I'm a software engineer that loved playing TW 2002 on my local BBS's. Would anyone be interested in working on an Android and/or iPhone app for playing Tradewars?

A turn based strategy game like TW would probably scale well to those accustomed to games on social media sites, and I think a smart phone app would be awesome and sufficiently addictive to capture tons of attention.

John-- I'd love to discuss licensing options. Please PM me or send an E-Mail.

--Scott

Are you thinking a new game, or a client that can interface with the existing game?

Feel free to respond here or in pm, whichever you prefer.

I use Lunaterm to login to my games and remotely take care of problems if I can't be at home, but some keys needed to do certain things are not available.
I can't see any reason to recreate the wheel but a frontend similar to SWATH with some limited functions would be great. Especially if it had more like TWX where you could use scripts and what not. I started to mess with it about a year ago and I just lost interest. But it is something that I always thought could be handy. If you need beta testers feel free to ask I am sure there are plenty of people here that would like having such an app. My preference is Android. Good Luck I hope we see something like this in the near future, I might actually start playing again

I suppose there are three approaches (well 4 really); Forgive me for stepping on your toes and presuming to know all about the current system...

0) With a high enough resolution screen, one could use a smart phone right now, with no changes (referring to just using a telnet client). My phone has a keyboard, so this wouldn't be too terrible, but certainly not tolerable for other devices.

1) Write a thin client that uses the same telnet interface, but provides a smaller keyboard, or uses button scripts in lieu of keystrokes.

2) Write a thick client for each platform and maintain the full look and feel of Android and/or iPhone devices. This would include Minimalistic UI controls, Smartphone views for each scenario (buying/selling goods, attacking, etc), context menu for other features. Menu-View Inventory, etc . For this approach, I'd say make it fully compatible with the existing servers, although streamlining the server to support the minimizing data exchange might be useful. To gain mobile popularity, it would also need to have an integrated browser of 'active' servers.

3) Keeping with the idea of a thick client for each platform... Since the mobile community may have a different approach to turn-based strategy games (I'm thinking of those addicted to facebook games like Farmville, Cafe Life, etc) playing for 10-20 minutes at a time, it might warrant a rewrite of the server. Add to this, 'paid' versions that may allow more turns, different features, etc.

As a guy who usually plays Monopoly strictly by the rules, I'm not suggesting changing the gameflow, rules, or legacy, just presentation and controls. The funny thing is that kids playing the game on smart phones are going to be younger than the game itself!

Some prebuilt functions like Colies/PPT/Chat and few others I am drawing a blank on, would be nice. I wouldn't expect to fully run attack type scripts, some things just need to ran by hand.
It might be fun to play or have a way that a game is setup so that only a Smart Phone can log into? Watching people trying to kill each other typing on tiny keyboard could be amusing

Well-- I'm a 30yo Software Engineer that grew up playing TW2002 at 14.4k; The addiction and allure of TW as a MM RPG (albeit a little less massive by today's standards) is still exciting, and I think there is a younger generation that would still love to play the game.
I do have a full time job and other hobbies (BMWs and Photography), but I've been looking for a reason to write an Android app for a few couple years now, and this sounds like an awesome opportunity.

I recently added support for a new-old feature, running limited access games. Back in the old days, maybe even when you played, the game wasn't interactive. So you'd log in, play a few minutes, then log out for the day and hope you survive to play the next day. That's a bit more like the casual experience most mobile users are going to want. So it might make sense to focus on that gameplay mode. I don't see most mobile players being in a position to drop what they're doing and engage in a fight when they're invaded, and having that ability, people will feel like they have to in order to be competitive. Having limits on time and interaction may seem too restrictive, but it really is liberating in a lot of ways.

If you're interested in writing something that works with the current game, basically as a helper, I'm willing to work "on the inside" to support that. But if you're interested in doing something different, as some of your proposals suggest, that's a whole other ballgame. We're currently in the early stages of putting together a proposal for a new TW project, which will probably include portable devices, so that's actually a long shot. I think a client to work with the existing game is something that can be done with or without my permission, but anything new that might conflict with our own plans, that's something that would take a bit more exploration to even consider.

I suppose I need to play a few games to catch up to recent trends! When envisioning a mobile app, I was thinking of this delayed interaction style. I suppose I hadn't realized that [so many] folks have wrecked the game with automation, like those folks sitting in front of the penny slots pushing 'spin' every 2.5 seconds.


While I agree, having to whip out my mobile phone because I'm being attacked seems rediculous, and I don't think most mobile users would go for that, but at the same time it sounds terribly addictive and some folks might elect for that style of game. Perhaps connecting to different game servers with different rules would warrant that type of game

Taking a look at SWATH, I like the hybrid terminal/command driven architecture and see how it adds a little modernization. Unfortunately, I can't envision how that would work on a mobile platform since you can't exactly leave sessions open in the same style; I think to make a successful mobile platform would probably require some concessions on the TWGS (alternate 'view' display to reduce reduced text exchanged and parsing required; standby/quick reconnect mode in between turns, etc)


Well, I look forward to the learning about the new TW project. If you would like any assistance creating/reviewing the proposal please let me know. If you need a part-time developer, PM me and we'll exchange contact information.
In the mean time, I'm going to [waste|spend|enjoy) my free time digging back in to an old classic, and hope that my wife is still around when I come out of my 90s computer game coma.

I see your point about having options between a more casual non-interactive experience and a more intense interactive one. I think both can be quite addictive, but the difference is, one is an hour a day addictive, and the other is 24/7 addictive. Just as the 20 or so players who have the time to devote to the game today ;)

Of course it's possible to run both kinds of games on the same server. I just see some of the challenges of a mobile interface being much easier to tackle if you only have one player in at a time. I know that there are a lot of people who say they'd be more interested in playing the game if they had a good mobile interface, but these are also the same people who say they'd be more interested in playing if the game wasn't overrun by aggressive bots. I'm trying many options to restrict bot use where desired, but the only guaranteed way is to play a non-interactive, old-school game mode. I'd be curious of these players would be willing to give that a try. I do know that the vast majority of TradeWars players never played the interactive version. But the majority of people with TradeWars on their radar today consider the interactive version to be the "real" TradeWars. So it's a tough sell. Now that the option is in TWGS, we'll see if anyone uses it.

As far as the new project, keep an eye out and I'll provide info as soon as I'm able. Have you worked on games in the past, even as a hobby? Again, feel free to pm or email if you want to continue in private.

My vision for a mobile app would be to target the hour-a-day folks for [potentially] a few weeks at a time.

TWGS server fires up a game for a few weeks.
Each user is restricted to number of jumps or a few hours-a-day; I forget the typical restrictions, it's been far too long!
I can either log in from my phone and play my turns (maybe a few 20-30 minute sessions) and then try to leave my ship in a safe location.
Alternatively, I can sit down at home and play my turns on the same game, using the traditional terminal interface, perhaps a helper app.

To design a mobile app would require the creation of dozens of different views, for basic, legacy functionality. Once created and released and feedback starts pouring in, perhaps add in some of the more interactive features. (What are all of the various interactive features?)

I envision a tradewars mobile app played by people that have never played tradewars, never seen the traditional console app, and have no idea what a TWGS is... The funny thing is that folks will think we're copying facebook games like CafeLife, Farmville, etc; even know TW has been around for ages!

I'm not too familiar with marketing of mobile apps, but a few thousand new tradewars players (plus a few thousand 'old' TW players) would be interesting for the game, especially if there was an ad service for the freebie game, and maybe some form of incentive for the paid version.

It just occurred to me the other day, as I whipped out my smartphone to play a game and kill a few minutes, that I wish I had a great game to play like when I was a wee teenager, and I thought; "Tradewars would be a perfect mobile app.

I don't play Facebook games, but alternatively, a FB game could also be very successful for the same reason.

What was awesome about TW2002, back in the day, before the internet, was that you were not playing alone. When you logged in every few days and you still alive, was a rush, and that concept was ahead of its time. What's cool is that now the game concept is in perfect time...

It's something that could be explored without much investment. I was recently considering the possibility of creating a special output mode for mobile devices, basically just deciding what would be a better target format (characters and lines) and creating new screen formatting to fit that. But obviously going to a graphical interface would be far better, even if the underlying game is the same. I created a mockup of a graphical interface for TradeWars a few years ago in preparation for a game I was working on called TradeWars Tournament. It's designed for a pc client, but gives the basic idea of how I'd wrap the current game in a gui.

http://wiki.classictw.com/index.php?tit ... Tournament

Look at the gallery link at the bottom, the UI concept is below the youtube teaser video.

I could see putting something like this on ipod, but getting down to a smaller phone size, it's probably too much. That's a major issue with the game, squeezing so much info into a small space. If you carved this up, there could easily be 20-30 screens.

I'd say any effort to do something like this should work on the mechanics first, then work on the looks later. The basic goal would be to create a mobile-friendly view, provide a means to navigate the various areas of the game, and to interact intuitively and easily with the menus. A big part of simplifying interaction would be to provide basic automation as part of the client.

Helpers parse the existing output and reformat it for their own interface. But if a mobile app has different requirements, like it can't expect to maintain a stable connection, I could try to work with that.

One last thing, I'd say that if you explore something like this, you might consider making it open source, or prepare for making it open source if you lose interest. I know there are a lot of other people in the community who would be interested in working on such a project. Oh, and try to keep it as generic as possible, because TW could outlive most of the devices we're talking about ;)

Ok, now THIS is a cool idea...... I'm going to be very interested to watch the idea grow into something.....

Yes, the hour a day makes more sence for mobile devices that pay the telco's by the minute.

I cannot imagine anyone racking up a cell phone bill to be online 24/7, unless you had unlimted calling. How many plans have unlimited calling now? From what I've seen the packages keep getting smaller.

Nobody pays by the minute anymore cruncher. You need the everything plus plan from Sprint..... $99 a month for as much as you can handle

LOL.... uhhh hey granny it's called 3G. Still using telnet to connect to the servers, I use a couple programs now to telnet in and reset games. I have also logged in to sit idle while driving around since I knew the person (you) would not move if I was online. I was not gonna tell everyone I was logged in using my phone, there is no way I can type fast enough on a 4.3" screen. I have also logged in to grab a corpie that ran out of time or was in there pod from my phone, so it can be done just a little clunky. But a SWATH type frontend to do some small tasks could make a nice added change to the game.