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OS/2 Shareware BBS: 7 Games
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netrek10.zip
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1997-04-15
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Netrek for OS/2
===============
Introduction
============
This is an OS/2 port of a client for a free networked game called
Netrek. Netrek has been around for many years and is primarily played
by college students who have access to the Unix workstations on which
Netrek is usually run. There are dozens of Netrek servers setup
throughout the world with clients available for many Unix platforms and
now OS/2 as well (a Win32 version is also available). Most of them run
24 hours a day, and you can probably find a game going at anytime of
the day or night (I have played until 7am in the morning before).
Netrek is a graphical X-windows game with up to 16 players playing
simultaneously on either of two teams. The game is played in a space
environement with each time "owning" several planets. The goal of the
game is to take over the other teams planets by killing other players
and dropping armies on the opponents planets.
The game has fairly simple graphics (not Pong-like, mind you, but it's
not Quake either). However, the ability to play in real-time with so
many other people results in some pretty serious team strategy. If you
get bored or decide to be a jerk, it can be pretty fun to just mill
around and blow up your enemies as well.
I won't try to explain the game in too much detail. Other people have
done a much better job elsewhere (see section on "Further Info"). I
will say that Netrek can be pretty addictive. My graduate school
G.P.A. took a serious beating at times because of Netrek.
Requirements
============
- EMX 0.9c or higher
- XFree86 3.2 (resolution of 1024x768 or better)
- OS/2 Warp 4.0
Since this is my first attempt at distributing a netrek client for
OS/2, I can't say for sure if it will work on anyone else's machine.
It seems to work on mine. Also, the requirements above indicate the
software that I have installed on my box. It may or may not work if
you don't have those versions of OS/2, XFree, and EMX. Note that this
Netrek client works best at a resolution of 1024x768 or better.
Both EMX and XFree86 are available at your favorite OS/2 ftp sites
including hobbes.nmsu.edu, wuarchive.wustl.edu, and ftp.cdrom.com.
Getting Started
===============
First of all, I would really suggest that you hit some of the Netrek
web sites, read the FAQ's, and get a hold of whatever else you can get
your hands on. Netrek is not really an arcade game where you can just
figure out everything but hitting every key and button and seeing what
happens. Also, like Usenet readers, Netrek players who have been
around for a while hate to see "newbies" who don't know what they are
doing. Lastly, many servers use so called "clue-checking" which
require that you understand some basics of Netrek or else the server
will kick you out!
Before you play netrek, make sure that you have the DISPLAY environment
variable set to something suitable for X-windows. I had to make a
change in the way the netrek client works because it couldn't seem to
figure out how to connect to the local X server.
To start netrek, just type:
netrek -m
This will bring up a list of servers which are available and show how
many people are playing at each server. Then you can click on the
server you want to play at. If there are too many people, then you
will be put on a wait list. Otherwise, you will join the game in
progress.
Lastly, once you have gotten familiar with Netrek, you will probably
want to setup a configuration file to customize the layout and behavior
of the client. Just copy the sample .xtrekrc file to whatever path the
HOME environment variable is defined to point to (mine is F:\UNIX\HOME)
and customize it to your needs.
File List
=========
netrek.exe - The OS/2 client to play netrek.
.xtrekrc - My netrek configuration file.
cow.txt - The documentation for this client called COW (client of win).
netrekFAQ - Frequently asked questions for Netrek.
netrekFTP - FTP sites to get more netrek stuff.
Further Info
============
The Netrek newsgroup.
rec.games.netrek
Fairly outdated, but lots of information:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/jch/netrek/README.html
Netrek FAQ in HTML
http://shell3.ba.best.com/~doosh/netrek/netrekFAQ.html
Home page for one of the Netrek servers
http://continuum.real-time.com/
Registration
============
There is none. Like everything else for Netrek, this OS/2 client is
free! With that, expect zero support. I will try to read
comp.os.os2.games, but this is more or less a simple port of netrek
client to OS/2.
Author Info
===========
Chun Hsu (hsuc@enteract.com)