Galaxy
Back in the dark ages of computing, yes the twilight years of the BBC Micro, the ZX Spectrum and the C-64 Rob decided that he would write a PBM, and he'd write it in BASIC dammit!
After much cursing and the slow progress of computer technology around him he eventually managed to code the ill-fated 'Awkward' a hideous mish-mash of terrifying code that was just about recogniseable as a fantasy wargame.
It trudged through about 4 turns, the players keen to see how long it would take before Rob would tear all his hair out as he found and corrected the odd bug or two...
Then one sunny morning in a dingy student pad Rob's hard disk decided that life wasn't living anymore and promptly died like the proverbial parrot.
Utterly snuffed it in fact!
Backups...
Ah...
Well he had backups... sure... just they hadn't been done that recently, and the thought of removing all the bugs again was frankly not that attractive, plus the players game info had all been lost. So 'Awkward' died... although it still lingers on as a terrifying lump of code lurking on a disk somewhere... waiting to strike.
Then one day... Rob stumbled onto the Galaxy-G homepage!
Galaxy is a a play by e-mail wargame of galactic conquest. Players nurture their warlike races through the traditional early stages of space exploration, galactic diplomacy, technological development, colonisation, and just possibly the odd war or two.
Or more likely a ton of them. Galaxy is realtively simple to play, and with the graphical helper 'GalaxyTV' it's even easier! What isn't easy however is taking over the universe when there's all those other meglomaniac players around!
My galaxy game is probably approaching near the mid-stage at the moment, people are expanding to the point where they realise sooner or later, they're just going to ~have~ to bomb someone... when the game finally ends I'll run another.
Useful links to get you started!
Rules for Galaxy!
Confused yet? Read this! It will help you survive!
The galaxy TV homepage, a very useful graphical thingy for Galaxy!
Galactic traveller, a whole host of PBEM info here!
All trademarks acknowledged, the people who wrote this game deserve a huge great slice of pie.