Netrek

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Netrek
Developer(s)	open source
Designer(s)	Kevin Smith Scott Silvey
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows Mac OS X Linux Unix (many variants) NetBSD
Release date(s)	1988
Genre(s)	real time strategy / shooter
Mode(s)	team game 2-4 teams (usually 2) 1-8 players per team up to 16 players total up to 16 observers Internet or local multiplayer or single player vs. robots
Media	Internet

Netrek is an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross platform open source software. It combines features of multi-directional shooters and team-based real time strategy games. Players attempt to disable or destroy their opponents' ships in real-time combat, while taking over enemy planets by bombing them planet and dropping off armies they pick up on friendly planets. The goal of the game is to capture all the opposing team's planets.

Netrek was the probably the third Internet game, the first Internet team game,^[1] and is the oldest Internet game still actively played (as of 2008). Developed as a successor to 1986's Xtrek, it was first played in 1988. It pioneered many technologies used in later games, and has been cited as prior art in patent disputes.^[2]

Contents 1 Description 1.1 Planets 1.2 Combat 1.3 Games 2 History 2.1 Similar games 2.2 Technological innovations 3 References 3.1 Footnotes 3.2 Bibliography 3.3 Further reading 4 External links

[edit] Description

The following describes Bronco Netrek; other variations of the game exist, but Bronco is the most prevalent form.

Netrek is essentially a greatly expanded version of Empire, a multi-user space combat game that ran on the PLATO. Empire, in turn, is essentially a multi-user version of the seminal Spacewar!, the earliest computer video game. Like those games, in Netrek each player takes command of a starship, which they pilot about a 2D map of the game galaxy, as seen from above. The game combines both tactical combat and strategic goals.

[edit] Planets

The game galaxy consists of 40 planets distributed about the map. The map is further divided into 4 sectors of 10 planets each. Netrek divided the players into one of four teams, loosely based on the Star Trek universe; the Federation, Romulans, Klingons, and Orions (or "feds", "roms", "klis", and "oris", respectively). Each team is assigned to a single sector when the map is reset.

The planets differ from each other in terms of military or agricultural development; at the start of game each team has several planets under their control, one is their homeworld, two are agricultural worlds, and some planets will have fuel depots or repair facilities. Planets slowly generate armies, which may be beamed up by players, and then beamed back down onto enemy planets to capture them. Planets can be bombed to kill off armies, but only to a point, landing armies is always required.

[edit] Combat

Unlike Spacewar! or Empire, Netrek includes many different ship types with their own strengths and weaknesses. Some, like the scout, are faster and are useful for long range hit-and-run attacks. Others, like the battleship, are extremely powerful but slow, useful primarily for point defense.

A player obtains "kills" either by killing an enemy ship or by bombing enemy armies. The number of kills decides how many armies a player's ship can carry. The player's kill count resets back to 0 each time their ship is destroyed, requiring them to obtain more kills before they can carry armies and capture planets. Consequently, people with 2 or more kills are often targeted for ogging (a kind of kamikaze attack) just to remove the threat of them carrying armies.

Enemy ships can be destroyed using two main weapons systems: phasers and photon torpedoes. Phasers are instantaneous beam weapons which cannot be dodged, while torpedoes take time to travel to the target and thus can be dodged. Other shipboard combat systems include shields, and tractor and presser beams. When a ship is destroyed, the player chooses a new ship and reappears next to their team's homeworld.

[edit] Games

The ultimate goal of the game is to capture all of the enemy's planets. Game play is normally between only two teams, the other two quarters of the galaxy being known as "Thirdspace". When two teams each have at least four players, the server enters "Tournament Mode", or "T-Mode", in which planets can be bombed and captured. Once one team has only two planets remaining, a twenty minute count down timer for their automatic surrender begins. Capturing a third planet will freeze the counter, while a fourth will remove the threat of automatic surrender.

Players join and leave the game as they wish. Pickup games can be as short as ten or fifteen minutes, but are normally much longer. "Clue Games" are games between experienced players, which are usually timed for an hour with a half hour of overtime, and a scoring system is used to determine victory.

[edit] History

Netrek is largely derived from Empire, written for the PLATO mainframe system beginning in 1973.^[3] It shares many characteristics of that game; key differences include a different planet layout and a much different pace of play, as well as evolutionary factors such as the use of mice instead of keyboard commands, TCP/IP networking, and the inclusion of color and sound.

In 1982 UC Berkeley student David Davis began writing a UNIX game called trek82, based on what he remembered of Empire when he used the PLATO system while at the University of Hawaii. This version emerged as trek82, using character graphics for display and a shared file to exchange data.^[3] Chris Guthrie joined Davis, and introduced him to Jef Poskanzer and Craig Leres, who were working on a more strategic offshoot of Empire called Conquest.^[3] They produced an updated version known as trek83.

In 1986, Guthrie began porting trek83 to the newly released X Window System, producing Xtrek. Further development took place at the XCF, with the help of Ed James. In the spring of 1988, Xtrek II was written by Scott Silvey and K. Smith, moving from a model which used X as a transport to the game having its own client-server protocol.^[3] This was key in allowing the game to be ported to other platforms, which may or may not support X. This version was later developed into Netrek by Scott Silvey, Kevin Smith and Terence Chang.^[4]

In 1989, the source code was posted to Usenet. In the fall of 1990, UCB alumnus Terence Chang set up a public Netrek server at Carnegie Mellon University where he was attending graduate school.^[4] In spring 1991, the first inter-scholastic game was played between UCB and CMU, and in January of 1992, the "International Netrek League" (INL) was formed, so that teams could form and compete with one another (as opposed to pick-up play, in which games are played by whoever connects to a server, and players enter and leave as they wish during the course of the game). Netrek was very popular in the Carnegie Mellon computer clusters between 1992 and 1993.

Over time, several major types of Netrek were created as people experimented with different extensions to the game. The most popular form is known as Bronco, named for the server at CMU. Particularly noteworthy are Paradise, which is designed to be more like Star Trek: The Next Generation with a more complex game universe, and Netrek Hockey, which is designed to resemble a hybrid of Netrek and ice hockey. Paradise's lack of success has been partly attributed to the lack of a Windows client; while all other variants of Netrek can be played using the same client program, Paradise has added features which require a more complicated client program.

Netrek play peaked in the middle to late 1990s, with several leagues existing for different forms of the game as well as for different regions, and several pickup games always active, 24 hours per day, seven days per week.^[5] Between 2002 and 2006 there was a steady decline in play. As of early 2007, Netrek has seen a moderate increase in playerbase coupled with a mild renaissance in development. In late 2006 Mactrek, a new client for the Macintosh, was released, and substantial changes are being made to the Windows clients as well as various server enhancements. Currently there is a move from 10 fps to 50 fps, and the addition of voice chat is being considered.

[edit] Similar games

Netrek also has similarities to Alto Trek , a game written in the late 1970s and later ported to the Apple Macintosh by Randy Carr around 1985 to become another NetTrek. Both games ran on local area networks, typically LocalTalk or Ethernet. Unlike Netrek, or Empire, these games did not include the strategic portions of the game.

Netrek also has some similarities to DECWAR, which was developed independently of Empire but is surprisingly similar in many ways. DECWAR formed the basis of the long-running Compuserve online game, MegaWars.

[edit] Technological innovations

Netrek pioneered the use of many technologies and design features that later found their way into commercial network games, including:

• The efficient use of fast but unreliable UDP packets as well as reliable but slower TCP streams. It was probably the first game to use both types of Internet Protocol packets.^[6]
• A robust client-server model that reduces the data exchange to 'need to know' information, limiting both the required bandwidth and the opportunities for players to cheat by obtaining more knowledge of the game world than their opponents.
• Persistent account information where players can create a "character", and log in and gain ranks over multiple games.
• Game mechanics designed to reduce the ability of assisted or robot player aimbots (referred to as borgs) to gain a significant advantage over a human player.
• An anti-cheating mechanism using an RSA-based public key cryptography authentication system that also attempts (with limited success) to detect and prevent Man-in-the-middle attacks.^[7]
• Multiple game variants played by the same client, with the server telling the client what game features are supported.
• The use of Metaservers, servers designed to help clients locate available game servers

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

• Netrek Nexus, official website
• PlayNetrek.org
• rec.games.netrek usenet group
• Netrek on SourceForge
• MacTrek, an open source implementation for Mac OS X