how many people remember paul.com?

T0yman: "That is the first version I played (1984). We used to go to Radio Shack and wait inline to take turns. Each person was allowed up 10 minutes unless you found someone then you were allowed an extra 5 minutes."

Awesome!

I've tried to get my hands on any artifact of the earliest version. I've never even found someone who played it. Talked to Sherrick about it, but he has nothing left of it. I'd give anything for the paper where he scratched out the sectors of the first prototype map.

My first experience with the game was in 1991, I was working as a cartoonist at a college newspaper and the editor used to come in late to use the school computer to log in and play his turns on this text-based game. I watched over his shoulder a few times, but didn't really get the thrill. At the time I was playing Lemmings with friends on one of the other computers. If anyone wonders how early this was in computer game history, this is about the time sound came to the PC.

Anyway, the editor was Ed McCullough, a med student at the time, who later left the school and went to work for a company called Multi Service. He started in their mail room, but after pitching the idea of starting a BBS, he was giving the green light to approach Gary Martin about bringing his Metropolis BBS to Multi Service (it's still there, called Game Port now). Coincidentally, when I graduated college in 1994, my first job was at Multi Service and my first interview was with Ed. I had no idea Metropolis existed, and I didn't meet Gary until, as some of you know, I rear-ended his minivan in 1995. So my first experience with the game came when Gary offered me the opportunity to take over support and debugging in 1995. I learned the game from the inside-out, which should explain why my perspective on the game is based as much on how it was designed to play as how it actually did play.

Oh, someone mentioned that I should have just done a minor release with bug fixes rather than the major release I'm working on. The last release was in 2004, and though I went into this update intending to do just that, I decided I would take advantage of the time I have available right now to do as much as I can with it. Once I get this done and step away to work on other projects, who knows if I'll ever get back to it. You just never know what's in store. I didn't expect to have this opportunity. I was supposed to be working on other projects that fell through. But I'm pleased to be doing this and I think the results will be worth the wait. After 6 years, what's a few more months? ;)

I'm not sure exactly when I started playing TW, but it was on a local dial up bbs and the PC was, well best word is dinosaur, and on a monochrome monitor. I had just gotten rid of my Radio Shack Tandy and that PC was top of the line at the time. rofl
I still remember sending that bbs $10 a year to get an extra 1/2 hour per day I could stay logged in.

I think we'd all love to see you play a live game. Maybe after the classic is ready for public release, set a game up the way you, Gary. Chris and Jeff would like to play and see first hand your work with today's players.

That would be Great PR! Oh, you've got to do it! Let all the major gaming news magazines know in advance.

And just for fun, we could have a pool of avatars to choose from, so no one logs in as their own gaming handle. Keep us guessing til the end who was behind what avatar! Now that would be a fun game!

When it's all over post the CLV list with who was really behind each avatar.

It would have to be I got a feeling a few players might want to get JP before he leaves fed space Might generate a lot of players, maybe it is the cold weather freezing my brain but sounds like a good idea -shudder-

Yeah, and the game-ops would be fighting over who get's to op this game. We'd have to have a lottery draw for that one too.

If I get to the point where I'm balancing a particular group of settings, an "official rules mode", then I'd definitely need to play some games to know first-hand if the game is playing anything like what I'm shooting for. That would be the first time I'm working on the game with an eye toward my own expectations and not those of players in general. My main goal right now is just to add settings that will allow gameops to explore different game styles, but I hope I'll have time to put together my own game mode and balance it. And if I do that, I would certainly invite Gary to give me advice, though I doubt he'd make a big deal out of being in a game, and actually neither would I. It would be a better test of real gameplay if I played anonymously.

But I still contend that this game is played so many ways by so many different people that mastering the game as a player would not be a productive use of my time. Who would I emulate? Singularity? Space Ghost? Cruncher? Eleq? Vid? I can't possibly master the game as all of these people play it, but I can take advantage of their advice as I have always done, along with Gary himself, and Jeff Moriarty from HVS.

Survey results so far with 27 people reporting (4 skipped the first question.)

1. What Version of Trade Wars did you first start playing?

Trade Wars 2001 - on Castle RavenLoft (1986 - 1991) 21.7% 5
...TradeWars 2002 v1 (Martech Single Line Door 1991 - 1993) 47.8% 11
TradeWars 2002 v2 (Martech Single line Door 1993 - 1996) 8.7% 2
TradeWars 2002 v2 (HVS MBBS multi player 1994 - 1996 final release) 17.4% 4
TradeWars 2002 v3 (Martech Multi player DOS 1997 - 1998) 0.0% 0
TWGS v1 - Supports TW2002, v3.10 - 1998 to current release 3.14 4.3% 1

2. I don't know the version but I do know... (5 skipped this one)

I was the only one in the game when I played. 50.0% 11
I had to dial up a bbs to play, other people were playing at the same time. 36.4% 8
I had to dial up local bbs then telnet to games - I was only one in the game. 4.5% 1
I had to dial up local bbs then telnet to games - mulitple players were in the game. 9.1% 2
I connect via the web or telnet directly to the games. 0.0% 0

Thank you Everyone!