I finally have windows 7 and I'm starting to do some testing of TWGS under it. The first thing I noticed is that even after installing Telnet, it doesn't work like it should. Don't know how Microsoft managed to break telnet after all these years, but they seem to have. Unless it's something specific to my system.

Basically, when I connect to the server and start a game, I get text and colors fine, but I don't get certain characters (using code page 437 which is default and seems to include all of the extended box characters and such). At first I thought the color ANSI emulation was bad and some characters were just black, but they're really just not there. And what's more strange is that they're there in some places and not in others. Here's a colorless version of the main menu showing what I mean.

<Help>


2 0 0 2
Global Commands
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
<`> Fed. Comm-Link <'> Sub-Space Radio <=> Hailing Frequencies
<#> Who's Playing <*> List All Globals </> Quick-stats

Navigation Computer Tactical
=-=-==-=-= =-=--=-= =-=--=-=
<D> Re-Display Sector <C> Onboard Computer <A> Attack Enemy Ship
<P> Port and Trade <X> Transporter Pad <E> Sub-space EtherProbe
<M> Move to a Sector <I> Ship Information <F> Take or Leave Fighters
<L> Land on a Planet <T> Corporate Menu <G> Show Deployed Fighters
<S> Long Range Scan <U> Use Genesis Torp <H> Handle Space Mines
<R> Release Beacon <J> Jettison Cargo <K> Show Deployed Mines
<W> Tow SpaceCraft <B> Interdict Ctrl <O> Starport Construction
<N> Move to NavPoint <!> Main Menu Help <Y> Set NavPoints ║
║ <Q> Quit and Exit <Z> TradeWars Docs <V> View Game Status ║
╚════════════════════════════════ v3 ═══════════════════════════════════╝

Note that the line characters at the bottom and sides should be surrounding the text, but they're missing from most of the display. Why? Is this a problem with Windows 7 telnet, my setup, or TWGS output?

just tested this on my laptop.. win 7 with twgs 2.07..

works fine.. i am using swath as my telnet client..

I wouldn't worry about Windows telnet. I use putty to check and see if my menues are lined up correctly. If I use windows telnet, I get the same results. It's not a problem with TWGS, as it displays correctly in every other telnet application.

I'm just curious what's going on there. I'm wondering if anyone else running TW under standard windows 7 telnet experience the same issues. I don't see anything about this on the web.

When I loaded mine up on Win7 64-bit, I just opened the port in the Windows Firewall. (It was installed in C:\TW2002\TWGS) I had to go back to Windows XP but thats because Home Premium doesnt do RDP.

H

Windows telnet doesn't seem to handle ansi very well.

It does fine up to and including Vista. I wonder how they managed to jack that up. Did they do a major overhaul of Telnet for Windows 7? Heh.

I thought they didn't install it by default. And it has to be added after.

Here is the technet link I found.

H

Adding it is easy. Same process as in Vista. But after I added it in Vista, it worked great. In Windows 7, it's terrible. Characters are just missing. They're there, and they can be displayed, but in any particular output, they can be missing. So it's not a font issue or a codepage issue, and it can't be an ANSI emulation issue either. I'm wondering if it's related to unicode vs 8 bit?

There's a hack out there for windows 7 HP to allow RDC. Google for it.

I've used Win7 32bit and 64bit since it was released (before really), and the Telnet client has always and consistently butchered ANSI graphics. All text seems fine though. Anyway, it isn't your setup.

Additionally, you have several options that you can toggle within the Telnet client in Win7, but don't let the get your hopes up. I believe I tried them all, to no avail. I think MS hates you JP, specifically.

Maybe they're just trying to force me to break away from ANSI and go graphical. I've had interest from a number of people in Microsoft gaming about new TradeWars projects, from Windows Phone to X-Box. Maybe that's it... ;)