PBEM fanzine 92 # 6 From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 20:19:14 +0000 ====================================================================== @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@ @@ @@``````````@@ @@``````````@@ @@`````````````` @@@@ @@@@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@``@@ @@ @@`` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@`` @@ ``@@`` @@```````````` @@``````````@@ @@```````````` @@`` `` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@`` @@`` `` ```````````` `````````````` `` `` ====================================================================== A Fanzine for Free Computer-Moderated Play-By-Electronic-Mail Wargames ====================================================================== volume 92, number 6 (yes, volume 92 is the first) december 15, 1992 ====================================================================== Greg Lindahl, Editor gl8f@virginia.edu ====================================================================== Table of Contents: Opening Stuff o The Editor's Corner Announcements o Washington Diplomacy Judge to be phased out Articles o A Review of VGA Planets 2.1 Regular Features o Game Descriptions & Information o Hints regarding sending electronic mail to other networks o What's this "ftp" thing anyway? o Archives and subscriptions by email ====================================================================== The Editor's Corner ====================================================================== Gee, these months fly by quickly. This issue is a bit slim, due to a dearth of submissions. But that's the least of my worries: ever order dancing gillies from Scotland and discover that they are 1/2 size too large? I even mailed them a sketch of my foot. Problems aside, I hope to have a better selection of articles next issue. I am currently involved in beta-tests of 2 new games; Dreams of Glory, and Space 1992. Hopefully they'll reach a finished state during the new year. -- greg (gl8f@virginia.edu) ====================================================================== Announcements ====================================================================== Washington Diplomacy Judge Being Phased-Out Ken Lowe, who has probably done more for free PBEM wargaming than any other single individual, recently announced that he will be phasing out his Diplomacy server, judge@u.washington.edu. No new games will be started, but all existing games will be allowed to finish. All is not lost, however, because Ken has given away the code to the server, and David Kovar and the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) are donating time (human and computer) to start a new Judge: judge@morrolan.eff.org. If things run smoothly, it will gradually take over as the central diplomacy server. Attempts are being made to insure that all games on the EFF judge have moderators, and that the number of new games is kept low enough to avoid lots of abandoned positions. There are also other smaller judges elsewhere but, for now, I am only advertising the EFF judge. I don't think I can possibly say enough positive things about what Ken has done. Long before anything of this scale was ever attempted for free, he wrote the server, got the necessary permission from Avalon Hill, and spent large amounts of time moderating zillions of games. Actually, that's unfair: nobody has attempted anything this large since. There are probably more gamers involved in this game than all other free PBEM games combined. At this point there is about one new game being started each day, and the rate is increasing because a new Usenet newsgroup devoted to diplomacy, rec.games.diplomacy, is attracting a fair bit of attention. If you've played games on the Judge, one way that you can show your appreciation to Ken is to send him a postcard through the mail, or a T-shirt with your school or company logo or some other interesting design from wherever in the world you are. He says that he wears a "large medium or small large", and prefers a colored background rather than white (i.e. gray). His postal address is: Ken Lowe University of Washington JE-30 4545 15th Ave NE; Suite 300 Seattle, WA 98195 Finally, please note that existing Washington Judge games will still need replacement players for quite a while, so keep an eye out for a chance to be useful. I try to play around one "dud" replacement position for every active game I'm in; it doesn't take much time and it helps things run much more smoothly. ====================================================================== A Review of VGA Planets 2.1 Matt Bakaitis ====================================================================== First, a quick note before I launch into an actual review of the game: VGA Planets is a game written exclusively for MS-Dos machines. Because of the method used to transfer data, you need the programs to decode the binary data files. From what I've heard however, there are no plans by the author to port the game to any other platforms or tell anyone how he has set up his data files. So, for the moment, MS-Dos is required to play the game. VGA Planets is a pretty sister of Russell Wallace's Galaxy game. However, as you get to know the game, it turns out that Galaxy may be the better choice in the long run. The game is based around a classic theme: each player starts off on a home planet, invests in technology, builds ships, colonizes other planets, and meets with (and kills) the other players. It's a simple premise, and one that can't really be screwed up, thankfully. In these areas, the game shows great promise. The rules for each are very simple and easily grasped. The best part of the game is the player's VGA graphic turn processor. Instead of using text file reports, the moderator mails out binary data files. The player's program then chews up this file and reports the turn results through a set of screens - one each for ships, planets, and starbases. The combination of menus, mouse directed data, and graphs allow the player to slide through a turn with relative ease. Essentially, imagine this program to be a collection of the Galaxy utilities bound together by a VGA interface. A great idea, and one that works rather well. But not perfectly. The things I don't like about the game (and will soon drive me away from it) can be divided up into two sections: bugs and rules quirks. First, there are enough bugs in the game to make it frustrating. The worst part is that they are documented in the rules included in the compressed master file. They even claim to have fixed them, though we keep running into them. The funniest, one that actually seems to have been fixed, is reported as a new _feature_. The author fixed a program crashing bug and claimed it was a FEATURE! OK, so I'm a little excited about this. I guess that the fact that the program works _is_ some sort of a feature if you look at it the right way. Second, there are rules quirks. Tens. Hundreds, even. Just to be fair, I'll report a few that were universal to every player in the game I've been running the last six weeks. The most costly deals with constructing a new starbase. The game allows a player to construct a starbase at a planet where one already exists. However, when construction is complete, it never shows up. The player is charged for money and materials, but no base. This is probably more a bug than a quirk. The rest of the major ones deal with the initial setup of the game. The map is fixed, it never changes from game to game. That's one. To make things worse, this fixed map has huge gaps between planets in some places and huge clusters in others. The distribution is crazy. That's two. When the players are placed, each player's planet is different. Fine, but there doesn't seem to be a minimum requirement of materials. Thus, in this game we are playing, I landed on a planet, in a huge void of space, with _no_ fuel and almost no other minerals. My planet was barren. Another player, after about twenty processed turns, still has a planet rich with fuel. I've been out since turn two. This situation is repeated in different ways - players placed in an empty area of the map, or placed on a poor planet. The game was essentially decided at setup. That's three. Finally, the fourth gripe, the one that "wins" the contest: Players may only build specified types of ships. There is no individual design possible. The problem lies with the fact that each race has a different set of ships that they may build. There is no attempt made to give some of the races a fighting chance. One race, the Lizards, might as well not be played in an aggressive game. If hostilities erupt, they have a hard time simply defending. Don't even think about an offensive. Another, the Evil Empire, is stocked with a full range of cargo ships and warships. If placed near the Evil Empire, either become good friends or start building guns the first turn. VGA Planets has a ton of potential. It even makes a good game to play for a short time. However, I doubt that it will survive in its current incarnation. Promises of a new version don't seem too promising, considering that the author states that he is "very pleased" with the current copy. My recommendation would be to get a copy (ftp to "ftp.ucsc.edu" and look in the "/PC/vgaplanets-2.1" directory) and play with it. You may like it, and will probably play it. We do. But, I doubt we will be any more games once this one is finished. ====================================================================== Game Descriptions and Information ====================================================================== Galaxy -- Galaxy is a closed-ended strategic economic/military space simulation. The game typically takes place on a 100x100 2D map, with a few hundred planets and 20 to 50 players. Players compete to capture planets, which can be used for economic expansion. You may purchase technology in many areas, allowing your ships to fight harder and move faster. Galaxy turns range in size from 10kbytes early in the game to 100-200kbytes late in the game. Games are being run by the author, Russell Wallace, and also by Rob McNeur, Howard Bampton, and the Generic Association of Gamers at Western Washington University. Announcements of new games have been generally posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.pbm. The last time that Russell started a game, he got twice as many players as he wanted. So it would be a good idea if there were more moderators, or if the GAG folks started up more games on their server. It would also be nice if new games got announced somewhere near the 15th of the month so I could publish a notice about them here, but that's probably hoping for too much. The rules and source code are available for ftp on ftp.erg.sri.com, directory /pub/pbm/galaxy. If you to get into a game as a stand-by for a dropped player or try your luck at getting into a new game, try sending email to some of the people who are actively running games, namely RWALLACE@vax1.tcd.ie, rob@ccc.govt.nz, and bampton@cs.utk.edu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Diplomacy -- The Diplomacy Adjudicator is a fully computer-moderated gamemaster for Avalon Hill's Diplomacy boardgame. To get more information from the moderator, send email with the word "HELP" in it to judge@morrolan.eff.org. Some information is available via FTP from milton.u.washington in the public/misc subdirectory. All of the information up for ftp is also available via the email server. There is also an older diplomacy Judge at judge@u.washington.edu, which is not starting any new games but has lots of standby positions available. Diplomacy is covered by its own on-line magazine, which you can subscribe to either by reading the newsgroup rec.games.diplomacy, or by sending email with the phrase: subscribe dipl-l Your Name to the address listserv@mitvma.mit.edu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Star Empires -- Star Empires is a simple closed-ended strategic space-opera-style game. Roger Lincoln is currently running game #2. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Celestial Empire -- Celestial Empire is a closed-ended strategic economic/military space simulation. Empires compete to capture worlds which produce many different types of resources, of which different amounts are needed to manufacture various items. The author, Dougal Scott, is currently running several games, and he periodically starts new ones. The rules may be ftp-ed from yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au in the directory /pub/celemp. After you've read them, if you still want to join a game, send your name to Dougal.Scott@fcit.monash.edu.au. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Olympia -- Olympia is an open-ended economic/military simulation in a fantasy setting, with a little role-playing thrown in for good measure. The beta-test just finished and hopefully the next iteration will be out soon, but Rich Skrenta is threatening to make it a commercial game... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Other games -- While these aren't wargames, they are PBEM games of a sort -- sports games. Generally these games have long seasons so you can't join in the middle, but if there's an opening, you might get in early. - Experimental Electronic Football League (EEFL): wickart@ichips.intel.com - United Electronic Football League (UEFL): billones@grebyn.com - World Electronic Football League (WEFL): sarge@cs.uq.oz.au - World Email Hockey Association (WEHA): creare!inb@Dartmouth.edu - S. P. Australian Rules Football (SPARF): mel@soda.berkeley.edu - Ultra Cricket: astley@franklin.cc.utas.edu If you'd like to see a sample set of rules, our popular columnist Mel Nicholson has an email server... for details, send email to munch@soda.berkeley.edu with the subject "help" to receive information about his game. And yes, I refuse to publish contact information for any form of PBEM Wrestling. ====================================================================== Hints regarding sending Electronic Mail to other networks ====================================================================== OK, so now you're wondering, "I'm using FidoNet or CompuServe or FoobieBlech and those email addresses he keeps on talking about sure look funny to me!". Welcome to the modern world of networking. See, there's this big amorphous network called the Internet that lots of other networks, like FidoNet and CompuServe (but not GEnie, yet) are hooked up to. And you can send email between all of them, if you know the right incantations. Often size or cost limitations will keep you from being able to play games on another network, but at least you can send me letters to the editor or articles. Compuserve: If your ID is [76515,1122] then your canonical Internet address will be 76515.1122@compuserve.com. The comma is replaced by a period, and that's your username. Compuserve.com is the name of your site. The .com on the end means that Compuserve is a business, and also generally means it's in the USA. This address is the one that non-compuserve people will use to talk to you. To send mail from CompuServe to the Internet, you use this sort of address: >INTERNET:gl8f@virginia.edu In this example, the ">INTERNET:" part indicates that the email is going to the Internet, and gl8f@virginia.edu is a normal Internet address (mine). Compuserve users have to pay extra for mail to or from the Internet. If you're a flat-fee user, the cost is 5 cents per 2500 characters, minimum 15 cents, and the first $9 per month is free. This can add up to a bit of money if you send frequent messages, or get into a Galaxy end-game where your turns are large. In addition, the maximum size for a given message is 50kbytes, and most Internet games do not split their game turns into pieces if they are too large. But you can try. Diplomacy, for example, should definitely be ok in size and volume if you play a no-press anonymous game. To go from FidoNet to the Internet and back is a similar process. Actually, it's not so simple. I have a document that describes this, but since FidoNet seems to be a bit of an anarchy, you can't even send netmail from some nodes and others may not be configured properly to send mail to and from the Internet. And, when you send email, someone is paying to send it, or maybe there is a local gateway and it's free. So, you should probably talk to your sysop first to figure out what's going on. Anyway, the long and the short of it is this: FidoNet users can send mail to the Internet by sending normal netmail to the user UUCP, and then on the first line of the message, put the line: To: gl8f@virginia.edu To send email from the Internet to FidoNet, you take an address such as "Dale Webber at 1:105/55.0", and turn that into dale.weber@p0.f55.n105.z1.fidonet.org. Again, this is subject to the same caveats above about the gateway and the costs involved. From what I've gathered (but I haven't asked recently), they ask that you keep messages under 10k bytes and to only send two or three a day. This is a fairly small amount that would limit your ability to play Internet games, but you can still submit articles to this fanzine (hint, hint). If you want to avoid the limitations, yet don't know how to get directly on the Internet, I can mail you a list of public-access Unix sites with Internet email capabilities. Just send me a short note, using the above info, to "gl8f@virginia.edu", and I'll mail a copy back. ====================================================================== What's this "ftp" thing anyway? ====================================================================== ftp is an acronym for "file transfer protocol", and it is only directly available to the privileged few who are directly hooked to the Internet using heavy-duty hardware. There is a way to use ftp via email, and if you can get email to me, I will send you a document explaining how to use it, or send email to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com, with an empty Subject: line, and the word "help" in the body of the message. ====================================================================== Archives and subscriptions by email ====================================================================== PBEM is archived at "ftp.erg.sri.com". I will also be setting up a mailing list to distribute this magazine, but keep in mind that it will be posted on a regular basis to at least Usenet and CompuServe, so if you're reading it now, you probably won't need to get on the mailing list to receive it in the future. ====================================================================== PBEM is published monthly. Please redistribute it far and wide, but do not modify or delete any articles. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE! Our focus is primarily on free wargames, but we're interested in articles about anything relevant. Up