This page shows various milestones and events in the development of the game.
September 2002: a new campaign "silver" started. Old campaign "red" ended.
April 2002: a new campaign "bronze" started.
December: a History and Changes page is now available for the game. This page has been around for a while, but I only recently tidied it up for "publishing".
November: campaign "red" started. New low-level technologies "biophysics" and "cryogenics" introduced. Also introduced a new restriction: a player may only have a maximum of three other players declared as "ally" at the same time; the purpose of this limitation is to prevent the game from being dominated by a large alliance of many small players, since this tends to slow down the game after the initial expansion phase.
October: the game was added to Greg Lindahl's PBM List. Also, from now on, I'll start using the "StarCluster: History and Changes" for more detailed information than I did before.
May: reference manual now available for download as a ".tar.gz" archive for off-line reading.
April: campaign "blue" started. New goods type "crystal" and some related technologies, installations and equipment introduced.
November: campaign "nov2000" started. Auto-generated reference manual appeared on the site.
September: introduced the concept of goods and automatic export in the game.
August: campaign "green" started. High-level technology "terraforming" introduced as a way of increasing the population capacity of a system with low population capacity.
May: campaign "blitz" started (perhaps somewhat misleadingly named), three turns per week. This was the first campaign that used the automatic update script from the start; before this, I had run things manually, but the game had been quite stable for several months at this point without any significant errors occurring, and it was getting a bit dull to inspect things manually...
March: campaign "core" started, using the new server rewritten in C which also took over the running of the older campaigns. I also think this was the campaign that introduced the Wenjee alien race in the game in addition to the three that were there from the beginning (Trialch, Krang and Zarth).
October: campaign "october" started. This was the last campaign that used the prototype game server (written in Perl).
June: campaign "quicktest" started, two turns per week. About 25 players, out of which about 15 were already playing "test".
Late 1998: campaign "test" started, one turn per week, later two. Initially about 15 players, with another 5 or so joining later.
I started writing the game server in spring 1997 with a sort of "rapid prototyping" development strategy, but other things got in the way (a half-to-full time job and a bachelor thesis in analytical philosophy) and when I got back to developing the server, I ended up redesigning it from the bottom up. All this went on in Perl, and produced a reasonably useable game server in Perl in autumn 1998, but I had decided from the start that I would rewrite it in C when I felt that the design had stabilized enough that maintainability became more important that being able to revise the server design quickly. I did this about a year after the first campaign had been launched.
Note, July/August 2002: the weekend 3-4 August 2002, the computers where the StarCluster game runs will be undergoing some maintenance, which may cause disturbances. Things should be running on Monday, 5 April again, but if it's not, I'll cancel the Monday update.
Update #2, May 2002: some new alien diplomacy opportunities are being added to the game, and will gradually show up over the next couple of months. In particular, the Trialch and the Krang may become somewhat more active than they've been before.
Update, May 2002: there are currently two running campaigns, "red" (which has now passed turn 50), and "bronze" (which started only a few weeks ago). There may still be room to squeeze another player into "bronze" while there still are a fair number of uncolonizes systems.
News, February 2002: a new campaign "bronze" will be starting in early April. Sign up the usual way by sending an email to starcluster@lysator.liu.se with a subject of "APPLY FOR CAMPAIGN bronze".
News, December 2001: a History and Changes page is now available for the game. This page has been around for a while, but I only recently tidied it up for "publishing".
News, November 2001: the "red" campaign has started, but there may still be room for a few replacement players. A few new technologies will be introduced in this campaign over the next few weeks.
News, October 2001: new campaign "red" starting in November. Updates will be on Mondays and Thursdays. You can sign up in the usual way by sending email to starcluster@lysator.liu.se with a subject of "APPLY FOR CAMPAIGN red".
News, May 2001: the home page was getting a bit crowded, so now the documentation links have been moved to a separate page, except for the Player's Manual which is now linked from both pages.
News, April 2001: new campaign "blue" started; still room for a few more players. Updates will be on Mondays and Thursdays. You can sign up in the usual way by sending email to starcluster@lysator.liu.se with a subject of "APPLY FOR CAMPAIGN blue".
News, February 2001: new campaign "blue" starting in March. Updates will be on Mondays and Thursdays. You can sign up in the usual way by sending email to starcluster@lysator.liu.se with a subject of "APPLY FOR CAMPAIGN blue".
News, October 2000: new campaign "nov2000" starting. Updates will be on Mondays and Thursdays. You can sign up in the usual way by sending email to starcluster@lysator.liu.se with a subject of "APPLY FOR CAMPAIGN nov2000".
News, August 2000: another campaign, "green", has just started. Updates will be on Mondays and Thursdays. There is still room for a few more players; you can sign up in the usual way by sending email to starcluster@lysator.liu.se with a subject of "APPLY FOR CAMPAIGN green".
NEWS, April 2000: a fast, computer-moderated campaign will be launched sometime in May, 2000. Updates will be on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The campaign name is "blitz".
There are still a few openings in the recently started "core" campaign.
NEWS, March 2000: The fourth test campaign ("core") has now started. The campaign was created with a few more player positions than players, so there's still room for a few more players.
NEWS, February 2000: The game server has been rewritten in C, and is being tested right now.
NEWS, November 1999: The `October' campaign recently started, but there is still room for two more players. You can still apply for joining this campaign by sending mail to starcluster@lysator.liu.se with a subject line of `APPLY FOR CAMPAIGN october'. The campaign will be updated twice per week, and has orders deadlines on Mondays and Thursdays at 16:00 GMT.