Talks with the Author

Dear sir.

You — creator of Galaxy??? I’m from Russia. Our Galaxy comunity has some servers and about 2000 members in the different citys. We are interested in history of this game, so I’d like to discuss it with you, if you don’t mind.

Thank you in advance.

Hi,

I am indeed ^.^ Glad to hear people are still having fun with it (I remember there traditionally being a lot of enthusiasts in Russia). And sure, I’d be happy to answer questions about the history of the game.

Hi, Russell Wallace!

I can’t believe that I found you. I spent much time for it, and I’m very glad to read your answer.

Yes, and your are the Legend for Russian galaxy players.

Thank you very much.

I should prepare and think about my questions, it was a great surprise for me, that I found you.

Your interview is for Galaxy History Site.

Hi

Excuse me for the letter like a form. Il be happy to talk about Galaxy but it is difficult for me to begin a free conversation with unfamiliar man. I have million questions :)

First of all, can you answer to this list:

1. How did you create Galaxy? It’s impossible to sit down and write rules during one evening, isn’t it?

2. Why do we see Galaxy in this manner? Why do you create it from space and stars, not from ocean and islands, for example?

3. About which algorithms of battle did you think?

4. In general, how did you develop Galaxy-math model? It’s almost impossible to create rules, that will be live and interesting after 15 years.

5. What do you plan during creating Galaxy? In Russia Galaxy it war role playing game by the long time, and only after many years it became the war of tactic and diplomacy.

6. Excuse me for this question, but what do you think, why Galaxy didn’t die after birth? It’s very difficult and tiresome to play without viewer as players in the beginning.

7. Why is Galaxy so close to Master of Orion?

8. Why there are no your texts about Galaxy in Internet? It look like as you lost interest to the game in the early º1990-th.

No problem, the initial list of questions is fine ^.^

It is — or rather you can, but will almost certainly have to make changes later on looking at playtest results. As far as I remember, the initial rules were designed during the course of a few boring college lectures somewhere around 1989—1990 and implemented as version 1, which basically didn’t work, was rewritten as version 2, which sort of worked — that was the first version tested by anyone other than me — and was refined from there.

The biggest source of inspiration that I can trace was a game called Cosmic Conquest by Carl Edman  that I played on the Amiga  in the late º1980s; the population and industry, technology, weapons and shields stats are along similar lines; in particular, the way battles were reported in the early versions — «(ship) fires on (ship): shields/destroyed» — was straight from Cosmic Conquest (though the format proved unwieldy for large battles, which was why I moved on to the later summary report).

Purely personal preference. I’ve always been a science fiction fan, grew up on the likes of Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov, love the idea of space travel.

The currently implemented one always struck me as the obvious one to use (in the sense that I don’t see any reason to do things differently), given the intent of keeping it simple. (I had some ideas for a more complex combat system for Cosmos — see below — though never got around to implementing them.)

There was some tweaking involved there in the early playtest days, though one particular «magic number» constant for the combat system, the cube root of 30 if I recall correctly, that I had assumed would have to be adjusted to some value that empirically worked well, to my pleasant surprise I never did need to change from its initial value.

*nods* It’s a game of strategy and diplomacy of course, but I also like to roleplay, depending on what sort of race I’m playing — I’ve played a couple of times as Fred Saberhagen’s berserkers, for example; you tend to die quickly from making lots of enemies in the early game that way, but it is fun!

Especially with the way turn reports were formatted in the early versions, yeah. Honestly the answer is that in those days we were used to working harder for less reward than nowadays. (Cue the speech about how the walk to school used to be uphill both ways :)) A similar game developed in the {21}st century would have to have better presentation from day one.

*blink* Close? They look very different to me. (I first played MOO years after I wrote Galaxy, so there’s no cause and effect relation there — the largest traceable influence is from Cosmic Conquest, as mentioned above — but I don’t see a lot of similarity; MOO’s economic model, combat system, tech tree, diplomacy, are all quite different.)

In the early to mid º1990s I moved on to other games: Judgement Day (which worked as far as it went, but mutually assured destruction turned out not to have much replay value), Atlantis (which initially didn’t work as an open-ended game, but had descendants that fared better), and one I called Cosmos which was intended as a complex open-ended space game, but the initial economic model didn’t hang together; I didn’t get a chance to go back to it, unfortunately, haven’t had time to do anything in PBEM gaming for years now.

Hi

Oh, in that letter I ask too many questions. It’s very interesting to talk with you!

Oh! It’s very intresting.

As far as I know, you wrote both rules and soft, do you?

Did you play real games by your own software? How were those games organized?

Were there people, who brought you orders on floppy disk? Or you have Internet?

On which OS did the original ‹Galaxy›-server work?

Do you remember the name of the course? We want know all about history of our world :)

Who did test the first version? They were your friends, or you found comrades by Internet?

Very interesting!! But I can’t find any screenshots or description of this game by Google and other search engines.

And many Russian Galaxy-players love science fiction. On Galaxy History site cite from Asimov[1] is the epigraph to your epoch. (http:…ru/index.html [2], unfortunately Russian only).

I explain my idea. Your mathematical model of Galaxy (including battle algorithm) combines is simple for human, but very difficult to computer optimization. And there are many ways to improvement for players. Even best ‹Galaxy› Viewers can’t do much analytical work. After 15 years there are discussions in Russian Galaxy about optimal industry growth, fleets and so on.

So it is very interesting to understand principals you use in writing rules. I can’t ask special questions in this point, but all you comments will be invaluable.

The cub root of 30 lives in all Russians versions of Galaxy.

Excuse me, I don’t know, who is Fred Saberhagen. He is your role alter-ego?

Some Russian players use this style too :)

Excuse me, I don’t understand your last phrase. English wasn’t my favorite course :)

Oh course, you are right. But Galaxy lives now, when many-many other games (MOO, for example) are dead long time ago.

I don’t want to minimize your role, and I don’t think that you took alien ideas. But the fact, that Galaxy has the root in Cosmic Conquest — is very interesting for us! But they are like. May be MOO authors play Galaxy?

And no one asks you to write Galaxy history?

There were Judgement Day players in Russian, but it was long time ago. Now the game is dead as I know. I include some Judgement Day material in Galaxy History site.

Atlantis lives in Russia now, but it is all that I know.

Do you think that open-end style is more favorite for PBEM? May be it was better to create Galaxy open-end in the beginning? In Russia we have many ideas about open-end Galaxy, and now play few games of 3—5 years in real time.

What a pity! I suppose, it isn’t hard to you to answer my questions.

Thanks for the compliment! Nope, not too many at all.

Yes.

Yes; at the same time as I started running games of it, I made the source code available for other people to run, and some of them did, and I was able to play in those games.

I had Internet access (which was essential for running the game), via a dialup account through college.

MS-DOS  (though people quickly ported it to Unix ).

*laughs* I’m afraid not; I studied computer science in Trinity College, Dublin, in the class graduating in 1992, but that’s all I remember as far as that goes.

The latter; I put out a call for playtesters on the Internet as soon as I had a working version.

Hmm, I can’t either, but a search for «"Cosmic Conquest" Edman » does come up with something that claims to be a BitTorrent  of a pile of old Amiga  software including that one, you could try that.

Cool! Can you translate the epigraph for me?

Perhaps I can shed a little light on it, then. In Galaxy there is no simple formula to calculate the outcome of a battle between two fleets, for example; it has to be played out shot by shot. This meant large battles could take some time to run (even though I was lucky enough to have a 386, a high-end machine in those days).

A lot of programmers, especially those of my generation who grew up on 8-bit machines, instinctively flinch away from designs that will use substantial amounts of computing power, as though it were a precious resource to be conserved. In my opinion computing power is there to be used, and it is in the application of as much of it as required that most of the space of interesting designs is to be found.

Nope, a science fiction writer best known for his stories about the «berserkers», a race of spacefaring killer machines programmed by long-extinct builders to destroy all organic life.

It’s an idiom — in Russia, do old folk gripe at young people about how easy they have it these days? A traditional line along these lines is «in my day, lad, we had to walk to school every day, five miles through the snow!», to which is sometimes added for humor value: «uphill both ways!»

If they did, they didn’t use any ideas from it that I can tell! In what ways do you see them as being alike? (I only played MOO 2 and 3, mind you, maybe there are more similarities in MOO 1?)

Not until now!

I don’t think open-ended is better or worse than closed-ended, but it is very different; Galaxy games on large maps can run for a long time certainly, but the requirement for an open-ended game is that it be able to run literally forever, with new players joining at any time, and that requires a different design from the ground up.

If anyone wants to have a shot at an open-ended space game, I’d recommend studying the history and various versions of Atlantis, as well as an earlier game called Olympia by Rich Skrenta which provided some inspiration for Atlantis (which I see is linked to from that page you pointed me at) and an even earlier game called T’Nyc by Steve Tihor which provided some inspiration for Olympia.

Nope, answering questions I can do ^.^

Hi, Russell Wallace

Certainly! Forgive, that I has not guessed.

From above by upper letters it is written: History of the Night Sky. This such romantic name of the project. ‹Galaxy›-client the stars map is displayed black — as the night sky.

In the bottom motto is: To All who has found the own Star in the Sky…

And your citation: Some of the best fun I’ve ever had in a PBM game.

If you want I can make translate of text about your epoch of galaxy. But after discuss with you, ok? :)

Just some people still can see this site. (The secret project! Joke:)

I think Interview with you will great presentation for this project. Exclusive.

By the way. After interview I plan write review. But I would like put on the site and our email correspondence. I think it’s not a personal and it will interestingly for all people. No problem?

And to continue dialogue I will ask my friend to help with translation. No problem?

Details in the evening.

Hi, Russell Wallace

Not at all!

Excuse me, I don’t understand. Can you explain, why you play with somebody else help?

Can you talk about tech details of those games?

Did you connect to Internet one time a day and receive all orders?

Did it work in auto mode, or you run it manually?

What about diplomacy mail? Did players send them to the server or to the real addresses?

It’s very interesting!

How many games did you organize?

And… do you keep archives? Anything from first games! Now we have only sources of ‹Galaxy 3.52› and your rules. And your cite :)

And how did it work with network?

Understand :)

Excuse me. You told us, that first version was not really workable. Now you talk about version 2? Who did first version test?

Ok.

I’ve answered few hours ago.

I understand… I met with computers during Spectrum epoch (great machine for its days, from England as far I know), more later than 286. But the first real personal computer was only Pentium I.

Oh :) It’s very close to few Russian idioms.

MOO 1 is much more similar to Galaxy than MOO 2 and 3.

Please, tell me if you receive letters from Russia during our interview. Can I hope? It’s journalistic intrigues. Game after the game:)

Oh… Galaxy game on huge map during long years (2 turns a week) — is hard work, even with best ‹Galaxy› Viewers.

I understand you. But in general, as for you, is it Galaxy better with open and or with clear objective (victory)?

Thank you very much.

Thank you and let’s go on! :)

Do you know fathers of Russian Galaxy? Evgeny Timofeev, Dmitry Butenko, Anton Kruglov?

What do you think about popularity of Galaxy in Russia? For 12 years we have regular Galaxy newspapers, many servers, various types of games. And we win all team party with other world (already 4 times).

Do you know about our rules? Toroidal map, bombing, voting… What is your attitude to our versions?

Hi,

How are you? :)

I had problem with internet, sorry!

What last email from me you had?

I think more good if you will send your email on my second backup email — petrakovskijav {cat} gmail {mouse} com 

Sorry, not ignoring you, just snowed under right now, will send another email in next couple of days :)

Hi, Russell Wallace

Ok. I just worry that can offend your by my English :)

No problems, my friend. No haste! :)

Well, one of the fun things about running a game oneself is to watch what’s going on, look over everyone’s shoulder, get CCs[3] of diplomatic messages etc, which I can’t do if I’m playing in the game myself; so my preference is to wait until other people are running, then join those games.

Basically, yes.

The operational side was semi-manual.

To the real addresses (with a request to CC me, for the aforementioned fun of watching what’s going on).

A total of 7, IIRC[4].

Afraid not; in those days, disk space was too scarce to be spent on stuff I wasn’t using.

At my end, I had a mail account on the college VAX -6230, with IIRC 1.5 megabyte of disk space; so come turn time I’d dial up from home, log on, download all the orders, log off, run the turn, have the program generate a script of mail commands to mail out everyone’s reports, dial up again, upload (Zmodem ) the reports and upload (ASCII ) the script of mail commands (so it would be as if I was typing them as far as the mail program was concerned; I think I settled on a time delay of 10 seconds per line — 30 seconds per report — to give it time to process).

I suppose people with Unix  machines with permanent net connections would have used the standard Unix  mail utilities (though I’m really just guessing as to what would have been likely there; I don’t remember that end of things).

Version 1 I just tested myself and went «bleah, this really needs a rewrite» :P

Thanks!

Yes, the Spectrum was from England. (I had a Commodore 64 , the other of the most popular machines of the º1980s, us Commodore  owners and the Spectrum owners used to slag each other off in school :))

Oh, okay, fair enough.

*grin* Will do.

I think Galaxy is better with a clear victory objective, because that’s what it was designed for; it wasn’t designed to work as an open-ended game. A different game could be a lot of fun open-ended.

I’m afraid not.

Very cool!

Toroidal map, I heard of that one, it makes things a bit harder to visualize, but is mathematically elegant as well as a little better balanced. I don’t remember the other options. (I do think it’s cool that the game’s framework works well enough to serve as a base for varying the rules like that.)

Great!

Sure, no problem.

*grin*

Hi, Russell Wallace!

I am glad to hear you again.

While we translate huge email pls answer me on another email.

Please, tell me about you :) If my questions seem to you too private, excuse me.

• When and where were you born?

• Where do you live now?

• What education did you get? What’s name of high school did you graduate from?

• What is your occupation?

• Are you married? Do you have children?

• Do you have any hobby?

• Do you play any games? What games do you prefer?

• Mmmm… May I get your photo?

Nope, no problem.

Dublin, Ireland; 08.09.1970.

Dublin, Ireland.

BA, Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin; 1992.

Secondary school: St Andrews College, Dublin; 1988.

Programmer.

Nope.

Main one these days is roleplaying games (human moderated, but played on IRC and OpenRPG ; I’m running a regular Friday campaign at the moment); and of course reading science fiction and watching anime.

In terms of electronic games, my favorites are probably the Japanese console ones; Shenmue, Grandia 2, Final Fantasy 10, Dark Chronicle and .hack, off the top of my head are some of the best titles.

Don’t have a camera handy, I’m afraid.

Hi, Russell Wallace

I’d send CC not at any price — I would not feel like it :)

Quite nothing? The first version of the rules would be very interesting :) For example.

And thank you :)

:)))

Commodore Amiga  (is the name right?) was not widespread in Russia. But there are Spectrum funs in Russia. Fun clubs. As far as I know, they actually develop new soft for Spectrum :) I found fun club Amiga  among English-speaking websites.

Elite  — my favorite game for Spectrum. The great game!

Yes, we have Dragon Galaxy server, specializing in running games with various features. They turn on as options in arbitrary combination. There are several tens of those features!

Dragon Galaxy gamemaster is Roman A.Makhnenko. He is very evil tyrant and usurper, but he makes for Galaxy a lot. If you got used to him, he even seems just :) But he can not seem evil :)))

The most of aforementioned features not change basic conception of Galaxy.

And just the most interesting question is how you manage to develop conception of game such as that? It exists so many years and serves as a base for creative work of other people until now. I realize, that my question rather naive and it’s almost impossible to answer it. But any your comments are very interesting :)

I’m looking through list of questions for Russell Wallace…

1. Could you say a few words about your game Rainbow’s End?

2. Can you tell a few words about Galaxy PBeM Development Group (GPDG)? Anything seems interesting for you. Under what circumstances it was created etc…

3. What game you created is the most successful at your option? The most interesting personally for you?

4. What about PBEM-games future trends? What direction of them changes do you forecast an why?

5. May be, you know, who is father of PBEM-idea?

Ufff… I actually have got tired with writing letter… But I’m looking forward to your reply. It’s very interesting.

In general we are drawing to a close of our conversation :(

Fair enough, each to their own :)

Zilch, I’m afraid; moved machines several times since those days.

I played that on the Commodore 64  — yep, it rocked!

Don’t have a better answer than the ones I’ve already attempted, I’m afraid :)

Ran a couple of playtest games, it was fun; there were flaws and limitations naturally, and I had been planning to do a version 2 with fixes, more realism, more options etc; but real life reared its head and I sadly never had time to get back to it.

I don’t remember any details apart from the ones I’ve already given, I’m afraid.

Tossup between Galaxy and Atlantis.

I think PBEM is becoming less popular due to competition from other forms such as MMORPG s and Web-based games.

Well, PBEM is a natural development from play by paper mail (Galaxy and Atlantis were both run by paper mail for awhile), and the earliest such that I know of was a game of chess between a couple of European nobles several centuries ago. (In general there is no knowable «earliest X» because one can always find an earlier one if one tries hard enough.)

All good things come to an end someday :)

Hi

My translator is ill. Some pause is necessary:((( Sorry…

Sorry to hear that, hope he gets well soon!

Hi, Russell Wallace

I too…

While I ask you some simple question:)

Exist link (tie, bond) between StarCluster•  and Galaxy? Or not?

Possible this link about StarCluster•  PBEM: http://www.pbm…10448.html 

I use some images from http://www.tcd.ie/  for illustration creation of Galaxy:) Hope, no problem with copyright . I write source (hyperlink) for images :)

Nope, hadn’t heard of that game before.

Cool ^.^

Hi, Russell Wallace

As for last letters…

What is BA decoding?

And what was the subject of your degree work?

«Bachelor of Arts». (This is a little odd, one would expect a degree in a science/technology subject to be called «Bachelor of Science», but there you are.)

Computer science, like I said :)

Hi

I decided to decorate description of your period with pictures of Trinity College, because of you told, you created the first version of Galaxy rules on boring lectures. So we quite can say, that the Trinity College is the Galaxy motherland :)

Trinity College is very beautiful. Though, I almost could not find the good it’s pictures :(

Please, tell me, what dose lower inscriptions on the attached pictures (2 pictures) mean? And in what language is it written?

Yep :)

In each case, the lower inscription is just the translation into Irish of the upper one.

Hi

Perhaps, it’s the last big letter… Time, arrangements with other people etc call me to describe the next period. I had no time to ask many questions — but nobody have time to do anything.

I should catch up time :))) 15 years only :)

The main thing: how and in what circumstances had you got an idea to create Galaxy???

And the last list of questions:

• Would you like to add anything into Galaxy now? Or do some thing by another way (method)?

• http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace/  — is this your web site? What is the scenery there? It’s very nice. Where is it?

• Can you name the creation dates of your games approximately?

• How had you got such passion — creating of PBEM games? You see, that any hobby has some reasons.

• About photo: What a pity, that nothing come out :((( I just was thinking, that you have some pictures on Internet. Even collective pictures of your college group could be suitable, for example. This picture could become an emerald in my project.

• About Cosmic Conquest. I found such description:

  Name: Cosmic Conquest

  Version: 1.35

  How to get: Fishdisks or any major amiga  PD software ftp site

  History: Invented in the late º1980’s by Carl Edman . Inspired by an earlier version of the game called Conquest, author unknown.

  Features:

  • Multiplayer (mix of human and various robotic)

  • Planets, stars

  • Around 30 ship types

  • Economy

  • Colonization

  • Multi-colored mainly point-and-click user interface

  Limits:4 players, 20x20 world, 20 stars (up to 10 planets)

  CPU impact: small, discouting robotic players

  OS required: Amiga 

  Contact: Carl Edman <cedman {cat} golem {mouse} ps {mouse} uci {mouse} edu> 

  Updated: 06.02.1991[5]

  I do not understand: this game was developing between 1989 and 1991? What date or date diapason should I point in my project?

  Could you supplement description of this game? Actually, I spent much time to find it’s description, but could not anything intelligible, except suggestion to download disk with games for Amiga  (600M) :(((

I have to reread our correspondence many times for writing final article. And, probably, I’ll ask you qualifying questions… if you don’t mind. Are you going away to anywhere within the next few weeks?

*nod-nods* I know that feeling!

Let’s see… I came across an ad (don’t know where) for a play by (paper) mail game called Star Cluster (no relation AFAIK[6] to more recent game of the same name), had fun for awhile then went «I can do better than this», I think that was how it went. (Though none of the actual design of Galaxy owes anything to Star Cluster — as I said earlier, Cosmic Conquest was the inspiration design-wise.)

Not that I can think of.

It was, but I’m not doing anything with it nowadays, don’t know how long it’ll stay up for.

I don’t remember where the landscape was, other than vaguely thinking it’s in North America someplace; it was some picture I found on the Internet that was free for noncommercial use.

«Early to mid º1990s» is the best I can do, I’m afraid. You could try rec.games.pbm in Google Groups  for more exact dates.

I like «sit back and think» strategy games, and I like simulating worlds, and PBEM is an excellent combination of the two.

I don’t think they were putting class photos on the Internet back in 1992, but if you find anything on Trinity’s web site, go for it ^.^

Well it says «late º1980s» there, I don’t remember a more exact date than that.

Let’s see, differences from Galaxy:

Single player, computer opponents (did I mention I actually wrote a new AI  opponent for it at one stage?), graphic user interface.

Multiple planets per star system.

Map restricted to… my memory says 16 stars, the above description says 20, maybe that was a later version or maybe my memory is just wrong :)

No ship design, a fixed library of ship types instead, acquired with increasing tech level.

Only one tech type.

Numbers integers rather than floating point.

Some extra stuff e.g. torpedoes (one-shot weapons) and «Q-bombs» (that could make a star go supernova).

Sure, that’s fine; I should be around.

Hi

Are you acquainted with the name Star Punk Timur or simple Star Punk? :)

Afraid not. What is it?

Hi, Russell Wallace

In this I wait answer from translator:)

Hmm… Unfortunately, my English very poor. Probably, I could not explain clearly. I remember about computer science, but it’s a very wide area. And I meant the title of your degree work specifically. If it’s not a secret, of course.

I think your English is quite understandable; I suspect it may be more a case of different assumptions based on how our respective education systems work… a degree course over here, each year there are classes in a bunch of topics (so for comp sci, we had classes in algorithms, programming languages, databases, AI , statistics, electronics etc), then in fourth (final) year we each got to pick a project to do, that counted for something like 20% of our final marks, is that fourth year project what you meant by/the equivalent of «your degree work»?

Hi, Russell Wallace

Unfortunately, my translator is busy very much now, so I can not answer your letters quickly. I hope you understand my troubles. I’m very sorry.

While I ask simple question :)

Please, tell me about play by paper mail game Star Cluster. I interesting the sense and goal of game. Any technical details about game with paper mail. 2—3 paragraph — common and short description of game Star Cluster.

*nods understandingly* Hope he’s recovered now at least!

Let’s see, memory is fuzzy at this point… a fixed set of something like half a dozen ship types… moved around a grid… it wasn’t amazingly exciting in hindsight, though it was for me at the time since it was the first such game I’d ever played. I don’t think there were any big battles… I think I won by default because the other players dropped out or something? Not sure. One of my ships got sucked into a black hole at one stage, that was one of the highlights :)

Wait — routes! The system in Galaxy for autorouting ships, I’m not certain but I think Star Cluster had that and that was where I got the idea from.

Hi, Russell Wallace

While my translator is busy, I can send you page about Trinity College. Page from Galaxy History Project. Only Russian, sorry. But, on page 5 beautiful photo of Trinity College. Send?

Yes please!

Hi, Russell Wallace

Page about Trinity College.

When I in IE 6.0 press «Save as…» some small element of web-design destory:( Long hyperlink and picture in menu — destroy. Sorry.

Page good?:)

Thanks, yep, looks good!

Hi

How are you? Do you remember me? :)

Such as man, who helps me with translation, became free, I hope to continue our conversation.

Hi, Russell Wallace

Yes, I meant your fourth year project. What was topic of your fourth year project?

Hi

I’m sorry, I do not understand: how people could play Galaxy and Atlantis by paper mail???

Yep! Overworked but otherwise I’m fine :)

Sounds good to me.

«Database Program Generator» was the title IIRC; it was a fourth-generation language that took a description of a database-style program and compiled it into C  code.

Company bought a license for the game, put an ad in magazines, took signups with appropriate fees from players, printed out turn reports, sent them out by post, players wrote out orders by hand and sent them back by post; typically one turn per fortnight.

Hi, Russell Wallace

Very well:)

I take translation old letter. Sorry if letter become out of date:(

I don’t, I’m afraid (no slight to the man, there are lots of things I don’t remember from that long ago, and I don’t have email archives from that far back :))

Seems like there’s more than one game called Star Cluster. The version I remember from the late º1980s/early º1990s was paper mail (though for all I know there might also have been an email version of it at some point).

The paper mail version was commercial, yes (almost necessarily so, given the cost and work involved in running a paper mail game).

Hi, Russell Wallace

I have received some web pages from the project about galaxy history of the competitor. If you like I can send it to you too.

Yes please.

Hi, Russell Wallace

…

Thanks!

Hi, Russell Wallace

Hm, maybe I’m not so good people if look on competitors like on enemy… what you think of it?

But world domination is at stake :)

I can’t really comment on it I’m afraid, because it’s just the one page of Russian text, which I unfortunately can’t read.

Hi, Russell Wallace

I’m surprised.

Is it not joke?

Do you mean your Galaxy and Atlantis? May be some others? If you mean yours, then excuse my indelicate question: how much did the licenses for Galaxy and Atlantis cost? :))) And what was the name of that company?

Once I had some troubles with my Internet (about in 2003) and I had to carry my written on the paper order into the Internet-cafe. But to play like this whole of the game… I can not imagine it.

As far as I remember, you told that you tested yourself the firs version and played the second version of Galaxy by Internet. What version of Galaxy did you play by the paper mail?

Hi, Russell Wallace

Any details about origin of Galaxy very interesting. But could you describe briefly Star Cluster game? Not much. About 2—3 paragraphs. Tell me, please, about purposes and essence of this game. I need it for completeness of my historical review.

Nope, not joking, my Galaxy and Atlantis. Don’t remember the details, been too long; I remember it was beer money, not something you could earn a living off; but getting beer money from something you’d done for fun, well, I wasn’t complaining :)

Uphill both ways, lad ;)

Well I didn’t need to, since I had email, the market was people who didn’t have Internet access. (Which was quite a few people, remember in those days the Internet wasn’t available unless you were affiliated with a university or other large organization.)

I did already, didn’t you get my earlier messages on that topic?

Hi, Russell Wallace

I have rather unusual request to make of you…

As I told you, name of my project is «The History Of Night Sky». «Night Sky» is a metaphor in this case. Romantic name. It alludes to conformity of night sky and Galaxy-map appearance in the Galaxy program clients: many white planets are on the black background.

The problem is I can not translate my project name into English word for word. Because of «Sky» is a nickname one of well-known Russian Galaxy player. But sometimes I have to translate my project name.

Now English version of my project name is Galaxy History. But it is too trivial name…

And I ask you, if it is not difficult for you, to paraphrase expression «The History Of Night Sky» so that it will not include the word «Sky», but sense and underlying theme will be keeping the same. As you know English perfectly, I hope you can do it. Certainly I’d like that the name of may project will be unusual and harmonious as far as possible.

And furthermore, it’ll be great honour for me, if just you think out the English version of the name.

Thank you in advance.

Hi, Russell Wallace

I take only this:

Yes, that’s all I remember of it.

Thinking about possible names, will get back to you when I come up with something. (Names aren’t my strong point :))

«History of the Firmament» would be the closest literal translation; I think something like «Origin of the Stars» might sound a bit better, though, and still gets the same meaning across?

Hi, Russell Wallace

Thank you very much.

Names aren’t my strong point too. The name «The History Of Night Sky» was thought out for me by Vesna (it means spring in Russian). Vesna is well-known Russian galaxy-woman.

Hi, Russell Wallace

Thank you.

«History of the Night Firmament» — is this right in English?

Is the more brief version — «Night Firmament History» — right?

Or, may be, «History of Night Firmament»?

I’d like to get as much short as possible name :)

In practice, nobody actually says «night firmament» in English, just plain «firmament» would be fine.

Hi, Russell Wallace

23-d of February is celebration of Russian Army. So I’d like to finish our interview by this date. Or by the 8-th of March — Women Day.

Please, tell us something epochal :) Like as desire to Russian players or something else.

My be, any funny story, connected with Galaxy birth? :)

Can you enumerate the whole list of games you created? Galaxy, Atlantis, Rainbow’s End, Cosmos… May be, something else?

I can gain an understanding of Galaxy, Atlantis and Rainbow’s End myself. But Cosmos… If it’s not difficult for you, please, describe briefly essence of this game.

In the Greg Lindahl project I found the list of pbm/pbem-games: Play by Mail & Play by Email (PBM & PBEM) List Index . There are 1418 games in it. Is it possible, that pbem-games such widespread in the world? In Russian I know about 5 such games… Why so many pbem-games exist? How many games from them are really popular?

How many games of Galaxy did you play? Have you ever win?

Do you work in Microsoft?

Can pbem-games die, in your opinion? Or this type of games will have admirers always, as chess, for example?

Sure.

If there were any such, I don’t remember them, I’m afraid.

Of PBEM games, those four plus Judgement Day. Non-PBEM games, more than I can remember. One of the more fun ones I think was Invasion of the Killer Tomatoes on the Commodore 64 ; the premise was that tomatoes grown in orbital hydroponic farms had mutated due to cosmic ray exposure, turned carnivorous and launched an invasion of Earth, so the player had to shoot them down.

Atlantis in space, briefly. I don’t remember the details, though I do remember I didn’t manage to get a working economic model, and eventually had to move on for lack of time.

They’re easy and fun to create, so it just requires that 1418 people have the time and inclination to have a go at it ^.^ Only a small percentage of them would have a large following, of course.

A few, don’t remember how many. I never won, though I came close a couple of times. One time it came down to me and one other player; he was just a bit quicker on the draw than I was :P

Work for Microsoft, the company? No.

I’m inclined to think there’ll always be a few die-hard fans.