Thousand Parsec

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Thousand Parsec
Developer(s)	Tim Ansell, Lee Begg
Release date(s)
Genre(s)	strategy, 4X, turn-based
Mode(s)	single-player, multi-player
Platform(s)	GNU/Linux, Mac OS, Windows
Input	keyboard, mouse

Thousand Parsec (TP) is a free and open source project with the goal of creating a framework for turn-based space empire building games.

Thousand Parsec is not only a game by itself, it is also a framework for creating a similar group of games, which are often called 4X games, from the main phases found in them: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. Some examples of games which Thousand Parsec draws ideas from are Reach for the Stars, Stars!, VGA Planets, Master of Orion and Galactic Civilizations.

Unlike commercial alternatives, it is designed for long games supporting universes as large as your computer can handle. It allows a high degree of player customization, and features a flexible technology system, where new technologies may be introduced mid-game.

The project is in the development phase and is looking for contributers of any kind (programmers, artists, web designers, documentation writers, ...).

[edit] History

Development of the project (under a different name) was started in January 2002 by Tim Ansell. Originally it was going to be a simple clone of Stars!. Later Tim decided to try starting a full open source project to become the "Worldforge" of space empire games. He hoped that this would encourage other people who didn't want to just clone Stars! to help out with the project and give it a broader appeal. After the announcement of the project Lee Begg was the only person who joined it. Even today Lee remains the only other major contributor.

By the year 2006 Thousand Parsec has not reached the envisioned goals. Partly the problem has been in the underestimation of the amount of work needed and partly because the project has not attracted any new developers. However, Thousand Parsec has a huge code base of framework which is rapidly accelerating it forward. The number of features left before full games of the complexity of Stars! can be produced is extremely small.

[edit] References

• Ansell, Tim. "Thousand Parsec goals and direction", Thousand Parsec Developers mailing list, January 2, 2006, retrieved November 21, 2006

[edit] External links

• The official home page of Thousand Parsec project
  
• Thousand Parsec on SourceForge.net
  
• Thousand Parsec on Freshmeat.net