John, if you make a text based DND-like game (as i am sure the DND rights would cost way too much $$) ill play as im sure many would. of course, i dunno how easy/hard this stuff is, but just an easy chat interactive/turn based chat room with each character having his race/class's options available to him on his turn and the DM well, he will basically have the options of god himself. *click* uh oh, there is a dragon that just set the inn you are in on fire.. i wonder where he came from? heh. of course, it would be just like regular DND as it would only be as fun as the DM made it. and you could also, since its a computer program, make it harder for a player to bend the rules.. as you so elequently put it. hehe. a monk killing a dragon in one hit lol! of course i recall having a kender(?)(hobbit-like create) who wielded a huge 2 handed sword. hehe. we all kinda bent the rules i spose heck, you can even intigrate that into v4, have the option at the stardock for players to sit down and play dnd, hehe.

Slim

quote:I started playing around '79 or '80, and played through '87, my senior year of high school. I hung up my dice when my level 24 Grand Master of Flowers monk, Hergrom, lost his head to a level 20 Fighter "wandering monster" who just happened to be carrying a vorpal blade and rolled a natural 20 on his first attack. Clearly the DM had it in for me and my character that day. But looking back, I guess I can understand why. It was somewhat ridiculous that my monk could kill a dragon in a single turn with his quadruple damage backstab two-handed attack. I think I'd bent the rules about as far as they could go.

Good times...

Wow, another old-timer, I started playing in '79 myself. I still fondly remember my last game, it was last Sunday, would have been Saturday, but that was our annual Muppet Movie Marathon. We had a good turn out for that, about 35 people. Of course I've branched out since '79 and now GM Shadowrun and Paranoia. We range in age between 40-something and twenty-something. Our current RPG group even has 3 women in it (shocking I know[:P]). Old Nerds never die, we just get more selective about who we game with.[:D]

~Prinz of Darkness

Well one thing the game is for the old timers...Most the youth now days are into the graphics.... Plus the amount of servers out there.... Unity would be nice...HEh...Oldtimer and his server was good for that... Too bad so many had 2 cry and whine and and he was fed up with things so he killed his server.....My suggestion would be to get the sysop of the servers together and combine their games on 3 or more servers and have multiple sysops on one server... with many games.....but that is the trick getting the sysops together and be able to work with one another.... Unity...is the key...

i assumed elipses (sp) were the key, hehe. nice ta see ya OK.

Slim

Hi all,
Well isnt it great to see the old TW2002 still up and running. Last time I played this game was as a SYSOP (Gateway CBIS. Australia). I loved this game, and it seemed to died off when BBS's did after the birth of the Internet. I did a search through Yahoo a while ago and the TW2002 software was changing hands and the game moved onto the Internet. What happened to the software being re-developed ? can we read what happened anywhere ? I just found my old license codes for my copy of tw2002? am i still entitled to install and run the game and receive updates?. Also I have a registered version of Twars by Doug Underwood, is this software still being used or supported? can the source code be taken on and developed further as a client frontend to the new Tw2002 releases ? What will Alpha 4 bring use? Can we read about future release/concepts information anywhere...

I will return and start playing again as I love this game, never did get it out of my head...or as I grow old, am I hanging onto a part of my childhood...lol
email direct of you like: sbergman@iinet.net.au

thanks....Steve (DaxTrader)

you found us! ack, we were hiding, hehe.
ill try to answer some of your questions.
dont know off the top of my head a website that has all the history of the tw2002-twgs changes, but i know there are a good few out there.
john doesnt legally have to update your codes BUT he is a great guy and if you have registered twars in the past, they will be updated to what you reg'd (ie: if u have the 100 node, but not gold, u will get reg codes for 100 node, but GOLD still will cost) i might be a little off, but as far as i know/have seen JP is great about honoring past registrations.
twar for windows... heh, well that stopped being developed and well, it sucks, heh. to use the source from that (ew) you'd have to talk to doug, current helpers today are:
TWX/ZOC/SWATH (do a search for any, you will find websites)
there have been recent posts in the past month about the future of twars, just do a search on this forum. good to see you are gonna get back into the game (be forewarned, the game has changed alot) if you would like help getting reacquanted with the game, i am willing to help (ICQ-207-107-486) as are many others. also, post away here and your answers will get answered, most of the time by someone compitant, heh.

Slim

Sbergman,
I should also mention that the playstyle of the game is a bit..er...faster than it used to be.

TWARS isn't supported anymore, and as far as I know, Doug Underwood has gone AWOL from TW. I last heard from him about 5 years ago. I wouldn't recommend using it. Try Swath or ATTAC.

Another good place to get you sorta caught up is http://www.tw-cabal.com. (this forum is probably the best place to get answers) You will have to play a few games and try to team up with experienced players to really come to grips with how things have changed. The game mechanics are more or less the same, but the tactics and speed have advanced by leaps. You will either love it or hate it. There are tons of servers out there now tho, so you can pretty much find a game with the settings and competition you like. Just look in the rebangs section of the forum.

In regard to the D&D comments, Neverwinter Nights uses the D&D ruleset, and can even be DM'd by a player in real time. Lot's of pen & paper modules have been converted for NWN also. Very fun RPG for D&D fans.

+EP+

See This is the problem people get losted somewhere in the translation of a topic... We were talking about losing players to crap like NWN.... Is trade wars dieing not Hey D&D rocks!!!! Darn elder say focus... hope you don't play TW as well as you read a forum....

oooo, overkill, you overstep your bounds when you step to EP, he is the man. and if you read all the posts you will see he was mearly responding to where i think it was me who said something about DND or responded to something about it

Slim

I played and went on and off a ton from this game. But it still remains awesome. Especially when you have the all too rare hand-to-hand ship-to-ship combat.

Pssh. I have a regkey and everything, but no stable place to set up a server of my own. <SIGH>

In a year or so I'll be running games, though.

Neverwinter Nights rocks. I've been playing it off and on. Best thing to happen for D&D in a while.

Yes, it is dying. You wanna know why?

It's too old-school, the game balance is fux0r'd, scripting takes all the skill out of the playing and the people who play have changed into "omg mad rush let's ****ing build EVERYTHING ON DAY ONE!"

It's the zerg mentality. Quake-by-text. Insta-frag. CounterStrike on Ice. It's a frag fest.

Old school: people aren't into text these days. Hell, I still MUD so I don't fall into this. It doesn't have the viscereal OOMPH that GUIs do.

Game balance: Most admins have no clue here. No offense people. 5k for GenTorps? WTF? It's all about "***-blocking" the other guy these days. It's not about skill, or figuring out the patterns and learning the trading mechanism. Everyone's turned into a script-kiddie. Run scripts to drop 1 fig everywhere you go? That's nothing but annoying. Legit? Yeah. But will you keep a playerbase with those kind of stunts, especially while in Truce mode? Same with running an IG. It's ghey griefer script kiddie tactics.

Scripting: I tried TWAR and SWATH. Why bother even sitting down to play? ctrl-t and watch TV while it runs. Yeah, THAT'S a fun game. "Oh, but it's so boring the other way." Everyone's too used to instant gratification and penile-flexing that they can't cope with a slower build cycle. No wonder the turn-based games (every one I visited) was dead.

FWIW, I ran games back in 1989, v0.98b on a dual-node BBS. I program for a living so I can bot the entire Darn game if I really wanted to.
I play "hardcore" permadeath MUDs, I was a GM DL on UO and a ranked "evil" on Sullon Zek.

The point is: You want to keep your player-base, your learn what turns people off. This is in part for the playerbase, but also for the admins who encourage/allow such crap.

I just came off a game, unlim turns and rebanged TODAY. Due to scripting and the mod, Terra's 7mil people were raped clean. There were 42 planets in the game, 48% with citidels in LESS THAN 12 HOURS.
Why in the world would you start a zergrush like that and give such a huge advantage to whomever reads the boards first? Why would you put GenTorps at 5k?

Anyone who wants to try and play there now...g'luck. One guild alone grabbed ~90% (estimated) of the colonists with twarp-macros. I gave away my 4 planets and colonists (4 citidels, 1 with QC level 3 being built. Remember, it was bang'd this morning....)

You want to know why TWS has been slowly dying? Why people aren't retained? Why people try to come back and get turned off?

There you go.

Don't worry about flaming/posting, etc - I won't be back. As with RL, "you can never go home." TWS was my home, long ago. These days I don't ENJOY playing it. Come home from a day of coding to... code scripts? I don't think so. That's not a game - that's more work. That's not skill, that's just being lazy. Work smarter not harder? Perhaps, but where's the fun in that?

I hunt with a bow and not a gun, too. To each their own, and as such, enjoy TWS... it's not my cup of tea anymore.

Good luck to those trying to keep the flame alive. You will surely need it.

I have a suggestion, I know I've said it before and I'll likely say it again. I may be wasting my time typing it, but here it goes anyway:

IF YOU WANT TO PLAY A SLOW BUILD UP GAME, STAY OUT OF UNLIMITED TURNS

Wow and I thought SGO was banned from the forums!!!
Sorry you feel that way about where the game has evolved to but I to played back in the late 80's and I honestly think that the scripts and macros of today’s helpers have made the game a bit funnier then it was back then and the public release of a lot of these script and helpers has at least allowed all players to be on equal footing in a game.
When I came back to trade wars about a year ago I had my Butt handed to me in that game and I was a little frustrated about it but instead of complaining about it and swearing off tradewars forever I asked people what I could do to make myself a better player.
If you prefer slower build up games then stay out of the unlimited turn games find a nice 1k turn and 5- 10k universe game with a few players in it and I think you might enjoy the game you are playing more then the one your complaining about.
Give the helpers a chance go down load one and find some of the free public scripts out there no one said you have to write the code yourself in order to use or have a helper.