History
The game was originally released in 1992 but became well known in 1994 with version 3, although the prior version 2.2 was already played worldwide. Version 3 allows up to 11 players to join, each of them leading one of the 11 possible races; in version 4 this limit has been removed, and several instances of the same race can be played independently by different players.
The predefined races are modeled after Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, though custom races can be created with special tools. Each predefined race has some special powers and specific fields of expertise (for example: Cyborgs can assimilate native races into colonists; Robots are expert minelayers; Birdmen excel at spy tactics and cloaking).
VGA Planets follows the 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit & eXterminate) model: The players start with a homeworld, and have to build spaceships, explore the galaxy, colonize planets, mine minerals, build up their industry, etc. The game has no built-in victory condition: the players have to agree on one before starting a game.
In May 2010 a new project was approved by Tim Wisseman called VGA Planets "Nu" to rebuild the version 3 game on to modern web-based technology. The Nu project was developed over the course of 2010 and was released for live games in November 2010.
Read more about this topic: VGA Planets
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)