Galaxywars
| Galaxywars | |
|---|---|
| Publisher |
 Gameforge
|
| Senior Developer | Magnus Bübl Markus Tervooren |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
2001 |
| platform | Web browser |
| genre | Browser game , manager simulation |
| control | Keyboard & mouse |
| language | German |
Galaxywars ( GW for short ) was the first major German-language browser game , operated by Gameforge AG , based in Karlsruhe . However, it was developed by Magnus Bübl and Markus Tervooren.
A Galaxywars server was last on the network. The number of servers varied because only one Galaxywars universe is started per server. The number of players was limited to (as of July 2011) 14,999 players per universe.
At the end of 2009 there were a total of almost 200,000 user accounts in all nine universes , of which only around 5,000 were active in December 2009. On February 9th, 2012 it was announced that the game will be closed on March 5th, 2012 and all servers (including the forum) will be shut down.
History / versions
Galaxywars was originally intended to be a browser game that was a mixture of the Planetarion and StarCraft games . At the end of February / beginning of March 2001, however, a separate project was developed.
The game round GW01 started on July 29, 2001. The community forum , at that time still a YaBB forum, was launched at this time. As Galaxywars had become a little better known, there were already over 500 new posts in the forum within the first four days, and it was a sure sign that the number of players on Galaxywars was growing rapidly. Before the end of the round, the server's traffic limit was exceeded and it was time to move.
GW02
At the end of 2001 a "test round" (GW02) started, which should last until the end of January 2002, but it actually only ended with the start of the 3rd round (GW03) at the end of February 2002. New in the "test round" were colonization ships and a functioning one Alliance system. The number of planets per system has also been reduced and some buildings that were previously without function have been removed.
GW03
On February 23, 2002 the third round of Galaxywars (GW03) started. Also in this round there was only one universe that was populated with over 100,000 players. GW03 was the second longest round of Galaxywars, it ended after more than a year on June 21, 2003 in an announced server reset.
GW04
This game round never exceeded the alpha stage and never started.
GW05
GW05 was the completely re-programmed successor version of GW03. It had no combat system and was limited to the expansion of mines , research and spacecraft fleets, which could not be used due to the lack of a combat system.
One innovation in GW05 was, among other things, that in addition to various branches of research, these newly developed branches of research could be given their own names by the players, which means that for the first time the players themselves determined how these developments were named.
At the same time, most of the development and graphics community finally migrated to Galaxywars the second Chance (gw-2nd), X-Wars and other offshoots and new developments. The meanwhile official forum of Galaxywars, Ultimate OnlineGames Forum , now also hosted other new developments by other developers.
GW-Classic
This new game round had a combat system again, and you could use the fleets again. Performance problems on the server made the universes smaller. Since the number of players was to be maintained, a second universe was started on a second server. A third and fourth universe were added later. At the beginning of February 2005 a bug became known that made it possible to double ships and thus create huge fleets. After the bug was fixed by the responsible programmer "Andi" on February 17th, 2005, but had been used for a long time, all four universes with over 100,000 players were reset.
GW-Classic 2
GW-Classic 2 is more of an unofficial title. The 2 symbolizes the relaunch of the GW-Classic round on April 7, 2005. The current round has been running since then and is the longest running from Galaxywars. It started first in Universe 1 and 2. A third universe was added later, as the first two became too slow due to excessive server load. A fourth universe has also existed since December 1, 2005, which already received 7,000 registrations on the first day. Most recently there were 111,771 player accounts at GalaxyWars. The most important visible innovations for the players of this new round: The elimination of the fleet bug, which caused new errors. Again, a number of players took advantage of these programming errors. The invasion ships were taken out of the TechTree, but there was no difference in gameplay because the invasion ships never worked. A space-folding drive has been added to the research, which is required for 2 new ship types, the Noah (merchant ship) and the Longeagle X (battleship). In addition, some little things have been added to make the game easier (e.g. change the Galaxy with "Enter confirmation").
In the 2nd and 3rd quarter of 2006, after a few test phases, further innovations were introduced. A diplomacy tool was installed and a graphical improvement of the galaxy overview was introduced. The messaging system has also been improved and some minor bugs have been fixed. The main achievement, however, was the introduction of a subprogram that detects user accounts that are not only controlled by humans, but also by intelligent computer programs ( bots ). These accounts have been banned from the game to ensure fair gaming.
VERSION v2.0.0 Alpha 18
A new beta universe has been opened since mid-December 2006, which is based on the code of GW0.54 and Space4k and is adapted to the classic design of GW03. Here the attempt is made to build in a real event handler, which does not - like the previous one - only take over parts of the game, but all events. The advantage is that errors like the "hanging fleets" can almost no longer occur, but there will be a short waiting time depending on the server load. Other errors such as the fleet bug should also be eliminated.
The beta server was now limited to 3,000 players. The battle script was unlocked later and the beta was a test universe with no gameplay differences to the other universes.
Process and control
The game ran with every common browser , the game was free. You started with a single planet that was randomly placed in the universe you signed up for. First, the mines for the raw materials iron and lutinum had to be expanded in order to later be able to build new buildings such as a derrick, which in turn was important as a water supplier for the chemical factory in order to produce the fourth raw material - hydrogen. Later other buildings were built such as the command center, a ship factory, and a research center. As soon as you had colonization ships, you could establish new colonies on other planets. Most recently, the limit was 20 planets per player.
Goal of the game
The aim was to quickly reach the highest possible research levels in propulsion and weapons research in order to be able to build fast and powerful ships. With these you could then attack your neighbors and plunder their raw materials (= " raiden ", " farm "). In order to collect as many raw materials as possible for the expansion of buildings or the construction of further spaceships in a short time , professional players created lists of planets called raid mines or farms of weaker or inactive players, which were regularly "processed".
The players also often formed alliances in order to better assert themselves against stronger players and other alliances. Within the alliances there was a lively trade in raw materials and there was mutual support in expanding. Even during armed conflicts, the players in an alliance usually stuck together. Friendly alliances also formed so-called meta-alliances or coalitions . Also were non-aggression pact (short NAP ) less durable agreement often closed as attenuated and.
Wars were fought between individual players and between alliances. One party declares war on the other between alliances. A war was waged , among other things, over a fixed period of time, a wide variety of standards were used to determine the winner. Mostly it was about the number of enemy ships destroyed.
It took a lot of time and patience to play Galaxywars successfully. Some players put months into building an account, with most accounts being maintained over years. This time was also necessary, otherwise you couldn't become a “great player”. Help was often given by members of alliances or, for example, friends, who then " pushed " the beginner (from English to push for push , push ). There was a kind of competition between the Galaxywars players to see who owned the largest fleet and destroyed the most ships or achieved the most points in the official highscore.
Trade on eBay
Although it was forbidden by the provider Gameforge, u. a. In the online auction house eBay, trading in raw materials, accounts and occasionally also raid lists from Galaxywars took place, for which a separate category was set up on eBay. If a player was caught trading on eBay, their account was permanently banned. Ebay no longer wanted to campaign for these actions that violated Galaxywars' terms and conditions. That is why the trading on eBay with accounts, raw materials and the like was later followed up by the Gameforge legal department. Since then there have been no online offers on the auction platform. Trading was generally prohibited by Gameforge for all auction houses or similar by means of terms and conditions.
Complaints
Like many other games, Galaxywars was not without its flaws. A major shortcoming was the internal numbering of a player's planets from A to Z - if a player's planets exceeded 26, the counting started again at A, which made control difficult. This was also the reason for the limitation of 20 planets per player.
Another reason for complaint was the fleet bug, which many players hated : it happened again and again that a sent fleet did not return to the planet despite a positive report and was thus completely lost.
In times of great crowds (evening hours, summer vacation), the server was overloaded again and again, which made it impossible to log in or continue playing. That also ensured that you B. could not repel enemy attacks in time or save his fleets.
In alliances it was also not possible to combine spaceships for a joint attack against a hostile alliance.
Since Galaxywars was a very "click-intensive" game, cheaters often used scripts or bots to do this work and evaluate their attacks. In Galaxywars, fraudsters who could prove the use of cheats were regularly deleted. In the GW03 round (2002), however, this was completely ignored, which led to "crazy" fleets.
The main criticism, however, is likely to be that all the program errors and problems mentioned had already been known for almost ten years, but were never or never completely corrected by the operator.
Shutdown of the game server
On November 20, 2009, all nine universes were closed and a general reset was carried out, the total number of universes was reduced to one. On February 9, 2012, it was announced that the game would finally be closed on March 5, 2012 at 4 p.m. The associated forum was also closed two weeks later. On March 5, 2012 at 4:06 pm, Galaxywars was finally taken offline.
See also
Web links
- Official website (dead)
- Original storyline of the game
- Original storyline of the game ( Memento from December 21, 2011 on the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Galaxywars account numbers (dead). On: galaxywarsforum.de, accessed on December 16, 2009.