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Classic TradeWars 2002 Sold
A reader writes "The rights to the classic BBS game TradeWars 2002 were sold by Martech Software to Epic Interactive Strategy over the weekend. John Pritchett of EIS has been active in the development of the TradeWars Game Server prior to the sale of the actual game. John claims he will begin working on a Linux port as soon as Borland ports Delphi to Linux. Nostalgia!
" I remember back when they first made it so you could have different planet types, and than multiple ships. *sniff* So much time wast...er spent.
I dream of playing Barren Realms Elite
If I die before I wake
It's a trip to the forest I must take
ok so that was waaay cheesy.. but seriously..
with all the power of Open source.. would it be possible to make a web/telnet version of
1. BRE
2. LORD
3. TRADE WARS 2002 ?
if so.. I can guarantee my productivity will plummet, and my networth skyrocket.. man.. i remember using the school computer to dial into bbs's so I could get my turns ino before anyone else got back from school..
If someone has the know how to make these games again.. I have the processor/space speed to host it and all the tools u need to develop it.
Anyone remember a cool little utility that would download some info out of tradewars and map out the Tradewars universe? It would help you discover tunnels for putting your bases in, etc.
I can't remember the name of it though.. arg.
Check out the Midnight Machine, which is running Wildcat! 5. The doors area features 2 TW2002 games, LORD, SRE, BRE, and many more.
Best of all, people still use it, so the games are still active
Pimp Wars was the best, but Piss Wars, Leech, and Dominion were pretty good. I also remember some funny-but-not-so-good ripoffs like Dick Wars and Sex Wars.
cpeterso
And don't forget the other games -- Studs, BRE and Lord
;-)
And LOD! Don't forget Land Of Devistation! Only door game I know of that supported inter-BBS compos and included an optional client-side GUI that could also play MOD (tracked music) files while you played! I've still got the LOD theme music in my MOD collection.
Can you remember your Fidonet node?
My point, or the BBS I fed off of? I was 1:177/132.4, a point off of Computer Castle BBS, the largest Fido BBS in the state of NH before we shutdown. 20 incoming phone lines, and a call-forwarding network extending accross three states!
NYNEX kept trying to raise our rates, but we kept fighting them off. They finally decided to go ahead and do it illegally. What can you do? They're The Phone Company(TM). The system shutdown when the SysOp got a $3000 phone bill that month.
Do you wish you could still code with PCBoard Programming Language?
Give me RemoteAccess and a copy of Turbo Pascal V7 anyday!
Ever miss playing with the volume slide on your USR Courier during connects?
'sniff.
Miss using TheDRAW or DuhDRAW?
Still got TheDRAW zipped up in case I need it. Though it prolly doesn't run under Linux natively, I bet DOSemu would do pretty well.
Wish you could still dial out with QMPro?
Telemate, man! Telemate! One of the only multithreaded DOS apps I ever saw. And the only DOS comm program that let you do other thing while downloading!
Man, those were the days!
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I used to sysop a WWIV bbs. We had TW2002, Food Fight, and we subscribed to Fido.net. All that on a 386-16 with (gasp) 8 megs of ram. I remember getting phone calls from my friends because I shut the server down at 2am to play Wing Commander. I used to get up extra early in the AM to get my TW turns in before anyone else. Today's games are neat and all, but when's the last time you got up at 5am to play q3a?
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
Yeah!!!! Which BBS? I ran Corpsman Corner BBS (Fidonet node 1:120/429 for a while) in Mt. Clemens, Mi. I was stationed at Selfridge. I ran several doors, tradwares 2002 for sure being one of them. BRE/SRE were great. Did you ever run LORD? Or Planets? Not VGA Planets, but Planets, by the makers of LORD? Man, those WERE the days! And who can forget Pimp Wars? Hahaha!
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
starshiptraders.com (this one supports telnet and http, supports lots of players and games, and is available to play -- I wrote this one), Tradewars, The New Era (you can download this one and run it yourself), and "Galactic Domination", which I've logged in to but don't have permission to make public -- it's under development.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
I played Tradwars 2, Yankee Trader, Galactic Warzone (those last two were kinda buggy and you could exploit all sorts of fun stuff :) and even wrote one, Czarwars. I ran Czarwars for about 6 years on my AutoBBS system on one phone line... :P
I never played TW1000 or the original TW though.
A friend of mine has a copy of the book, The People's Book of Computer Games, which included a little BASIC program, "Star Trader", that started it all. I tried to buy the book from him but, of course, he wouldn't sell.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Does ANYONE remember this precursor to TradeWars 2002? Everyone talks like it's the only trade wars game that's been in existence... I spent many days playing this one, going on long planet-buying sprees when they'd go on sale for 99%, and months later find one of those planets still tucked away in some corner producing away...
Though that doesn't quite match the fun of dumping all your fighters, sneaking in under those 25,000 fighter fleets, and doing some planet-smashing of one of the big players.
And staying up late and hitting the auto-dialer at midnight hoping to be the first one in after maintenance to invade the Cabal...
I'd love to get a hold of this one, any version... heck, I'd even take Trade Wars 500 if that could be found.
I don't know what it was, but TradeWars 2002 just never had the same charm...
(We'll ignore that bug-riddled Galactic Warzone, though they tried so hard...)
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I ran a Telegard BBS back in 94 with TradeWars 2002 on it. Man, those were the days!
I don't get why everyone used and remembers Telegard, when it was little more than a blatant rip-off of the T.A.G. BBS software, and rather inferior at that... I remember the first time I logged on to a Telegard BBS, right after it's "initial release", and it seemed they had done little more than changed the software name...
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Note: I was a BBSer from 1991-1995, and one of the top two BRE players in my city, as judged by tournaments and inter-league play. At one time I frequented no less than 15 boards a week, often 8 a day to play BRE, Global War (a risk clone) and Land of Devestation (I even made half a mod for that one) I was known on no less than 10 FidoNet echoes, and even was a SysOp for 6 months (and a CoSysOp on a few boards too... wasn't everyone? :)
In this context, I say we oversentimentalize the BBS.
Sure, we met plenty of people. Sure, we had lots of fun. But I'd suggest that more than a few of you have telnetted into a board, checked the message boards, and played a door game or two, and said, "This is what I spent hours a day doing?"
If we really think back, I'm sure we can remember more than the silver lining on the cloud. If it was a multi-line board, chances are we were paying money to access it, perhaps more than the internet charges we pay now. And what were we paying for? The privledge to talk to maybe 4 or 5 more people at a time, or download the newest file.
Or, you were on about 80 of the single line boards, where you would toggle 8 or 9, and redial for a half hour until you got on, hoping to make the midnight deadline for some game.
Let's face it: times have gotten better technologically, not worse.
I think what we're really remembering is the people we've met. I mean, we can always find people somewhere on this vast Internet, but chances are they're half way across the world, or at least the country. I miss finding people who were in the same city that I am. In a world of unbounded contact, is it the physical colocation with others that we miss?
Of my current best friends, three of them I met online. I see two of them often enough now that I no longar talk to them online. As for the third, I'm more likely to talk with him over the phone long distance than to chat with him online.
And perhaps this is the moral of the story. As much as we talk about these new forms of communication taking over the world, all they are, ultimately, are ways to contact people, and hopefully to stimulate face-to-face interaction.
So go play TW2002 again. Chances are you'll play for a week and then drop it, citing that you just don't have as much time as you used to. Or find a BRE league or play Earth 2025, its successor. But it was the people, not the process.
Switching it to run on Linux would open up several things. It would allow the game to be easily made available over the Internet, and it would allow it to run on a solid multi-user system.
However, the problems (this was a few years ago though) with the multi-line (AKA MBBS) version was balance. The balance that made the one-line version work failled when they lost the intracacies of ship speeds with multiple turns for movement. Also, the combat system was never updated, so it became a matter of typing speed if the user was online, or if they were offline, you could do whatever you wanted.
I missed the old version, but the MBBS version that I had worked with was missing something. However, I look foward to seeing the new version.
Alex
The Internet reminds me of pre-MBBS BBSing. You could trade files with ease, and there were discussion forums where you would read others posts, but there was no real community developed.
When MBBSes were taking over my area, S. Florida, a few ended replacing the dozens of BBSes in the area. I remember sitting in teleconference for hours talking about everything, and then we would complain about the newbies. The older users were computer geeks, the newbies were whoever's family had just bought a computer and their friend's introduced them to our board.
My first girlfriend was met indirectly through BBSing. Although she happened to be on the board, I really met her through a mutual friend.
While I have a couple of good friends from my high school, the majority of my close friends from my teenage years were the people I met online. GTs went from big deals every 3-4 months to an almost weekly thing as the usage base began having more users of driving age.
It might have been unique, but Dragon World was very special to me. The system devolved into political infighting when the system went through a messy divorce and the board transferred hands a few times.
I do remember my attempt to salvage the board... it was on the Internet for a few months while it sat in my bedroom at school. Unfortunately, the owner sold the board, but the new owner never even put it up... There is a mailling list of users... but it is so infrequently trafficed that it is sad...
Alex
(read: only moderate this if you know what a BBS is)
..
Ah, finally an old school story
The BBS scene is not totally dead. Darktech.org and dyndns.com host many 2-node telnet BBSes running PCBoard, WWIV, SearchLight, etc. And don't forget the other games -- Studs, BRE and Lord -- people are still playing them; and the more popular MajorMUD for WorldGroup/MBBS. FidoNET and other private messy nets are still alive and rolling.
Can you remember your Fidonet node?
Do you wish you could still code with PCBoard Programming Language?
Ever miss playing with the volume slide on your USR Courier during connects?
Miss using TheDRAW or DuhDRAW?
Wish you could still dial out with QMPro?
If any of your answers were "yes" then you might be a washed-up old school BBSer. Related links:
http://www.oldskool.org/
http://archives.thebbs.org/
http://bbscentral.kracked.com/
http://thuglife.org/
NPA#201
Jon L.
I miss TW and its ilk. There's a half-decent one I goofed with a bit (Space Merchant), but it Just Ain't the Same. It's kinda weird how games that no game marketer nowadays would take a second look at ("It's not even 3D accellerated!") was, and I assume still is, quite popular. Same for all those BBS doors; they were simple as hell, but they *worked*. :)
I should hope there are plenty of people out there who actually don't believe the graphics make the game. ;)
-PS
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
I still run that game..
Telnet even..
tradewars.riscserver.cx port 2002
ANSI BBS emulation.
Play, we need players..
Have fun....
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
It's funny hearing all these nostalgic former players talk about how it used to be... I've somehow managed to never leave the game!
I invite all the old timers to check out the newest version of TW, even newer than the beloved ufies.org games. Quite a few improvements...
http://twgs.tradewars.org
telnet://twgs.tradewars.org
Games are free to all!
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
Didn't these games pre-date Delphi? i.e. weren't they written in Turbo Pascal or something?
In which case, a port to Linux can begin right away - there's already a TP-compatible pascal compiler on Linux...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
if you want to play tradewars telnet to (telnet://cybernet.dyndns.org) or point your web browser to (http://cybernet.dyndns.org/telnet.telnet.html) or just log intot he site... (http://cybernet.dyndns.org) Support for 100 online users -marcux
in case anyone wants to go nostalgic and play again, IIRC the ufies bbs (bbs.ufies.org) still runs tradewars.