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New Graphical Trade Wars 'Dark Millennium'
7213 noted that
the Tradewars site has announced "Tradewars, Dark Millennium", which presumably will be a MMORPG [?] RTS
based on the terrifyingly addictive game that I used to write scripts to play my turns for me in middle school. Screenshots and descriptions are available, but its gonna be vapor for a long time I'm sure. TW2002 is really where I met Hemos,
Nate, and
Kurt The Pope. God I loved that game.
While you're waiting for Dark Millenium, you can play Blacknova Traders an open source html tradewars at blacknova.net. When DM comes out, you will probably want to stick with the open source version.
I remember getting my 14.4k. Quite a leap up from my 2400bps- I remember not having to wait for most text to load..
That's the problem with telnet BBSes- the latency sucks. Unfortunately, I doubt there are any easy solutions to this- what would be best is a BRE-manager that would allow the client to reproduce the menus on cue, etc, and have only the bare essentials sent down the pipe. Would certainly make latency less noticable..
-bugg
For colonizing from sol, I used emacs and gpm to do my dirty work. I just typed the appropriate command sequence in emacs, highlighted it, and whacked the paste button a dozen or so times. Of course, if anything out of the ordinary happened, the results could be catastrophic.
Port-to-port trading, on the other hand, I did using a crack-addled perl client that I threw together. It'd also determine the optimal ordering for a list of waypoints to be visited.
Oh, and I had a script to extract information from a log dump of CIM and a bunch of little scripts to work with that data to find things like port pairs.
Nothing particularly special, but there's a certain degree of "I wrote it myself." pride.
You got laid by violet!
That is for Trade Wars Gold/Game Server, not for Dark Millenium :(
Would be a cool idea. How would you do that? I guess you could take some source for a base telnet server and heavily modify it. Are there better ways than that?
From the Trade Wars webpage:
Realm plans to release Trade Wars on Macintosh, Linux and the console systems soon thereafter.
This is good for us Windows escapees.
Let's hope it isn't vaporware.... (hope I didn't just jinx it!)
PS: For those of you who remember Solaria... Earth:2025 is at games.swirve.com/earth. It a great, large mass of online strategy gaming. There's nearly 16,000 players in the Standard game....
(/shameless plug)
Ruling The World, One Moron At A Time(tm)
"As Kosher As A Bacon-Cheeseburger"(tmp)
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
For those of you who can't wait for this to come out try checking out some of these interesting and commendable knock-offs.
JumpGate: Very cool first person ship flying in a pseudo-realistic physics universe. Three different factions vying for control of the same universe, join one. Fly your ship into combat or trade goods peaceably. You can't own a planet or a space station but the graphics are alright. It's in open-beta and available now @ www.mightygames.com.
MerchantEmpires.net: A slick web interface leads to a back end written in php and mysql. Almost exactly the same as Tradewars, but with a web interface, this game wasted plenty of my time. Check it out at www.merchantempires.net.
Eve-Online: Looks very, very ,cool but is in the early alpha stages right now. You won't be able to play it for at least 18 months. The graphics engine looks awesome and you can own ships and spacestations. www.eve-online.com
Privateer Online: Origin killed this title a while ago but some diehards still think it may be in the works. I wish it was but I think this is not the case. Have fun!
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line.
Got the url for the BBS? I would LOVE to play TW again.
(or telnet to lord.nuklear.org port 31337)
You know you want to.
Well you could check out BlackNova Traders a web-based tradewars game...
BlackNova Traders
While we're on the subject of BBS nostalgia, check out Remembrance of Things Past, an excellent Cult of the Dead Cow T-File from 1998.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
i was at class, so i missed most of the fray on this, but it looks really cool. i've just got one request for the devel team, and i may pass it along.
i really liked the feel that the original trade wars had... sorta a Star Wars meets Star Trek ambience, which may not be legally possible given the current environment and the business plan they have, but it deserves a shot. yeah, the ships in ANSI blue and red is cool... but unless it's got that plausible pankake-squashed look to the ships... right now it looks like Anarchy Online and not TW2002.
of course, come the day, i'll probably not pay to play either of them, and just stick to FPS LAN games and TW2002 on free telnet BBS's.
i don't MMORPG right now anyway... for what it's worth__
alt.geek
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
Umm, it won't be "vaporware" until they start missing deadlines. Just because it's in the works, doesn't mean it's vaporware...
I registered tw2002... I want a discount on the new one! :)
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
I played this with my friends in early high school and it took up a lot of my time. We were obsessed with this game. We kept trying to write clones of it with QBasic. Eventually I gave up and wrote a full-fledged LORD (Legend of the Red Dragon) clone with QBasic. It was huge. I even utilized the modem to make an "online" version of it. This game is a true classic. I'm just waiting for NASA to come out with their commercially available Interdictor Cruiser. I mean, come on! 2002 Is next year!!! Hurry up! I met a lot of people on trade wars too.. It's great for meeting friends.. and enemies :) :)
Long Live TradeWars!!!!!!!!
There is a great online comics scene out there, and some of the best are all about modern gaming. Comics like Penny Arcade and Player vs. Player (PvP) are consistantly funny and high quality. What's more, they give a shared experience, and often foster a community.
In a bit of nostalgia-meets-the-Internet, Gamers have resurected one of the shining examples of bad localization. The folks who translated ZeroWing did an awful job, and the results are so bad they are funny. The phrases recently became popular again, and you'll hear cries of "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" across the Internet.
These same gamers shut off the connection for a while to fire up the photo editor and create some great parodies. Many are posted to message boards to be appreciated by fellow fans. Some of them made a dubbed version, others made a techno soundtrack (search for "Laziest Men On Mars, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"), and others made a hilarious flash movie.
All this creativity was spawned by this later version of gamers. More that ever, I think creative people are meeting and interacting online, and the new games are, at worst, better versions of television, and, at best, a tool for creating a common experience, so that strangers can meet each other.
All this is a bit off-topic, but I think you are worried over nothing. I'm hoping they do a good job with the new TradeWars, which I remember as fondly as other Slashdotters (...in my day, 2400 baud modems, 1 hour just to download 1 meg of porn, etc...)
Nothing like it before it, nothing like it after it.
I also liked Usurper. SRE was OK. FE was OK. LORD was OK (borderline bad- I know I'll get flamed for this), Food Fight was a great way to spend your remaining minutes.. :)
I would kill for a good modern day version of BRE. Alas, I doubt any replacement will capture the heart of the politics and strategy that was BRE.
-bugg
Check :
http://www.eisonline.com/twgs/#Order
under "Notice to Martech Customers" - get this - this company is HONORING Martech's Free Upgrade Policy
Definately nice to see a company understanding the importance of keeping users of their product happy.
My .sig says it all... :)
Here's the original announcement:
Quoted off of WWIVnet:
47/50: The Future of Martech Software
Name: Gary Martin #1 @9354
Date: Thu Apr 16 08:59 1992
From: Castle Ravenloft (Topeka, Kansas) [913-842-0300]
Statement of Direction, April 16th, 1992
Martech Software, Inc.
Recently we asked the BBS community if they would be interested in an advanced version of Trade Wars 2002. The response has been overwhelmingly positive! With the exception of a few who expect to get something for nothing, Sysops across the country enthusiastically screamed "YES! YES!" for our advanced Single and Multinode version of Trade Wars 2112.
With this vote of confidence, Martech will be moving ahead on the TW2112 project. We do not have an estimated release schedule at this time.
Some concern was expressed that TW2002 registrants should get a discount on TW2112's cost. We agree. So at this time we are setting forth the following tentative pricing schedule:
Trade Wars 2112 registration (for all versions of TW2112)
For 1 to 4 nodes $35 US
For 5 to 10 nodes $50 US
For 11 to 25 nodes $65 US
For 26+ nodes $80 US
*** Upgrading from a previous registration of TW2002 gives you a ***
*** Fifteen dollar discount on any of the above prices. ***
Trade Wars 2112 Vga Terminal Program $10 US
| Please note this registration is NOT a Sysop's cost, but |
| a user's cost. The TW2112 Term Program will support |
| 640 x 480 256 color mode and sound cards. It will offer |
| many of the features, integrated into it, of the current |
| mapping and database analysis programs. This will be a |
| complete TW2112 environment for your Users! It will |
| even function as a standalone Term package so Traders |
| can set it to dial their favorite TWs games... |
For those that are curious about the multi-node costs of TW2112, we plan on supporting both Multi-process setups (Desqview, Windows OS/2) and Multinode setups (Lantastic, Novell lans. Std file sharing using Share.exe for record and file locking.) The multinode prices reflect the amount of INTERACTIVE PLAY that will be incorporated into TW2112. Users will be able to combat each other realtime, join in mutual assaults on enemies (fleet warfare!), communicate with all active nodes (through Ship Messages) and sit down in the Tavern for a chat... TW2112 will be a new step forward in user interaction for the multinode environment.
Well there you have it. This is the direction Martech is moving to. This summer we will put out a Maintenance release of Trade Wars 2002 first, to cover all known bugs, and add a few new angles to the game. Once thats out work will begin fulltime on TW2112. Sysops who have registered TW2002 will be given FIRST CHOICE when it comes to putting out TW2112. They will have it on their system long before anyone else does. We're doing this to show our appreciation for those who have registered the game and helped to support Martech Software.
For future reference, we will require Sysops to mail in their TW2002 registration letter or card to be eligible for the discount on TW2112. Make sure you have yours in a safe place! Resends on lost letters will be available for our regular processing fee of $3 if you've lost it. To request a resend, fill out all pertinent info about yourself and your BBS and the approximate date of when you registered and mail that to us along with the $3 processing fee. Then HANG ON to your registration letter!
TW2112 is going to blow you away.
Martech Software, Inc.
134 Indian Avenue
Lawrence,Kansas
66046
I miss the old BBS's ... I had such good times playing games as a kid, leaving messages for people, trading files ... I found about about the Internet because of the BBS's we had connected to things like FIDOnet and other mail-forwarding services. I had a shell account as a result of the BBS's in my town. In fact, one of the comic shops on the West side of town who ran a great board called the Jester's Court (name of the store too) just closed a few months ago I guess.
/. so much. Posting messages, discussions ...
I don't miss 2400 baud though.
Guess that's why I like
hermit
www.thegrinder.org
I post anonymously, because I'm paranoid, and they're out to get me. (No, really, I'll get around to creating an account today.)
Karma? I don't need no steenkin' karma!
you know you use emacs too much when you try to ctrl-c->ctrl-X out of this post
<pedantic>you know you're not using emacs enough when you don't type C-x C-c to exit emacs. </pedantic>
Of course, it's entirely possible that you type it correctly, but don't remember typing it. Me, I prefer vim.
--
Wouldn't that just be MMORTS?
Yes, I admit it. Trade Wars cost me as many grade points in high school as Civ did in college.
Alt-027[0;1;44m forever!
--
Rob Carlson
I remember writing scripts for Telix (an old dos comm program) in it's mini implementation of C, which it called SALT (which stood for something, goodness knows what...) to go back and forth between my planets and Sol to get more colonists... It was fun.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
If you go there via http, there is a simple web page with some info, etc. and some links to see who is looged into the board, etc. Telnetting to the url gets you the board itself.
And they do have tradewars, along with other things. (Now watch them get /.ed)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I've just started getting back into wasting too much of my time MUDding again. I forgot how much fun I had with them.
I broke down and bought a router for my Cable Modem so can redirect incoming traffic to my Linux box so I could run CircleMUD again. I've just started modding it, but there's already some cool things in place. Just need players now! (And I'm in a generous mood - I've been advancing new players to level 15 when I see them online at the same time I am)
telnet to ooze.bloomnet.com port 4000 to check it out.
Or use the Java telnet applet here
Actually, if it keeps the gameplay of the original, it will not be an FPS, I'm sure that intership combat will be FPS, but combat is only a part of the game. You'll like it, keep an open mind! :)
Trade Wars is not just killed or be killed! There is some combat, but it is more about colonization of new planets, building financial resources and space exploration, and forming alliances with other players. Sure, it's got the word "Wars" in it, but remember that it also has "Trade" in the name - it can be loosely descibed as a space-based version of monopoly. Much strategy, planning, and if you're not careful - you might even learn something...
the correct link to nate's webpage is: oostendorp.net, not oostendo.com as CmdrTaco would have us believe...
I post links to stuff here