[quote="Gary Martin"]It depends, if you're counting earliest, well besides myself and MaryAnn doing testing, that title would go to Tom Boucher, handle "Trekkie" who was our very *first* play tester.

Hello Gary - it's been a long time since I used to logon to Castle Ravenloft to grab the latest version of TW. I think that you've set a record, for one of the longest running still in development games ever (a few MUDS may be older). Good work, and glad to see you are still around.

Wayne

PS: Remember that email you sent me about game play?

I feel young all of a sudden. I played 1991-1996 and 2001-2003.

Can't say about TW2002 but TradeWars overall ... since early 1980s

I stated my BBS on 02/15/80 and still run it today.

I was in the USMC from 81-85 and worked on my BBS when I could, but installed Trade Wars in 1985 (had been playing it for a while at that point)

There were multiple "clones" of Tradewars over the years and I actually preferred Galactic Warzone by Scott Baker myself (http://www.sb-software.com).

I am getting off track here...

The oldest copy I can find at the moment on my system is from 1988
TRADE WARS (v.ii) by CHRIS SHERRICK (PTL)
RBBS version brought to you by John Morris
Enhanced 1000 Sector brought to you by Alan Davenport

It was titled as TradeWars 1000 v9.03 from 11/01/1988, though I have some docs for this version 7.54 from 02/10/1988

The other older archive is listed as TradeWars Release 10.01 from 01/14/1990 by Chris Sherrick and John Morris


I run a number of older TradeWars clones and the like on the BBS (telnet://gamemastersrealm.com) such as:

Empire
Galactic Armageddon
Galactic Overlord
Galactic Warzone
InterSteller Annihilation
Iron War
OutPost Trader
Space Quest 2112
Space Race
Star Force Commander
StarDock Loco
The Exploation of Space
Trade Wars 2002
Ultimate Universe

All fully functioning registered games.

The TW2002 running in the BBS is the DOS version, and I host a TW2002 server at telnet://twars.gamemastersrealm.com (not the current version here for download though)

Any, that's all I got time for at the moment, I lurk here at times, just dropping in today since John sent me an email about something and I figured I should stop by again and finally register :)

Welcome! We're glad you did drop in. I'm looking forward to visiting your bbs.

Wow .. I may be on that list too .. I've been playing and hosting tradewars since somewhere around 1989 or so .. and have not stopped playing yet.

Back in the day I used a bot .. Vip Term on a C-64 and had my kids take turns punching F1 (to terra) and F2 (back with cols) , they were my bot .. lol

The good old days .. then they grew up and didn't want to do it for me anymore

ROFL... You just can't get good slave labor anymore ;(

Laff, its so funny to think that I started playing in like 2000 as a freshmen in high school, I'll never forget I was in typing class hiding me screen over and over again from the teacher, played on lord.doa.org, heh, and by mistake! Wanted to join my friends in class playing LORD but the game was full!! Ended up playing in a game off and on for like five years on that server...

oh the good ole days, n1 enter e nte ltnt enter n1 enter l snl1 enter.... i thought i was amazing with 5000 figs on a havoc gunstar!! ended up capping like 50 fully loaded planets with no cits, capped like 5 million figgies!

Back in those days, TW actually had a boss key, which would have come in handy with the teacher ;) It was a simulated FTP display on a global. I had to pull it because a gameop (who shall remain nameless) accused me of giving people a backdoor into his system.

I've never owned codes for any version of TW. I, too, would love to see 1.03D run again somewhere. I used to have 1.03D but don't seem to any more. Oldest version I have is 2.0WB8. Running a single-player version would require a setup where a "gateway" program accepts telnet connections and keeps track of username/password pairs. Once you've set up a new account or logged into an existing account, the "gateway" sets things up accordingly and launches the game.
On a related subject, what's the situation legally? If I were to buy modern TWGS, would this give me the right to use any old version of TW2002 I could get my hands on? Can codes still be generated for pre-EIS versions?

There's actually a copy of 1.03D running at Deep Space Nine BBS (telnet://dsnbbs.dyndns.org).

An update here. I did find both 1.03 and the 1.03D update patch on a website somewhere. Google is your friend! So I have them again.
Here's an interesting question for JP or whoever. Just for grins, what's the oldest version of TW2002 whose source code still exists? As I understand it, by the time the planet cloning bug was discovered and it was found that 1.03D fixed it, nobody had the source code for the 1.03D release any more, so it was just released as is.

2002v098, 2002v100, 2002v103, 2002103d are all pretty common.

2002v096 is impossible to find. It had some interesting features, like you could buy an ISS while evil...

Wayne aka The Mad Hatter

Thorny's BBS is running some really old versions of TW and TW variants, if that's what you're looking for.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thornys-B ... 1190218419

I doubt the 0.96 file still exists except on some old floppy disk on someone's disk holder on a shelf somewhere.

I remember the BASIC program someone ran on their No Change BBS. It was ported from a TRS-80. Later on a Pascal version was made for WWIV and other boards by converting the code. Later on TW2001 and TW2002 got made. I think 0.96 was a TW2001 release IIRC.

There are still BBSes running Tradewars, but they are Telnet now. Using modem emulation software to hook into Telnet connections. The BBS version of TW2002 was discontinued after 3.09 IIRC. People upgraded to TWGS. But it would be nice to have a BBS Door that connected a Telnet connection to a TWGS server.

Many other BBS door games went freeware after the Internet killed the BBSes others went out of business and we cannot get reg codes for them.

I found a list of Tradewars BBS doors here:
http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/5721/files.html

Sorry no 0.96 version.

But I do see that TW2002 had mods for it back then, and TWGS lacks that. I suppose it could be implemented by adding in scripts to the TWGS server to run for each game edit to add in a wandering planet named Nomad and such, or just make programs that can access the TWGS data files to add them in like that. It would be cool if they were internal to the game edit and adding in via a script or something.

orionblastar ; I did write a twx script for the Wandering Trophy Planet (WTP)
I am running a few games at my server.

The first Winners are : -=Shadow=- , and SwampRat
This was in the Pirates edit.

I have a few more still running on different edits.

But as a SysOp , it is hard to determine the game over status
so I have made objectives to each game to determine this state.

If game has alien planets .. when they are all taken its over
If game has WTP .. when it is taken its over
or third .. if game is about 100 days or older .. its over.

I like to keep fresh games up there.

Vid's World on Guam rebangs on Wednesdays.