Empire (game, 1973)

The first version of the game, Empire I , was written by John Daleske in TUTOR As part of his course work in the spring of 1973, when he was studying at the University of Iowa . Silas Warner Provided him with disk space (called “learning space” in PLATO terminology). The first version was a step-by-step strategy for eight people. Each player had ships, industry and budget. Players needed to manage the budget and industry in order to create more ships, and also to turn materials into goods and trade ^[2] .

In the autumn of the same year, the second version of the game, Empire II , was created, which has changed significantly and become more tactical-oriented. Each player controlled a spacecraft and could shoot at others with torpedoes. The number of possible players has increased to fifty. However, Silas Warner liked the previous version more, and with the permission of John Daleske, he revived it under the name of Conquest . In 1982, Jeff Poskanzer created Conquest for VAX / VMS computers. By the end of the 90s, Conquest could still be found on NovaNET PLATO systems.

By the end of the year, Daleske was rewriting the game again, giving it the name Empire III . He optimized the program code, and also significantly improved physics; in addition, the player’s ship is now constantly displayed in the middle of the tactical screen. Up to seven teams and fifty players could participate in the game; In addition, players could join the eighth brigand team to act independently.

In 1976, the development team led by Chuck Miller and Gary Fritz, which also includes John Daleske and Jim Bettin, made significant changes to the program code of the game. In 1977, they released Empire IV , which supported the ability to exchange text messages between players in a chat . In 1981, Steve Peltz created the tournament version of the game; began to be held annual tournaments.

Empire was very popular: according to the analysis of the PLATO system log files located at CERL, which was carried out by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , from 1978 to 1985, users spent approximately 300,000 hours in the game ^[3] . Empire is still being played on the site www.cyber1.org .

Based on Empire , other games were created, such as Trek82 , Trek83 , ROBOTREK , Xtrek and Netrek .

Although the PLATO terminals had touch panels for data entry, they did not have a manipulator , so the game was controlled by typing. Commands for changing course or shooting were entered in degrees : 0 meant the right side, 90 - top, 270 - bottom. Buttons could also be used with arrows. Monochrome displays with a resolution of 512x512 pixels were connected to the terminals; to display the graphics you can download a special set of characters.

The task of the game is to conquer the galaxy, which includes 25 planets. Representatives of the four races of the Star Trek universe live on the planets: representatives of the Federation, Orions, Romulans, and Klingons . Before the release of the game, the name of the fourth race was changed to Kazari, because the authors were afraid of accusations of copyright infringement. In 1991, the original name was returned to the NovaNET game version.

Each team gets a home planetary system: three planets nearby. Between the home systems of each team are two neutral worlds; In addition, the five neutral worlds are in the middle of the galaxy. Common to all the playing field has a size of several game screens. Each player-owned planet initially contains 50 armies, and 25 planets on neutral planets. Each player controls a spacecraft and fights other ships , and also destroys enemy armies, dropping bombs on them. The player can teleport his army to the ship in order to transport them and teleport to an enemy planet to capture it. Ships of different races have small differences: Orion ships have the weakest weapons, but the fastest; Romulan has the strongest weapons, but the lowest speeds; Federation ships and kazars have moderate weapon strength and speed. Two types of weapons are installed on ships: phasers and photon torpedoes . Phasers do damage instantly, while torpedoes take some time to reach the target; in addition, you can dodge them, and they can be detonated before meeting with the goal. When a player dies, he is reborn with a new ship in his home system or in any other captured system.

In addition, the ships had a limited supply of fuel, which was slowly replenished. So, flying at top speed completely consumed fuel in a few minutes. The entry into orbit of a friendly planet increased the rate of fuel replenishment.

Although Empire is an action game, the gameplay can be quite slow. Thus, the flight from the home system to the enemy can take from one to two minutes, and the landing of fifty armies on the planet - from five to ten. The game takes several hours or even days, with some players replacing others. However, during air battles, players could press up to twenty keys per second, giving commands (that is, as often as the system could handle them).

The PLATO terminals were connected to the host with a 1200 baud channel. In addition, the refresh rate of the screen, which displayed a lot of ships and torpedoes, could be 1-2 seconds. Players could decide how often their display would be updated, but they couldn’t postpone this action for more than 10 seconds and couldn’t give more than a certain number of commands until the next update. The position of the ship was recalculated only when its owner updated the screen, so the ships could “jump” (perform the so-called “hyper-jumps”). The location of the torpedoes was recalculated when any participating player updated their screen, so their movement was virtually continuous. The relatively simple game mechanics, due to the limitations of the hardware, added strategic depth to the game.

• The history of computer games
• Spasim
• Maze war
• Netrek

• Empire History on the official website of John Daleske (eng.)
• The History of Empire Written by Gary Fritz
• PLATO: The emergence of an online community (English)
• Netrek History in the Internet Archive (English)
• The history of computer games (Part 5, PLATO) on the GameSpy website (Internet archive) (Eng.)
• Empire Gameplay (Eng.)
• Cyber1 - site about computer system PLATO (eng.)