As the game approaches a playable release, I figured it was time to describe it a bit. Space Tyrant is an open source game following in the footsteps of SST and TLR. Unlike it’s relatives, it runs in memory and uses a model that permits things to happen in real-time. For example, a ship moving into your sector will immediately cause your display to show a ship has spotted you. At the moment, the game is only playable with telnet, but it doesn’t suffer from the difficulty of having to key in many numbers to move from sector to sector, as each sector has a single digit from 1 to 6 to allow movement. The real-time model affects everything including your radio, so when someone transmits a message, all online ships see that message immediately.
The universe is similar to SST and TLR, with a main galaxy in which all ships start. For every 2000 sectors, there’s a spaceport randomly placed that has a wormhole leading to an 8K galaxy with a random productivity boost. Equipment works a little differently, with most basic functions built-in, like autoscoop, planet locator. Ships currently start with 50 holds and have room for 50 more or one less for every piece of additional equipment up to 5. That’s were things are a little different. You have the option of purchasing tractor devices, combat systems and scanners. These devices add basic capabilities when you add one or two, but when you add 3 or more, additional capabilities kick in. So depending on what you want to do, you’ll need to make the decision of what kind of ship you’ll need: farmer, killer or hunter.
Current state of game includes combat systems, passive scanners and tractor device under development. You can buy them, but they don’t do anything yet 😛
Check it out at telnet://ioresort.com:9999