Space Empire Elite
| Space Empire Elite | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Jon Radoff |
Space Empire Elite or SEE is a multi-player strategy door game for Atari ST bulletin board systems. In Space Empire Elite, players rule an empire which they expand by purchasing planets or conquering other empires. Players are responsible for maintenance of their military and planets as well as feeding the population and the army. The goal is to become the largest, most powerful empire and remain so for as long as possible.
Like many other BBS door games, SEE is asynchronous; players do not need to play all together at the same time. Gameplay is turn-based, with a set number of turns available to play each day.
One key feature of later versions of SEE is that the game can be set up for "intergalactic", or inter-BBS, play. In this mode, players on one BBS are part of the same "galaxy" and work more as a team, trying to destroy other BBS "galaxies."
Origins and influences
Jon Radoff created Space Empire [1] in 1986 when he was a teenager, using GFA BASIC on the Atari ST.[2]
Radoff has said he was inspired by a single-player text game for the Commodore 64 called "Kingdom."[3] Kingdom is a turn-based empire-management game, where a player must balance paying for an empire and feeding its people.
Radoff designed SEE to revolve around a similar "tight loop around the resource-based decision[s]." But he didn't want the game be a solo experience. He added multiplayer support, enabling different players on a BBS to attack one another. These features allowed SEE to offer a "social game experience."[3]
Radoff says he felt that Atari ST BBSes generally lacked good BBS door games, and when SEE was released, many sysops immediately wanted to put it on their systems.[3]
Throughout 1987 and 1988, Radoff kept adding features to the game, and began to sell it as shareware:[2] sysops could try the software for free with limitations, such as a cap on the number of players. To remove the limitations, sysops would pay a registration fee.[4]
Much of the money Radoff earned from Space Empire Elite and Final Frontier later became seed capital which he used to start the company NovaLink.[3]
Radoff ported Space Empire to the Commodore Amiga in 1989 for use with his new BBS software package, Paragon. He wrote this new version in C and revamped its gameplay. [2] Maintenance of the Amiga version was later taken over by Tony Preston, developer of Citadel BBS software.[5]
Around the time Radoff ceased developing the Atari ST version of SEE, a sysop named Jurgen van den Handel wrote a clone of the game, adding new features like inter-BBS play,[6] which became very popular with sysops. For a time, this "intergalactic" mode was far more popular than the local mode. This fork of Space Empire Elite was updated and maintained by a succession of authors including Steven P. Reed, Carlis Darby, David Pence, Doc Wynne, David Jones, Dick Pederson, and Rob Magdich. The last known version of this fork, v11.37, was released in 1996.[7]
Legacy
SEE was probably the most popular game available on Atari ST BBSes, with one magazine describing it as a "craze" involving hundreds of boards.[8]
Hollie Satterfield, creator of Space Dynasty, described Space Empire Elite as an "addictive game" that drove lots of traffic to Atari ST BBSes.[9] This popularity led Satterfield and several others programmers to imitate or adapt it.
Besides Space Dynasty[10], other BBS door games influenced by SEE include Solar Realms Elite[11] (and its cousins Barren Realms Elite, The Arcadian Legends, and Falcon's Eye), Dark*Storm[12], and Space Empire II; as well as the unix-based game Professional Galactic Empires.
Break Into Chat blog articles
- Jon Radoff, creator of Space Empire Elite (interview)
See also
References
- ↑
Radoff, Jon (24 May 2010). "History of Social Games". radoff.com. Archived from the original on 29 May 2010. Retrieved 9 Jan 2013.
The earliest implementations of online PBM games ... were BBS "Door" games. ... I wrote a game in this market called Space Empire a long time ago.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2
Radoff, Jon (1 August 1989). "Space Empire (Amiga) v1.0 documentation".
In 1986 ... I played a game called "Empire" on a C-Net BBS (Commodore 64) and enjoyed the concept. ... I created my first version of it (in GFA Basic), and released it as public domain to the Atari ST world. ... The versions for the Atari ST which I sold in 1987 and early 1988 were very popular, and at least a hundred Atari ST systems in the world probably still run it.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Radoff, Jon (2 February 2016). "Jon Radoff, creator of Space Empire Elite and Final Frontier". Break Into Chat. Interviewed by Renaud, Josh. self-published. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
- ↑
Uhl, Anita (November 1988). "Board Meeting Minutes (Sept. 24, 1988)". Dal-Ace newsletter.
Donny reported that Doug Mauldin has donated $12 for Space Empire for the BBS.
- ↑
Hallman, Jonas (June–July 1994). "Lir på lina" [Play online]. Datormagazin. Vol. 9, no. 11. pp. 26–27.
{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: date format (link) - ↑
Connor, Joe (October 1995). "Silver Service". Atari World. Specialist Magazines Ltd. p. 72. Retrieved 14 Sep 2023.
If you're into games there's a games echo and a Multi User Game (MUG) called Space Empire Elite which runs across the network so login and launch your own inter-BBS attack!
- ↑ Magdich, Rob (6 Dec 1996). "Space Empire Elite v11.37 documentation".
- ↑
Colin, Bruce (July 1992). "A Worldwide Network of Comms". ST Review. EMAP. p. 135. Retrieved 14 Sep 2023.
One aspect of ST comms that has become a craze is the online game, Space Empire Elite. Hundreds of networked ST boards have been running the game for years.
- ↑ Satterfield, Hollie (6 November 2013). "Hollie Satterfield, creator of Space Dynasty". Break Into Chat (Interview). Interviewed by Renaud, Josh. self-published. Retrieved 6 February 2025.
- ↑ "Creator O'Toole". "WWIVNEWS Volume 1, Issue 3". Retrieved 1 December 2012.
- ↑ Patel, Amit. "SRE: Design Notes". Retrieved 19 October 2012.
- ↑
Ewert, Jason (14 July 1991). "Dark Storm (v0.095 beta) User Instruction Manual".
The idea for Dark*Storm came from an game called S.E.E. (Space Empire Elite) by Jon Radoff - quite a good game.