SWars is a science-fiction strategy game. Set over one thousand years into the future, five galactic feudal-style empires fight for control of all known space, centred around Terra. Players assume control of one of the empires and battle against each other using brute force, politics or espionage.
Play proceeds turn-wise; each player having a turn to build, repair, move units and so on. There will be a strong emphasis on network play, the game will be playable over the Internet or over a local network. Framework will be provided for pluggable computer-players, Anyone want to write one?
SWars is a free software project, based on the now out-of-print board game Succession Wars by FASA Corp. I'm a fan of FASA's sci-fi Battletech universe, in which the game is set and I decided to write SWars to replace the copy of Succession Wars that I lost a few years ago.
The game is in development, that is to say it is not yet finished, and at this point in time is it not even playable. I personally do not have as much spare time to devote to it as I would like and the result of this is progress has been slow. I hope that others who either also like the board game or are just interested in the game will help out. If you would like to, please see the Contributing page.
SWars is licensed under the GNU GPL ensuring it will always be free. This will lead to a much better game for all to enjoy! For more information on the GPL, visit the GNU website.
The game is written in Java. This is a great thing, Java enviroments are availible for many different hardware and software platforms, so SWars can be run on every platform that has a Java enviroment. I personally have run SWars on FreeBSD, Linux, OS/2 Warp, Irix and Windows NT. Java enviroments are also available for Macintoshes, Windows95/98 and many others. SWars should run with no problems on all of these platforms, thanks to Java.