Hi all--
I'm doing some work on promoting Netrek, and it's gotton
me interested in the following qualities:
graphical (incl. ascii graphics)
action (real-time-ish)
multiplayer, by which I mean 3 or more
wide area
on the internet
teams
leagues and guilds
If anyone can help with the following questions or add material,
that'd be great...
I've got the following timeline points:
1972 - Alto Trek
probably first networked game
multiplayer
1973 (Fall) - Empire II on the PLATO system
not networked, but a wide-area multiplayer action game from
graphic terminals
did not clock like a modern game; players called for their own
screen updates manually
1974 - MazeWar, probably second networked game
? XNS/PUP, right?
first First Person Shooter
first use of Avatars (enemy players appeared as walking
eyeballs. I don't count ships as Avatars)
first level mapping
first or second rendered 3D perspective graphics (Spasim may
have been first on this)
? In 1993, SGI did a Mazewar demo at Interop, with
workstations placed around the show,
So at some point, MazeWar became playable on a routed TCP/IP
network. When?
1981 - Empire tournament play starts
1983 Jan - flag day; NCP turned off, net goes TCP/IP
1983 - SGI Dogfight (aka fight)
? I think the first game with its own Internet client-server
protocol?
? Did Mazewar get there first? It was client-server and not peer-
to-peer, right?
? I also think it was LAN-only, using broadcast UDP? I've also heard
it was originally XNS, but there's a well-known UDP port for it,
so when did it switch?
I believe that while it was possible to choose to play in
? cooperation, the game itself did not have teams per se?
1985 - X Window System 10 ships
1986 - Xtrek, descendant of PLATO Empire
? first X-Windows thrown-display game?
1988 - Xtrek II: Netrek
? second client-server game?
? first client-server team game?
? first client-server game with routeable protocol?
1991 - Netrek league play starts
So, what am I missing?
1974 to 1983 seems like too long a gap for there to have been
no ARPAnet graphic action games... there were many PLATO games
during that timeframe, and an IBM space battle game of some sort.
Also probably military simulators.
Thanks all!