Decwar

So I see that source code is now (finally) available for Decwar. Has anyone gotten a version to run on machine? Does anyone have details?

I would love to set up my own server for it.

 

Yeah...*sigh*. Did a search here and the term DECWAR doesn't exist.

Decwar (not to be confused with Decwars) was the first multiplayer computer game (i.e. more than head to head playing) made. And it was Star Trek - the second star trek computer game. It was Federation VS. Empire. Each instance could handle up to 26 players. It ran on a DEC 10 /PDP-11 hardware. The original source code has been sought for years and has been found and released.

It's an ASCII game of coarse. However, it's still fun to play (I have played very limited sandbox versions). You scan your space (represented by a dot Cartesian grid). You move your ship. You have to pay attention to you fuel supply, dock at space stations of planets, and defeat the enemy (other enemy players) in space combat. Despite being ASCII, it can be very fast paced because it is done in real time.

 

Stellar Trek is another port of this game. This is the Android version. An iPad version is also available. I just recently installed it. It's quite good.

 

I keep hoping GOG.com will get the original Star Trek Basic game or one of the ports or upgraded versions of it. I don't dislike Decwar but sometimes I prefer it to just be me verus the Klingons

 

For the last year I've been working on a Decwar clone, I really need alpha testers to tune the game and make suggestions.

It features most of the instruction set of the original Decwar, a 79x79 universe, but, with some syntax changes support for nearly unlimited users. It uses a subset of the telnet protocol. Some name changes game objects also were done. The game always comes with robot ships (was romulans, now archeron), and blackholes.

If you want to try my rewrite of decwars, it lives at:
telnet decwars.com 1701

or
http://decwars.com

-Harris