VGA Planets

The game became well known in 1994 with version 3, although the prior version 2.2 was already played worldwide. Version 3 allows up to 11 players to join, each of them leading one of the 11 possible races; in version 4 this limit has been abolished, and several instances of the same race can be played independently by different players.

The predefined races are modeled after Star Trek, Star Wars, etc., though custom races can be created with special tools. Each predefined race has some special powers and specific fields of expertise (for example: Cyborgs can assimilate other races, turning colonists into Cyborgs; Robots are expert minelayers; Birdmen excel at spy tactics and cloaking).

VGA-Planets follows the 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit & eXterminate) model: The players start with a homeworld, and have to build spaceships, explore the galaxy, colonize planets, mine minerals, build up their industry, etc.

The game has no built-in victory condition, e.g. the players have to agree on such a victory condition before starting a game.

A game is set up using three programs: a master program that allows the creation of a universe with the desired characteristics; a host program that acts as a server; and a copy of the client program for each player. Clients up to version 3.0 were DOS programs; from version 3.5 on there were clients for Windows.

First, the host sends a file with the initial conditions to each player. The client program allows the player to view data about the game and make decissions. Once the player has finished giving orders for the turn, either the client program or an external helper program takes the data, creates a turn file (usually with a .TRN extension), and sends it to the host person, who feeds all the turn files into the host program. The host processes all the turns and creates new status files, which are then sent back to the players. This process can be fully automated (the host can be an automatic server).

In its time, LANs and the Internet were not generally available to the public, so VGA-Planets was played mainly by email. That means, the turn files and the game status files were transferred via e-mail, e. g. within the FidoNet-network. For this to work, there had to be regular schedule for turning in orders to the host.

A big problem of version 3 were certain technical limitations, e.g. the maximum number of 500 ships for all players, which lead to undesirable gameplay. Despite this, VGA-Planets was well established in the mailbox scene. Third parties had developed a lot of extensions.

As of 2005, version 3 games are still being played by thousands. Version 4 is being developed. Though it is still in the beta stage, it is considered sufficiently bug-free and being widely used. Version 4 was a major departure from version 3, with new rules and a lot of extensions.

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