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Malifax · 04-23-2006, 12:34 PM

The best combat ever seen on the Internet was found in a Simutronics game called "Orb Wars." The game took place in one-month campaigns where players would gather in the chamber, form teams of one to five participants each and enter contests lasting a random amount of time between 12 and 30 minutes. Contests took place on 100 x 100 grids, or maps, consisting of multiple terrain-types and dungeon-like features sprinkled with monsters of various types. The object was to locate the five orbs situated around the map and touch them to turn them your team's color so that at least three of the five were last touched by someone on your team when time ran out. Of course, guarding your orbs and overtaking your enemy's orbs was the name of the game, obviously where combat comes into the picture. Combat consisted of battle using spells, wands, potions and explosive crystals in real-time. The battlefield was presented in a 2-D overhead view of the map where you could see the terrain and watch monsters and players moving in real-time. There were six wyzard types, each with unique strrengths and weaknesses: enchanters could recharge the wands and vials found around the map and on the corpses of killed monsters. Alchemists used herbs they'd found to cast all spells at 100% with no stat cost. Illusionists could use the invisibility spell to remain unseen with no drain of their concentration. Conjurers were experts with the lightning spell and could summon an array of creatures to guard orbs, break walls, attack foes alongside them, pick them up when they died, find other combatants, resurrect teammates, etc. Necromancers were masters of the death spell and possessed the ability to summon undead. And sorcerers, while they couldn't use wands or vials, had higher stats and cast all spells at higher proficiency than wyzards of the other types. If you wanted exciting, fast and furious combat where the outcome was determined solely by your own ability, OW was it.

I really miss the game. I've attempted to purchase the game from Simutronics multiple times so that I can put it up on the web for free play, but I get no answers to my email. So I'm going to recreate the game myself. If this sounds like fun to you and you're a C++ coder or otherwise experienced in game programming and are interested in jumping aboard the project, please drop me a note:

Here's a of the game recreated in Photoshop. The map was made of ascii characters. The game could be played from a terminal emulator (vt100, vt52 or ANSI) or a custom front end that presented the game more graphically. Teammates appeared as numbers 1-4, enemies as numbers 5-9, critters as letters, artifacts/wands/vials/herbs/crystals/etc. as +'s, walls as [], and on. The linked jpeg is a pic I put together representing a view from the game played via FE. In the picture, the player (represented by ^ -- you could face n, s, e or w) has typed the fireball spell into his buffer to cast at the demon to the north. The demon has prepared a web spell and will cast it at the player. The player can melt the web from his body by typing "will," but it will cost him drain of some of his stats.

04-23-2006, 12:34 PM	#1
Malifax Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 108	The best combat ever seen on the Internet was found in a Simutronics game called "Orb Wars." The game took place in one-month campaigns where players would gather in the chamber, form teams of one to five participants each and enter contests lasting a random amount of time between 12 and 30 minutes. Contests took place on 100 x 100 grids, or maps, consisting of multiple terrain-types and dungeon-like features sprinkled with monsters of various types. The object was to locate the five orbs situated around the map and touch them to turn them your team's color so that at least three of the five were last touched by someone on your team when time ran out. Of course, guarding your orbs and overtaking your enemy's orbs was the name of the game, obviously where combat comes into the picture. Combat consisted of battle using spells, wands, potions and explosive crystals in real-time. The battlefield was presented in a 2-D overhead view of the map where you could see the terrain and watch monsters and players moving in real-time. There were six wyzard types, each with unique strrengths and weaknesses: enchanters could recharge the wands and vials found around the map and on the corpses of killed monsters. Alchemists used herbs they'd found to cast all spells at 100% with no stat cost. Illusionists could use the invisibility spell to remain unseen with no drain of their concentration. Conjurers were experts with the lightning spell and could summon an array of creatures to guard orbs, break walls, attack foes alongside them, pick them up when they died, find other combatants, resurrect teammates, etc. Necromancers were masters of the death spell and possessed the ability to summon undead. And sorcerers, while they couldn't use wands or vials, had higher stats and cast all spells at higher proficiency than wyzards of the other types. If you wanted exciting, fast and furious combat where the outcome was determined solely by your own ability, OW was it. I really miss the game. I've attempted to purchase the game from Simutronics multiple times so that I can put it up on the web for free play, but I get no answers to my email. So I'm going to recreate the game myself. If this sounds like fun to you and you're a C++ coder or otherwise experienced in game programming and are interested in jumping aboard the project, please drop me a note: Here's a of the game recreated in Photoshop. The map was made of ascii characters. The game could be played from a terminal emulator (vt100, vt52 or ANSI) or a custom front end that presented the game more graphically. Teammates appeared as numbers 1-4, enemies as numbers 5-9, critters as letters, artifacts/wands/vials/herbs/crystals/etc. as +'s, walls as [], and on. The linked jpeg is a pic I put together representing a view from the game played via FE. In the picture, the player (represented by ^ -- you could face n, s, e or w) has typed the fireball spell into his buffer to cast at the demon to the north. The demon has prepared a web spell and will cast it at the player. The player can melt the web from his body by typing "will," but it will cost him drain of some of his stats.