Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!apple!shebs
From: shebs@Apple.COM (Stan Shebs)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.games.bugs
Subject: Re: xconq, xconq, who's got the xconq?
Message-ID: <13985@goofy.Apple.COM>
Date: 11 Jun 91 04:46:02 GMT
References: <16466@reed.UUCP> <44@dworkin.UUCP> <1991Jun9.184109.19872@viewlogic.com>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 30

In article <1991Jun9.184109.19872@viewlogic.com> peter@suntan.viewlogic.com (Peter Colby) writes:
>	Xconq on the other hand has a long derivative history. Starting out
>with a game called "empire" that was written (in Fortran no less) on a
>Decsystem 10. It migrated to DecSystem 20 and to Vax/VMS, oh about 7 or 8
>years ago. The same basic game (by the original author?) was released on
>Apple Macintosh as Strategic Conquest - right about the time that the Mac+ came
>out. This version has been revved twice with Strategic Conquest 3.0 released
>about 6 months ago by a different publisher than the 1.0 and 2.0 versions.

StratCon was independently developed I believe (David Harr who works for
Delta Tao should be lurking around here, he ought to supply more of the
details) by one Peter Merrill, while Walter Bright did the older mainframe
versions.  Bright later did/directed ports to Unix and PCs.  At one point
somebody actually leaked the sources (after I had written xconq) and I
looked at it out of "professional interest", but the Fortran was quite
impenetrable!

>Xconq is an expanded version developed entirely independantly (without
>reference to the original code) for the X-window system by a person called
>Stan Shebs - originally at the University of Utah (or somewhere nearby) and
>now at Apple Computer.

Yes, we briefly ran VMS on a machine at Utah and that's I encountered and
became obsessed with the VMS empire.  I was, however, unhappy at the
unavailability of source and so decided to write my own.  The first working
version was strictly for curses - it was some months before a colleague
suggested an X port, and the rest, as they say, is history...

						Stan Shebs
						shebs@apple.com