Spacewar
Released: 1985
Published by: (Direct from author)
Developed by: Bill Seiler
Author(s): Bill Seiler
Introduction
SPACEWAR was a clone of the original Spacewar! game for DOS. Written by Bill Seiler under a user-supported licence (donations), it followed the game mechanics of the original 1962 mainframe game. Using your chosen spaceship, fight against the computer or another human, reducing their ship's shields until they are destroyed.
Direct your ship by rotating it clockwise or anticlockwise and use your impulse engines to move forward. Weapons-wise, you have both phasers and photon torpedoes, where a phaser hit counts as 1 unit of shield and a torpedo counts as 4 units. Both use 1 unit of your energy.
Trade shields for energy or vice versa to be sure you can manoever or fire (preferably both) - if you don't have enough shields you are vulnerable to be destroyed, and if you don't have any energy you won't be able to use your impulse engines (you can still rotate, though). Energy is automatically increased by 1 unit every 2 seconds.
You can also cloak your vessel, making it hidden on the gameplay area - while this works well against a human opponent, when playing against the computer they can still see you. There's also the trade-off that while it's hidden from your opponent, it's also hidden from you! Using your cloak uses up 1 unit of energy each half-second, just like your impulse engines. You can also hyperspace to get out of trouble fast, though this uses 8 units of energy. Your new location is randomly chosen on the screen. The game screen wraps around from left to right and from top to bottom.
Just like the original game from 1962, you can optionally choose to have a planet in the centre of the game area, and a further option to give the planet gravity which pulls both spaceships towards it. Hitting the planet results in instant death, both for you and your opponent, so this adds a new element to gameplay where you need to always have some energy in reserve to be able to pull away.
In this DOS version, the left computer-controlled ship is defensive, and the right one is offensive - this gives you a couple of skill levels, if you like, with the defensive one firing its phasers more to defeat your inbound photon torpedoes, and the offensive one firing volleys of torpedoes at you with little regard to its energy usage and hence its defences.
SPACEWAR is pure arcade fun, and it runs on any DOS PC with a CGA card or better.
System Requirements
| System Requirements | Intel 8088/8086, CGA graphics.(640 x 200 in 2 colours) Audio support: PC speaker Peripheral support: Keyboard |
|---|---|
| Original Media | None known |
| Installed Size | 22 KB |
From where can it be run?
SPACEWAR can run from a floppy disk for from a hard disk location. It's just a single executable file.
Copy Protection
The game has no copy protection.
How to Setup
There is no setup or configuration required. If you are running the game on a Hercules monochrome system, use a CGA Simulator in order to play.
Problems
There are no known issues playing this game.
If playing in DOSBox, reduce your cycles down to around 277 using Ctrl-F11.
Keys
The game is entirely controlled via the keyboard. Each player's keys are outlined in the screenshot below:
You can also toggle the sound on or off using F8 while in-game.
To Quit the Game
If in-game, press F1 to return to the main menu. At the main menu screen, press F1 again to exit to DOS.
Supporting Documents
There is no supporting documentation for this game.
Additional Files, Drivers & Utilities
There are no additional files for this game.
Save Games
There is no save game facility in the game, nor a high score table.
Versions of the game known to exist
| Version | Date | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 1.50 | 1985 | Initial release(?) |
| 1.71 | 1986 | Unknown differences from earlier versions |
| 1.72 | 1986 | Unknown differences from earlier versions |
Original Floppy Disk Contents
Since Spacewar was a shareware game and exists as a single executable file, there no known official distribution disks.
Installed Directory Contents
This is for version 1.50:
Directory of C:\GAMES\SPACEWAR |