quote:Originally posted by Shorty

quote:Originally posted by Deign

Of course, there was no online combat, so being online 24 hours a day wouln't have made sense, even if it had been allowed.


I am not sure why everyone says there was no online combat and only 1 person plays at a time, thats not what I remember. I used to play on a 30 node local BBS that had lots of online combat and I have seen as many as 23 people in a game at a time, the version I beleive was the MBBS version 1.03D. Trust me, even in the old days the gaming was heated at times. I got into it about the time twhelp was coming on scene and I took some serious online butt kickin because of it. And as far as how it was happening, your right, I had to do some serious searching and begging to find out they were using a helper because nobody told anyone their secrets then. It was a different world then but think of it this way, everyone is sharing their helpers, scripts, secrets, and so on so now it should be a more level playing field for everyone. At least now there should be no excuses for takin one in the shorts.

It's my understanding that martec's 1.x and earlier trade wars were single node. They did have a 2.x but it wasn't out very long before the commisioned High Velocity Software to write a multi-node MBBS version of the game.

quote:Originally posted by Harley Nuss (teamEIS)

quote:Originally posted by Shorty

quote:Originally posted by Deign

Of course, there was no online combat, so being online 24 hours a day wouln't have made sense, even if it had been allowed.


I am not sure why everyone says there was no online combat and only 1 person plays at a time, thats not what I remember. I used to play on a 30 node local BBS that had lots of online combat and I have seen as many as 23 people in a game at a time, the version I beleive was the MBBS version 1.03D. Trust me, even in the old days the gaming was heated at times. I got into it about the time twhelp was coming on scene and I took some serious online butt kickin because of it. And as far as how it was happening, your right, I had to do some serious searching and begging to find out they were using a helper because nobody told anyone their secrets then. It was a different world then but think of it this way, everyone is sharing their helpers, scripts, secrets, and so on so now it should be a more level playing field for everyone. At least now there should be no excuses for takin one in the shorts.

It's my understanding that martec's 1.x and earlier trade wars were single node. They did have a 2.x but it wasn't out very long before the commisioned High Velocity Software to write a multi-node MBBS version of the game.


What you have here is people from different time periods defining "old days"... some are thinking of when they played MBBS 5-10 years ago and some are thinking of when they played the door 10-15+ years ago, and then again some people are still stuck in WTC 2001 and think that was the golden age (snicker)...

All of the Martech versions prior to 3.x were single node including the v2 wide beta's which were still active during the MBBS 2.x days... as far as being better or worse off now, I think game play is light years ahead, not so much skill but reaction time, most of the "advanced" techniques used today have been around since the first days of multiplayer and quite a few since single node. As a matter of fact there were many ways to make more money in the MBBS days, the difference as with anything I guess is things change over time, some things improve, some things don't and some things get worse but you have to take it as a whole.

Like in sports athletes get bigger, stronger, faster, ect, ect do they get smarter? Do they know more about playing the game? I don't know as a whole but history tells us that mostly what worked then works now if you adapt it a bit just like a good running game and good defense still will get you to the super bowl or great starting pitching with a bunch of singles hitters can carry you to the world series, a player that learns to do the basics well usually ends up being ok in the end.

I have been around the game a long time, as long as anyone I know of currently still around and I can say there is nothing I miss about the door version, but I do sometimes miss the interactive play of the MBBS hay days, telnet places like Stardock BBS, Rippers BBS, MPB and later on many others including FEN when Boogie ran it... when games were not just loaded but there were actually people at keys having conversations, you actually made friends with people you would otherwise never have met and even those you didn't get along with seemed less, I am not sure of the word to use here, brutal I guess is a good one. Many people use to get just as much out of the social aspect of the game as they did the actual game play, I got my 1st serious job out of college through Trade Wars and the contacts I made through the web page and I know of many other people from that time period who gained many similar advantages from the game

The game play has become faster, its somewhat more automated, reaction time has gone sky high, and in my opinion is the only real difference between yesterdays MBBS players and those of today, but all in all the game as it is right now it it's current incarnation is the best it's ever been from a pure game play stand point... it could just use a little help on the social side of things.

Hmm.... I tend to see the wiews from both sides as I also started playing in the old local dialup BBS era...played all 500-1K turns by hand until I finally gave up and got the old TWWin helper to break me out of my zen mode of repetitive keystrokes building planets in closest 3 deep bubble I could find near Terra (boy was that a major mistake as I found out when competition arrived and you can ask prestone for that history)! What I sense is the same thing that older players such as Animal and few others have told me about as they mention the idea of 24/7 'script kiddies' taking out the fun for them as there is never any time slot available to stay at keys without getting killed by a bot running mindlessly while the operator of that script is at work, sleeping or on vacation. Someone recently posted a link to a thread that was a couple years old that had a couple posts by JP expressing his feelings about the future of the game in v.4 and also defined what he felt were 3 basic types of scripts. If anyone has that link could you please repost it? I think it also had content defining reactive events and the possibility he might write code to eliminate 'events' in some manner.
quote:Originally posted by Tchiak

I think the smack talk needs to be laid off of this one. I agree with Jsch, i like the way games were played in the good ol' days. I also think that scripts have their place too. But what i find intolerable are people who think it's perfectly ok to just run a script then walk away, go to work, or do whatever, then come back and see that you have destroyed all these people and added a bunch of crap to the log that takes forever to go through cause Planet . has been destroyed like 5,000 times. Seriously.. in my humble opinion.. your not dedicated to the game.. if you don't think you have to be sitting in front of the terminal to play it "properly"

http://www.eisonline.com/twforum/topic. ... C_ID=11387

http://www.bbsmates.com/pritchett.asp

Is that what you were looking for FC?

Thanks TW...it is not the link I was reading last month but is also a valuable link to have as it shows more of the vision JP has for the games future.

Thanks Kav! [:D]

TW Historian. Guess I can live with that.

Let's see - started playing Trade Wars on a Maximus BBS - blew the sysop up when he left his ship in sector 1. He still reminds me of this when I see him.

Later that year I was at a Science Fiction convention in Columbus Ohio (Ohio Valley Filk Fest - a friend of ours was one of the guests) and some guy told me about a new version of Trade Wars that had 7 ships instead of one. He insisted it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

About 6 months later I stumbled across a local board that was running the newest release of that version of Trade Wars - it was now up to 9 ships (Version 0.96). Talked The Count of Time into running it on his BBS not long after (around V0.98).

Not long after that he was complaining about the 1K sector limit, and talked me into trying to do something about it. The result was the Trade Wars 2002 Universe Expander, and 20K sector games were possible. During that time I don't know how much money I spent on long distance charges downloading the newest versions <G>.

Around the time version 1.00 came out a local pay BBS called Canada Remote Systems managed to get TW2002 running on 200 nodes! Yes, you could actually logon and fight whoever was in the game at the time. We thought it was fantastic, even if it did open up an amazing amount of bugs. V1.00 didn't have multi-node capabilities, but CRS managed to make it work anyway... Then they installed the Expander on top of it all, so that they were running a 200 Node game with 20,000 sectors!

That was about Christmas 1992. Woody Weaver had released TWView, which I think was the first helper (and still my favorite) in 1991. TW2001 the predecessor to TW2002 was released in 1987, but it would only run on WWIV V3.0 BBS software. TW2002 came out in 1990.

TW2002 was the first game of any sort that featured wide third party support. While Gary Martin wasn't always very happy with the form that the support took (and some of the programmers were less than diplomatic about certain perceived imperfections in the game), that support is what made TW2002 into a giant.

Gary didn't help any of us - but he didn't hinder us either. He did ask several of us to "please be carefull." As an avid RPG player Gary was very concerned about game balance, something that we could have destroyed easily.

Early versions of TW2002 up to Version 1.03D were blue games. Reds had a tendency to die fast.

When the High Velocity Software (HVS) MBBS port was made, it blew the traditional balance out the window with a host of bugs, some of which players now accept as standard features, Megarob being the most flagrant. The game now turned massively Red.

With HVS being either unable, incompetent, or unwilling to fix the bugs Gary soldiered on with Doors version 2, and then finally after HVS imploded/commited hari kari/melted down/self destructed/whatever produced TW2002 V3, the first Doors version have multi-node support. This version of TW is the basis of TW Game Server, and not long after TWGS came out Gary sold TW2002 to JP, who has developed it since.

The game has changed tremendously over the last decade. The ability to be online 24/7, the rise of the Reds, the repairs to the franchise made after the demise of HVS, and the demise of the third party programmers have all changed the game - in some cases almost beyond recognition.

I remember the game I first meet Kavanagh in - it was the first time I'd played MBBS, I wasn't used to having other players online, and I was messing up big time. He, Blue Gene, and a couple of other guys (if you are reading this - it was almost 10 years ago so forgive me for forgetting your names) gave me a hand, and taught me enough to keep alive at least part of time.

Yes, I miss the old time games. Heck, I might even try and set one up. No, I don't think I'd go back - once you get used to the new way of doing things it has it's attractions, and the game has less bugs now than any time I can remember!

Bunch of old men

Muhahahaha

Res Judicata

Better watch it boy, I might fall over on you and squash you. Been sitting in front of a monitor for too long, and I've gained over 100 pounds....

haha i'm surprised the same ppl play this game

i played the game in the mid 90's and i also played from early 2002 to early 2003, i liked the challenges that the scripters brought to TW, it was really fun tryin to outsmart ppl's scripts with macros and reflexes, the old days of TW were nothin but repetitive crap i just never understood why some ppl created bots to perform every function of the game for'em, even fighting

Man, talk about an old timer. How the heck are ya Camaro?

Hey Camaro, how the heck ya been

Wish Sir Death was around too.

Camaro I sent you an ICQ...from Demian..authorize me

Res Judicata

Sir Death has been online in icq some lately. Been a while since that weiner has played too. Camaro and Sir Deathhead were on a corp with me a few years back, you know, before I became the great player I am now [;)]

quote:Originally posted by Doctor Who
2) The scripts were around back then, I just doubt your local board had the competition level to see such scripts. Mix that around with the fact that some of us have (just like you) been in this game for much of the games life and this has allow'd us to share what we know (those of us who dont carry the old bbs attitude) and write some really killer scripts.
3) You need to learn to understand scripters&scripting a bit.. Then you can kill them..

This depends on your description of old -- which I guess has already been addressed by others in this topic. I played on half-a-dozen BBSs when I was younger and they only started showing up after I'd already been playing a year or two. If people were using them in my area, they must not have been very good then because I was also top 3 in every game. Of course they might have had them in certain areas -- but I doubt they were very prolific.

But yeah he needs to understand them. TWX proxy is actually really easy to use and write your own scripts. Using someone else's scripts are fine, but it's much cooler when your own newly created script captures someone or tpad colonizes and buy dumps at the same time.

quote:Originally posted by Doctor Who
4) Reds could actually make MORE back in the old bbs days.. The accepted bugs/differences (Megarob was one of those, except the value was somewhat different) would allow reds to make really WICKED cash, In a organized game with those edits I think that reds would make more cash than they do today..

Once again, this depends on your definition of old. Also, I think mixed-corps are what really made reds powerful.

quote:Originally posted by Doctor Who
5) Lets not forget that the # of players in the game was really low in most games compared to todays game.. I dont think most bbs's never even seen 200 people join a game, much less 200 people logging onto the bbs at the exact same time to play that game because it's opening.

I played when the game was single-node but we always had 50-100 people always waiting to jump into the game as soon as someone finished.

quote:Originally posted by Doctor Who
Now to the post about "Walk away and all ur stuff goes boom"..
Please can you supply me with a script that will play the game fully.. To my knowlege there is no such script.. the only scripts that come close are VERRY wasteful on turns and hence they are only used in unlimited turn games.. now if your returning and you like the good ole days then you wouldnt be in any UNLIM turn games.. Come try some 600 or 500 turn games..


Of course, the challenge of writing a script (or set of scripts) like this really appeals to me... I had a graduate level course on AI in college and I think most CS majors would love to be able to write a program/bot that could pass the Turing Test. Of course to really pull it off and have people "not know" it's a bot, you'd have to make it respond slowly, screw up from time to time, and post insults/compliments on fed-space... hehehehe

Is it me or did res come off sounding like a nice guy? jeez now i gott go and rethink everything I know hehe!

hehe I am a very nice guy, when I feel like it
I like to be EVIL too, cuz I can....see

Muhahaha

Suck WHAT?

Res Judicata