trade Wars, and TWGS is a devoted server for that game. I intend to generalize the server in coming months, and plans are in the works to bring LORD to the server as the second game. At that point, I intend to open the market to any interested developers (royalty free).

Anyone with a Windows-based PC can run a server, and a cable-modem connection or better can host a decent sized game. The game is built from the original code, so it isn't as optimized as a game of this type could be. But on the other hand, it's much more efficient than any other implementation of Trade Wars 2002.

Why Delphi?

Trade Wars was originally written by Gary Martin in Borland Pascal. When I decided to do a port, it was either a rewrite or a recompile. I wanted to keep the game as close to the classic as possible, so I simply recompiled it under Delphi, then added sockets code. I've added a considerable amount to the game, but the classic mode is nearly identical to the game you played as a BBS door.

Can I please write a Linux port?

I get this question quite frequently. I want to wait on the Inprise (Borland) port of Delphi first, because that would save a great deal of effort. If that fails, I will consider letting another programmer do the port. Please don't swamp me with requests at least until Borland's port is out and I've tried that approach ;)

What is the future of Trade Wars?

I am very interested in bringing some ideas for a more mainstream game to some of the computer game publishers. I believe the name still has a solid recognition factor, and a modernized game that retains the essence of the original could do very well.

Finally, I'd like to comment about the history of Trade Wars. Clearly, Gary Martin was not the first person to develop a game of this kind. The first, as mentioned in other posts, was outlined in a book on BASIC, and is nearly as old as the modern computer. Early BBS versions were developed by Sherrick and Morris CONCURRENT to Gary's efforts. Mr. Martin explains that there was a friendly race between these two early versions, until Sherrick started to make negative comments about Martin's version. He was able to put a stop to the claims made by Sherrick simply because they were not true.

There is little dispute that Gary's final version, Trade Wars 2002, was the most popular, and it continues to have a solid following. It is my hope to continue the Trade Wars tradition, both with the classic running under TWGS, and a future, mainstream version of the game.

Thanks for your interest in TW2002. To keep up with the developments, go to http://www.eisonline.com/twgs and follow the forum or add yourself to the mailing list. And I'm always available for comments at jpritch@eisonline.com.

John Pritchett
Epic Interactive Strategy

For those of you interested in checking out the latest version of Trade Wars, you can download the beta TWGSv1.01 (Win32 TW server) at http://www.eisonline.com/twgs/beta. Keep in mind that this is a 4 meg distribution, and since I don't have mirror download sites it might be slow during peak hours. We had a wave of hits coming as a result of this post :( If you're not getting a few K per second, come back later.

Here are a few answers to common questions:

Who are you?

EIS is just one person, John Pritchett (me). Because of my circumstances, it is impossible for me to relocate and seek employment at a computer game company. Therefore, I am trying to build my own company around my vision of online gaming. I am not a fan of "massively multiplayer" games, and am trying to promote an online game style based on the strengths of the BBS door model. My TW server project barely scratches the surface, but it'll be slow going as long as I'm the only developer on the team :(

What's new in TW these days?

In my current project (TWGS), I have worked hard to retain the classic gameplay while adding some new twists through the Gold features. If you played TW back in the early nineties, you'll be able to jump right into a modern game. Games today are multiplayer, can have up to 20,000 sectors, can have customized aliens, ships and planets, can be played in classic, MBBS emulation, or Gold customized modes, and can be hosted from a computer without a BBS.

What is TWGS?

My goal with this project is to provide a more modern parallel to the BBS. It's not supposed to provide all of the features that a BBS provided, since the web already does a better job of that. All it is meant to do is provide a cheap, accessible multiplayer online game platform where small, amateur developers can target their games. I've started with Trade Wars, and TWGS is a devoted server for that game. I intend to generalize the server in coming months, and plans are in the works to bring LORD to the server as the second game. At that point, I intend to open the market to any interested developers (royalty free).

Anyone with a Windows-based PC can run a server, and a cable-modem connection or better can host a decent sized game. The game is built from the original code, so it isn't as optimized as a game of this type could be. But on the other hand, it's much more efficient than any other implementation of Trade Wars 2002.

Why Delphi?

Trade Wars was originally written by Gary Martin in Borland Pascal. When I decided to do a port, it was either a rewrite or a recompile. I wanted to keep the game as close to the classic as possible, so I simply recompiled it under Delphi, then added sockets code. I've added a considerable amount to the game, but the classic mode is nearly identical to the game you played as a BBS door.

Can I please write a Linux port?

I get this question quite frequently. I want to wait on the Inprise (Borland) port of Delphi first, because that would save a great deal of effort. If that fails, I will consider letting another programmer do the port. Please don't swamp me with requests at least until Borland's port is out and I've tried that approach ;)

What is the future of Trade Wars?

I am very interested in bringing some ideas for a more mainstream game to some of the computer game publishers. I believe the name still has a solid recognition factor, and a modernized game that retains the essence of the original could do very well.

Finally, I'd like to comment about the history of Trade Wars. Clearly, Gary Martin was not the first person to develop a game of this kind. The first, as mentioned in other posts, was outlined in a book on BASIC, and is nearly as old as the modern computer. Early BBS versions were developed by Sherrick and Morris CONCURRENT to Gary's efforts. Mr. Martin explains that there was a friendly race between these two early versions, until Sherrick started to make negative comments about Martin's version. He was able to put a stop to the claims made by Sherrick simply because they were not true.

There is little dispute that Gary's final version, Trade Wars 2002, was the most popular, and it continues to have a solid following. It is my hope to continue the Trade Wars tradition, both with the classic running under TWGS, and a future, mainstream version of the game.

Thanks for your interest in TW2002. To keep up with the developments, go to http://www.eisonline.com/twgs and follow the forum or add yourself to the mailing list. And I'm always available for comments at jpritch@eisonline.com.

John Pritchett
Epic Interactive Strategy

BBS's are still out there, but you need to know where to look. Hint: A fair number have telnet access.

I won't post the address to any here, since I don't have any particular wish to crash the two that I frequent. However, I will reccommend the program Zap-O-Com (ZOC) which is available at http://www.emtec.com/zoc/index.html. They have a downloadable shareware version. (Because after all - BBS's are what made shareware work not so many years ago.)

ZOC is a very configurable, ANSI enabled telnet/dialup client. The only hitch is that it is only available for Windows and OS/2.

As for doors on the existing BBS's, Trade Wars 2002, Barren Realms Elite, and Falcon's Eye are still ubiquitous. Trade Wars seems to have the most devoted crowd, and there are many lists of active games available. This is one I found after a quick search. Others exist that are updated nearly daily with information such as the nuber of players, planets, corporations, etc. http://www.tradewars.org is a Trade Wars news site. Not sure how good it is.

Anyway, I encourage any people out there who haven't had experience with BBS's to try them out. The community still exists, the only real downside is that it is a lot more trouble to meet someone face to face (should you want to) than it was when everyone was in the same city/town. (Damn you, Mosaic, damn you)

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