bright@dataio.UUCP (Emperor) (06/28/84)
Here is a brief history of the VMS version of Empire: Empire was originally written by Walter Bright (me) between 1977 and 1979 at Caltech for a PDP-10. It was written in Fortran. Since then, Herb Jacobs and Dave Mitton from DEC converted it to run under VAX VMS and distributed it through DECUS. How it got to Unix, or even if it is the same game, I don't know since I have never seen a version of the Unix Empire. If anyone could tell me this, please send me a mail. The version that I wrote is a screen oriented game where you controlled armies, fighters, destroyers, submarines, troop transports, cruisers and aircraft carriers on a 60 x 100 map consisting of land, sea and cities. The computer controlled the other side, playing by the same rules that you did. A typical game might last up to 20 hours, and is a real CPU hog. The game and the Fortran version (including 'derivations') are copyrighted by me. DECUS has acknowledged this and has stopped distributing the sources (but will still sell you the binaries). All rights to the game are reserved. Also, I have rewritten Empire to run on an IBM PC. If you would like a copy, please send $40 to: Northwest Software 13928 129th Ave NE Kirkland, WA 98034