Yes, that's Battlestar Galactica's replacement word for ... well, never mind.

The end of that series blew my mind. Took me a minute to wrap my head around it but I digress.

I've been a member here since 2001! Really? Oh my gawd. I'm feeling really old....

The question of the day. Are there any plans for an upgraded version of TW? Also, what language is it written in? (never bothered to look). Imagine this, TW as a downloadable game from the Play Store......

This game... On a phone...

I just don't see it, then there is the whole Pay To Win aspect and that would be fracking disasterous to the game.

You can play on Android, here's the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hordeq.twarsmobile

Also if you want to have SWATH / TWX / whatever else usable, you can load androidVNC on your phone, and then tightVNC or a similar program on your PC, and then remote control your PC anywhere using your Android phone. Has lots of other fun uses other than TW of course : )

Only really fun if you have a physical keyboard on your phone, touchscreen keyboards are annoying.

Last thing I heard, JP was talking about having some time to work on the game. But that was about two years ago, and I haven't heard anything since.

It would be relatively easy for someone to pick up the TW franchise and make another TW-style game. But would anyone play it if it weren't a perfect clone? The subtle differences between v1 and v2 are too much for some old-time players, not to mention helpers and scripts.

Hi All,

I actually stumbled back into Twars very recently because I was curious if there were any clones/open source projects similar to TWars. I've been working on a another text based game and I had the thought if anyone had worked on a upgraded/expanded TWars.

From my reading of this forum I get the impression that JP (and anyone else?) is still very protective of their copyright material. So a clone would be unlikely; I've seen that someone has done a pretty much direct rip off Majormud which surprised me.

Also I think for the old school players if it wasn't identical they probably wouldn't play. I personally was thinking of some game variations which either would make a game more persistent or perhaps it could "grow" into a multi-universe. Another alternative would be to pre-populate it more with aliens/AI corps. Such as a game that is X years old full of remnant corporations etc. Maybe lock down aliens more into certain areas etc, de-centralize things like SD/Terra (i.e. more than 1) to make it more vast and harder to lock down.

However we all know we want to play stock, kill every last person in the game, and dominate it to satisfy our egos :)

The other option I was thinking was a mobile device App which really was some sort of HTML5/socket based connection that would add in some touch controls to the game. Idea being a proxy server would sit in between the tradewars server and the UI and add in some tags to make the UI very favorable to mobile devices. Meaning you could tap a sector number and you would warp there, perhaps have a basic menu for other options etc.

It could then be expanded to included TWX like script functionality for repetitive tasks and perhaps even allow user defined scripts.

If you could then lock the game to only Mobile devices so everyone was on a even playing field you could add a new variant without modifying tradewars. Wouldn't be that hard if the tradewars server could only except connections from the IP of the proxy and the proxy then took care of account functionality.

Anyway I'm rambling when I should be working, good to be back playing again!

Here's a thought, if there's going to be a newer version and you want to get the average Joe back into the game, then you need to even out the scripting to make it more fair.

In other words, write the scripts into the game. Then make those actions available to each player server side and not allow individual script building. Everyone has the same basic set of tools and that's it. By doing that, you get back to the strategy of actually playing the game and get away from who can build the fastest cashing or killing script.

One of the things I always liked about Tradewars is you had to use your imagination. I always opted towards a game that would mimic what was really possible in a real universe, not a fantasy world full of things that would never be applicable in a real world, or real universe scenario.

yeah, I get your point Master, I enjoy the app development as much as the game like many scripters. I was involved in a tradewars client, I've written heaps of scripts etc. I also like bring it back to a even playing field for many players too.

My thoughts of a web enabled client that is compatible with all devices which connects via proxy is that you could potentially lock that option down. Stopping other tools from accessing that particular server.

All connections go through a server proxy, which could have security built into it that authenticates the web client to determine its genuine and not someone else's helper/proxy.

Means you wouldn't have to touch the tradewars server, just write a intermediary proxy and a web client. The web client would basically already be out there as I'm sure there is a ANSI compatible MUD client that runs on HTML5 or web sockets.
However a custom one allowing some direct touch screen options would be more suitable. Now if I didn't own a business and have a family I might find the time to do this! Ok, I have the time but to busy PLAYING tradewars :)

Hammer