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“And it is still running perfectly today!”

Galactic Empires for Networks (GEn) – a Swiss multiplayer game (1984-2000)

by Beat Suter

Can a strategy game still provide the same excitement and fun 40 years later? Can a network game work as well on new systems 25 to 30 years later as it did back then? What sounds impossible or unlikely has been achieved by three Swiss developers with their game Galactic Empires. All three belong to the first generation of computer science students at ETH Zurich. They have helped shape digitalization in Switzerland from the very beginning. Their multiplayer game has a playing time of 4 to 8 hours and can still be played today in the same way as it was played all night long with friends.


The tip came from a good friend who, in the early 1990s, regularly played a science fiction strategy game on Friday or Saturday nights with his circle of friends from the IT and business departments, mostly in the homes and offices of his friends. It was a multiplayer game that was developed over the years and played again and again until about 2008. The developers and players called the game GalEmp or Galactic Empires, later also GEn, Galactic Empires for Networks.

1984

A first static version of the strategy and simulation model in space was developed in 1984 by Peter Vrkljan on Apple II. The ETH student had reprogrammed it in Pascal (Suter 2023). Peter Vrkljan lived at that time in Wettingen, canton Aargau, and had begun to study computer science at the ETH Zurich at the end of 1982. He belonged to the second class of computer scientists ever. Vrkljan wrote the program in the computer room of the main building of ETH Zurich, which at that time was equipped with about 20 Apple II computers. There he met students from older semesters. One of them was Peter Leikauf, whom he knew from the sports club (table tennis). The other was Jochen Walz, who had also gone to Kanti Baden. “Jochen was the head gamer in the computer room in the main building of the ETH Zurich,” where gaming was forbidden. “He also wrote the legendary print program that all students at ETH used,” says Vrkljan (2023). “We played a [space simulation] game a few times, and I decided to program a more user-friendly game. It was finished in 1984. It had about 1500 lines of code.” (Ibid.)

In the 1990s, Jochen Walz turned the static game into a network game that could be played on PCs, first in a LAN and then over the Internet. Together with the aforementioned ETH graduate Peter Leikauf, who received the first prize at the ETH for his doctoral thesis, he developed the game further and made it network-compatible, or – as he says – re-developed it and played it over and over again1. The test games then turned into regular gaming sessions with friends and acquaintances. In the first years there was no motivation to publish the game on the market. Rather, programming was a finger exercise for them and playing with friends was a fun leisure activity. Vrkljan says: “We usually played it with 6-8 players. The game lasted 4-8 hours. Usually someone invited us to his house. The traditional menu was peanuts, frozen pizza, coke and vanilla ice cream.” (Ibid.)

Multiplayer in Space-Setting

They were able to have fun together mainly because GalEmp was a multiplayer game played turn-based on a single computer, and therefore allowed or even demanded a lot of communication and socializing in real space. The setting and the mechanics were also very attractive. In times of Star Wars movies on the big screen (Star Wars – Return of the Jedi 1983) and as a defense concept of Ronald Reagan’s US government (Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) 1984), it was an ideal concept to conquer planets in the universe and to produce resources to be able to conquer more planets.

Turn-based meant that the players had to give their input one after the other. An individual player was allowed to take time to think before giving his input. This took two to three minutes per player, but often more than 10 minutes in total per round of input. Basically, the game was about conquering the universe, i.e. conquering individual planets and producing resources (new spaceships). The conquered planets continued to produce their resources independently. At the beginning there was no visual output on the screen. Each player had to mark his own planets by hand on a matrix printout (paper with holes on the sides) with hole protection stickers for ring binders! A practical analog hack. Basically, the game was nothing more than an Excel list of planets and resources and their development in the center of the game. Apart from the matrix printout, there was no visual implementation.

The goal of the game was: who could rule the universe and own as many planets as possible? There was only one winner when everyone was tired of playing. Later, the developers introduced a “force to win” situation: Whoever owned as many spaceships as everyone else combined won.

The Developers and the Players

The original developers of GalEmp were Peter Vrkljan, Wettingen/Zurich, Jochen Walz, Baden/Kreuzlingen, and Peter Leikauf, Fislisbach/Brugg, all three students of computer science at the ETH in 1982. Jochen Walz was born in 1960. He studied at the ETH Zurich from 1980 to about 1987. He started with electro engineering and changed to computer science when he was allowed to. Peter Vrkljan was born in 1963 and began studying computer science in the fall of 1982. Peter Leikauf was born in 1958. He graduated in computer science in 1986, after starting as mathematician and then switching to computer science. He graduated with a prize-winning doctorate. All three had met in the computer room of the ETH main building. And all three came from Baden and the surrounding area and had attended the cantonal school (high school) there. Peter Leikauf was type A (old languages and cultures), Jochen Walz and Peter Vrkljan were type C (mathematics and science).

Active players from their circle of friends were above all Miroslav Tafra, Baden, Radek Mrskos, Baden, Petr Smely, Zurich (all computer scientists) and Stanislav Koutek (economist, Wettingen). However, they were not involved in the further development of the game. Later, Thomas Wehlen (computer scientist, San Francisco) and Helmut Steurer (economist, Vienna) also became regular players of GalEmp.

The Foundation by Keypunch Software

In the ETH computer room, it was forbidden to play games. Nevertheless, some students not only did their homework on the available Apple II machines, but also played games. Vrkljan, Walz and Leikauf were fascinated by a strategy simulation game that they played over and over again on a 5 ¼ inch floppy disk. This was the game that Vrkljan used as the basis for his own space strategy game. It was the game Galactic Empire, distributed by Keypunch Software on a disk entitled “Strategic Simulation” for the Apple II – a compilation of four games. It was the second of these four games on the disk labeled A10280, Apple II SeriesTM (fig.1). The term Galactic Empire was used in the singular. The publisher of this compilation was the US company Keypunch Software2, which was founded by Paul Rinde in Minnesota and became known as one of the first Shovelware distributors.

The term shovelware is used to describe individual video games or software packages that focus on quantity rather than quality. The metaphor implies that “shovelfuls” of games have been thrown into a pile (a compilation), i.e. a careless compilation of video games has been created. However, the term primarily describes the method of software distribution and is analogous to the distribution methods of shareware and freeware. The term originated in the 1980s and had its heyday in the 1990s, when large quantities of shareware demo programs were copied onto CD-ROMs and advertised in magazines or sold at computer flea markets.

Image of the floppy game disk with Galactic Empire for Apple II, purchased by the author in January 2024 in the USA and now in the CH-Ludens archive. Source: Suter, CH-Ludens
Figure 1: Image of the floppy game disk with Galactic Empire for Apple II, purchased by the author in January 2024 in the USA and now in the CH-Ludens archive. Source: Suter, CH-Ludens

The company Keypunch was probably a bit ahead of its time. It distributed software from 1984 to 1993. The American company usually published inexpensive software packages by mail, but also sold its products in some stores. Keypunch Software focused on the Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Apple II and Atari 8-bit home computer systems of the time (as well as the Tandy TRS 80) and mainly published video games in the form of shovelware, but also distributed any other software that could be sold. Keypunch was notorious for selling software they didn’t own, usually by modifying existing games distributed as freeware or open source to make them look like a new game. They usually removed all credits and renamed the games so that the original developers would not find out.

The origin of the game beyond this compilation by Keypunch Software is therefore uncertain. There had been some space strategy games on individual systems in the years before, for example a game called Empire had been developed for the Plato system in 1973. At best you could get more information from Paul Rinde.

The Apple II version of Keypunch‘s unlicensed “Strategy Simulations” series included four games, all with a space theme (fig. 2a). These were: Space Trek, Galactic Empire, Star Rebels, and Star Traders. While in Star Trek the player controlled the USS Enterprise and had to destroy all Klingon ships in nearby star systems within 26 days, Galactic Empire allowed up to 20 players to play. Your goal was to conquer as many planets as possible in a randomly generated galaxy in a limited number of rounds. With each turn, each player could build a certain number of ships on their home planet, and then send this fleet of ships out to conquer or defend foreign planets. A map shows the coordinates of each star system (fig. 2b). In the example screens, Admiral 1 attacks a planet in world 11 with 50 ships (fig.2c). This plan fails, and at the end of the turn, he has 48 ships left (Fig.2c and 2d).

Figure 2: Screenshots of the Apple II floppy disk “Strategy Simulations” by Keypunch Software.
Figure 2: Screenshots of the Apple II floppy disk “Strategy Simulations” by Keypunch Software.

The game by Keypunch Software was programmed in Basic and was relatively easy to modify (e.g. names and colors). In a Youtube video (jnby 2010) the gameplay of the game is shown and the process is nicely explained by the retro gamer jnby. In the comments, some people say that they also played this Apple II version and loved it (fig.3). According to the comments, there were also versions of Galactic Empire for TRS80, C64 and DOS. And many are still extremely enthusiastic about the game decades later. For example, commenter @dagwort writes:

Galactic Empire rocked. All-night games in the dorm with the old college gang. I ruled with Clausewitz’s nine principles of war. Not knowing where other players were until your fleets clashed with theirs was the key to GE’s “suspense”. Today’s strategy-game builders refuse to grasp that concept and lard up their games with over-the-top graphics and obese command menus.” (ibid.)

Figure 3: Galactic Empire setup of 40 worlds as star map. Source: jnby Video
Figure 3: Galactic Empire setup of 40 worlds as star map. Source: jnby Video

The first Galactic Empires

The three Swiss developers wanted to make a better game out of it. Peter Vrkljan first reprogrammed it in Pascal on an Apple II in 1984. In the interview, Vrkljan puts it this way: “The original version was this disk for Apple II that you managed to find. It had no graphics. And then I programmed the game on the Apple II in Pascal, with graphics and a moving universe”. (Suter 2024) Vrkljan and Walz confirm that the strategy simulation game by Keypunch Software was used as their basis. However, they had introduced significant changes from the beginning. Vrkljan lists the following changes:

  • “Graphical representation of planets (production, ships, owners)
  • Rotation of these planets in a spiral with gravity towards the center
  • Collision of planets (absorption and replacement) plus rotation of “small” planets around the “big” ones (production >10) increasing production
  • When the attackers were outnumbered, some of the defenders surrendered and ran over.
  • Standing orders from ships to planets to shorten the entry time
  • Radar function (graphical display of fleets)
  • Save game state in case of power outages or technical problems
  • Automatic game termination when a player is overpowered” (Vrkljan 2023)

The second static version for PC (DOS)

Jochen Walz then programmed another static version for DOS in Turbo Pascal in the 1980s. This second version of Galactic Empires was the same as the first version and was static. It was played as a multiplayer game, but the players had to make their entries one after the other on the same computer.

All three developers graduated from the ETH in 1986 and 1987. Walz and Vrkljan started working in the private sector while Leikauf stayed as assistant at ETH and achieved a doctorate in 1990. Nevertheless, Galactic Empires continued to be played. There were also several attempts by Jochen Walz to develop a network version for the serial ports. This was in the late 1980s, before the World Wide Web was established – pre-Internet, so to speak – and you had to develop your own hardware. Walz says: “We had even built hardware on the serial port at one point. We had written a network driver on the Apple II in 68 bytes that we could plug into the holes in the graphics memory. The idea of the network version was much older than the Internet. And as soon as the Internet was a topic for insiders, we had it on the Internet. (Suter 2024) These early networking solutions were very cumbersome because each computer had only one serial port. The hardware and cables from those early serial port experiments are still stored in his basement. Walz adds in an e-mail: “There was never such a thing as a ‘modem version’. We did think about it for some time and did small pilot projects (like the one with the self-built hardware on the serial interface) but then waited until the time was ripe – i.e. the infrastructure was available. This was then made possible by two things: TCP/IP as a network layer and a graphical user interface, as it had been usable since Windows 3.1, but certainly with Windows 95 (released in February 1995).” (Walz 2024a)

Vrkljan, Walz and Peter Leikauf never intended to publish and promote the game via a game publisher or their own marketing. They were not involved in the video game market or the home computer scene of those years. The game was primarily intended for their circle of friends. Developing the game was a hobby for them, as all three had soon found challenging jobs in logistics companies, banks and commodity trading. In its original version, the game didn’t even have its own name or a start screen, but development continued over the first ten to fifteen years and interesting new technological features were added because Walz, in particular, kept at it.

The first network-enabled Galactic Empires (LAN)

The network version of Galactic Empires designed by Jochen Walz could then be implemented with the new technologies of the 1990s. Based on the DOS version of Vrkljan, Walz developed and designed a LAN-capable version in 1995. He created the client himself on Windows in Visual Basic. Peter Leikauf was responsible for the server-side software in Java. Walz remembers: “The idea of what it should look like actually came from me. I had teamed up with Peter Leikauf. He wrote the server and I wrote the client. That was the division of labor, but we did a lot of things together. The whole concept and design was more or less mine. It was necessary to do it in two different environments. The server runs on Linux in Java, and the client is Windows and Visual Basic. So it is two completely different worlds.“ (Suter 2024)

Walz goes on to explain that from then on they always played the game over a LAN because it was a social event for their circle of friends. At the beginning of the session, each player had to download and install the client. They also had to register with the server for information and rankings. “It could have been done over the Internet, but who wanted this with slow modem access?” (ibid.) Pizza, coke, ice cream, and sometimes burgers were always part of the experience, as the nightly events usually lasted until the wee hours of the morning. And Walz points out that the results were always uploaded from the LAN to the central server.

Figure 4: Galactic Empires for networks (2000), recording of the game screen. In the gray window at the bottom right, it says “Server stopped”, then in the second line: “RM has winning strength”. There was also a kind of ELO ranking (relative skill level of a player) with a “rating”. Source: Vrkljan
Figure 4: Galactic Empires for networks (2000), recording of the game screen. In the gray window at the bottom right, it says “Server stopped”, then in the second line: “RM has winning strength”. There was also a kind of ELO ranking (relative skill level of a player) with a “rating”. Source: Vrkljan

The second network-capable version for Internet

The new network version had a different display. The planetary world was no longer static but moved in a circle (previously an ellipse) in imaginary three-dimensional space around the center of a kind of galaxy, while the individual planets moved away from or toward each other (fig.4). This version was often played locally in a room in real time via LAN. In 2000, Walz brought this network version to the Internet. This version for Windows XP is still running perfectly today. Walz created a website with information, registration and download options. The game now had a public release and was accessible and playable worldwide. Peter Leikauf wrote the network software for the Internet connection. “And finally, on November 26, 2000,” says Vrkljan, “we were able to celebrate the premiere of the Internet version. Our first intercontinental real-time game session is documented in a video (November 26, 2000). The distribution was: Vienna-Zurich-San Francisco. Helmut Steurer was in Vienna; Thomas Wehlen was in San Francisco; and the home base in Zurich was occupied by Peter Leikauf, Jochen Walz, Peter Vrkljan, Radek Mrskos, Miroslav Tafra and Petr Smely”. (Suter 2023) (Fig.5-7)

Figure 5: Video capture of the first international game session of Galactic Empires for Networks on November 26, 2000. On the left is Peter Leikauf assisting Helmut Steurer in Vienna and Thomas Wehlen in San Francisco with the installation of the software, on the right is Petr Smely preparing the game. Source: Vrkljan
Figure 5: Video capture of the first international game session of Galactic Empires for Networks on November 26, 2000. On the left is Peter Leikauf assisting Helmut Steurer in Vienna and Thomas Wehlen in San Francisco with the installation of the software, on the right is Petr Smely preparing the game. Source: Vrkljan
Figure 6: Miroslav Tafra (left) and Radek Mrskos (right) in the first international game session with Galactic Empires for Networks on November 26, 2000 Source: Vrkljan (Video Capture)
Figure 6: Miroslav Tafra (left) and Radek Mrskos (right) in the first international game session with Galactic Empires for Networks on November 26, 2000 Source: Vrkljan (Video Capture)
Figure 7: Peter Vrkljan at the first international game of Galactic Empires for networks on November 26, 2000 Source: Vrkljan (Video Capture)
Figure 7: Peter Vrkljan at the first international game of Galactic Empires for networks on November 26, 2000 Source: Vrkljan (Video Capture)

In an addendum, Jochen Walz notes that this “international event” in the early 2000s was not the beginning, but something like the (provisional) end of the whole thing. “We had been playing GEn on LAN for years before that, but in exactly the same configuration and only because it was a ‘social event’. Not everyone had a decent Internet connection at home back then. It would have been possible to play online, and I also have a few players in the database that I don’t even know who joined from outside during that time. There were even network (game) servers back then where anyone with an Internet connection could play against the robots. That also happened. (Walz 2024a) In addition to the English and German versions, there were also Danish and Finnish versions at the time. Language versions were relatively easy to create. (ibid.)

The Website of Galactic Empires

At the request of Peter Vrkljan, Jochen Walz uploaded the old Galactic Empires website again on September 8, 2023 (fig.8). The website from the year 2000 was online again for a short time. Walz (fig.9) then removed it again for security reasons. However, CH-Ludens now has an archived version of the website with all static HTML pages.

Figure 8: Cover image for Galactic Empires from its website. Source: Walz, CH-Ludens
Figure 8: Cover image for Galactic Empires from its website. Source: Walz, CH-Ludens

Galactic Empires is still around – almost unchanged for decades, but still running. And this despite the fact that the substructure has changed massively. It was developed for Windows XP and browsers such as Netscape Navigator, as I have just read to my own amusement. I still regularly crush a few robots – but with the server in my LAN here (so not available ad hoc from outside).” (Translated from German by author)

Figure 9: Jochen Walz while taking part in the first international game session of Galactic Empires for Networks on November 26, 2000 Source: Vrkljan (Video Capture)
Figure 9: Jochen Walz while taking part in the first international game session of Galactic Empires for Networks on November 26, 2000 Source: Vrkljan (Video Capture)

And Walz continues:

“And the old website is still running. I’ve just uploaded it again under […] – where it was originally. So you can take a look at it. It has a few minimal glitches as well as incorrectly displayed special characters or a slightly different display in a modern browser – but only on closer inspection. And the whole functionality with logging in/ registering is deliberately no longer possible. This would no longer meet my security requirements or the current data protection laws. It’s possible that I won’t leave it online for long for these reasons…” (Vrkljan 2023) (Translated from German by author)

The website itself begins with a descriptive historical welcome for visitors.

“Welcome!

A long time ago in a galaxy far away… more precisely, at the Zurich Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in the early 80’s, there was a game called “Galactic Empire” being played on the legendary Apple II (thanks, Steve!). It was about planets and fleets and admirals in space… Although it didn’t offer any remarkable user interface (according to the limited technology of that time), it showed a very special kind of fascination which hardly could have been foreseen by the author. The original game has disappeared long time ago, but a group of enthusiasts created a PC-version, still without networking (instead the keyboard was passed among the players!). Nevertheless, those enthusiasts have met for game-sessions regularly during the last 20 years!!! And now (after having talked about it for a decade), we proudly present a modern network version with all the gimmicks to be expected from a multi-user-game those days. However, the charm of the original game has remained and is only emphasized by today’s technology – and the game is still fundamentally simple and thrilling. This is no surprise because it has a lot to do with some elementary principles of human life: greed, fear, patience, risk-taking, diplomacy, fighting, logistics, stamina, …

Galactic Empires is a multi-user-real-time-strategy game, where a bunch of space admirals commanding worlds and warships try to conquer the universe. It is meant primarily to be played among human players (half a dozen is about optimal). The purpose of this website (called “registry server”) is to register players, schedule games, provide a ranking system and distribute the newest software. Though playing is most fun against friends (who, however, might turn into enemies…), it is also possible (and meaningful at the very beginning) to compete against a bunch of robot players.

This page leads you through the process of becoming an admiral – step by step. I recommend that you try everything out immediately while reading this tutorial. And yes – the game is free and just for fun – although experience shows that there is an inherent danger of addiction…” (Walz, Website Galactic Empires 2000 – 2024) (fig.10)

Figure 10: Home screen Galactic Empires for Networks as it presents in 2024. Source: Suter
Figure 10: Home screen Galactic Empires for Networks as it presents in 2024. Source: Suter

Subsequent Developments

As described in the intro, the game itself is about planets and fleets that you can send out. “If the fleets go to your own planet, they strengthen your fleet. If they fly to another planet, there’s a battle – and the planet belongs to the winner. That’s the basic concept of the game. And the planets produce ships all the time”, Walz explains as he launches the game on two computers in his apartment. “I also had an earlier version where the planets produced ships and weapons. One planet would produce more ships, the other would produce more weapons. You could trade with the surplus. I had the components of an adventure game in there. There were also merchants who would rip you off. And that’s why the game didn’t catch on. One of our regular players was the first to go to a dealer who ripped him off. And he cried blue murder. We haven’t played that game version since. That was before the Internet.“ (Suter 2024)

Walz continues: “Peter introduced the graphics: the one with the universe and the round planets. I took that on board. But I also did it a little differently with the graphics. With the rectangular screen in full screen, you have a problem from the beginning if your planets are placed in a corner.” (ibid.) The universe was then placed on an ellipse. But even with an ellipse, one player has more hinterland behind him, the other less. Vrkljan: “So the starting positions are not equal. Jochen then made it circular.” (ibid.) With the circular universe, the starting conditions were the same for everyone. In Vrkljan’s original version, the rotation and collision of the planets were calculated first, and only set after all inputs were made at once. So, the game made a jump every time. Walz: “You couldn’t really predict the movements of the planets. It was relatively chaotic, and then things happened in leaps and bounds.” Walz’s main innovation was the continuous motion of the planets in micro steps. This meant that the universe was moving continuously and thus became predictable.

Vrkljan: “It wasn’t possible before in terms of computing power. Everybody made their entries and you calculated the next round, which took two minutes. With the increased computing power, you could do this in real time all the time. In other words, the calculation only took a few milliseconds.” (ibid.) However, a calculated degree of chaos was also important, according to Walz. He then introduced “that the planets revolve around a center, just as the planets in space also revolve around a center – according to Kepler’s law. This means that the outer planets move more slowly than the inner planets. Earth takes one year, Jupiter 5 years. This creates a little disorder in the system, because eventually an inner planet will pass your outer planet. […] So you inevitably get in each other’s way, and that creates a certain tension for the game.” (ibid.) For example, the travel time of the fleets is not the same when the planets are moving toward and away from each other. This has to be taken into account when making decisions. Walz: “Timing became an important factor. The next new movement pattern was a slow spiral movement inwards, but you only noticed it later because it was so slow. And when planets collided with each other, they were reset according to a certain algorithm or disappeared completely”. (ibid.) Vrkljan:

“But you could foresee a crash. You knew it was time to get off the planet. And the difference to the static version was that the whole environment was now dynamic. In the static game your advantage would have been cemented, in the dynamic game you had to defend it cleverly or look for another advantage. You were forced to make decisions. And someone who just ‘sat around’ had no chance of winning. You also had the risk of making a bad decision, but that made it interesting.” (ibid.) 

“And it is still running perfectly today!”

After Walz has launched Galactic Empires for networks (Gen) on two computers and is talking about it. (cf. Walz 2024) “Yeah, one computer is running Windows 10, the other is running Windows 11, and it looks almost like it’s new. I’m proud of that. […] I still maintain that: Good software doesn’t need updates. Any update is a sign of badly written software! An update that fixes bugs is also just a sign of bad software. And I’m very proud that my game did not need any updates. Again, the game was developed on XP and ran on all intermediate versions without any “tweaking”. (Suter 2024) All functions are fully configurable, the planetary movements, the battles, the fleets. Walz also introduced a “fog of war” that adds to the excitement. A player only sees an area around his own planets. However, each newly conquered planet increases the radius of vision. Battles that take place outside the visible area can still be seen.

The game also has a spectator mode. Walz explains: “You could just log in as a spectator. Or if you lost, you automatically became a spectator. You couldn’t do anything, but you could see everything, not just one part of the universe. Maybe that’s similar to broadcasting live games, like Giga TV and now Twitch. […] Sometimes there were only two people left in the game, but because it was exciting, the others didn’t go home, they just kept watching what was happening. […] You can also play the game alone.” (ibid.) Walz has programmed different robots to play independently with different tactics. In addition to the two players, there are four robots in the game that has been launched by Walz. “It is not so easy to play against these robots. The AIs still feel good today. Both the players and the robots are now trying to spread out. And at some point, they will collide, and then the real strategic battles will begin.” (ibid.)

“In the beginning, it’s all about conquering new territory. These are neutral planets where you don’t see any information. These are planets that are yours or someone else’s. Your own planets have visible information: a name, i.e. I4 or I2. In the middle you can see the number of ships on the planet, here 316. And at the bottom is the number of ships produced per minute, here 15. You can now send your 316 ships to another planet.” (ibid.) The movement of the fleet becomes visible with small dots and lines. The robots play different strategies, Robot U (Up) tries to establish itself at the top of the screen but is still hidden from everyone. One player sees 8 planets in his area, the other player sees 7 planets. (cf. Walz 2024) This will soon change with the conquest of some neutral planets (fig.12). In total, there are 80 to 100 planets in the universe. Walz: “I play against 10 to 12 robots at a time, which is intense. […] There is also the standing order component. Then you don’t have to send the fleets around individually, but you pull them together, you automate the whole thing. But even order networks are not so trivial. You may have to customize them after interferences of opponents. But this means that you can plan your strategy and then execute it with orders and see what happens.” (Suter 2024)

Figure 11: The interface of Galactic Empires for networks during gameplay on September 27, 2024. At the top right is the circular universe with planets visible to the player. Source: Suter
Figure 11: The interface of Galactic Empires for networks during gameplay on September 27, 2024. At the top right is the circular universe with planets visible to the player. Source: Suter

The game interface consists of several fields or windows (fig.11). The large main field at the top right shows a simple graphic of the universe with the visible planets. The player with the white planets sees several foreign grey planets and three foreign green planets in his sector. In two locations, marked with a rectangular field with numbers, are battles for planets taking place. To the left of this are fields with a list of worlds and battles as well as a list of fleets. Below this is a graph with the history of the fleets. And below the graphic with the universe is a chat that allows players to negotiate with each other online or simply comment on moves. (cf. Walz 2024) A spectator receives not only the information of a single player in all fields, but of all players. They therefore have a god-like overview of all the information in the universe.

The graphics are from the early days of the game. Vrkljan: “We edited the graphics on the Apple II version with bitmaps. You just slap a bitmap on top, not a program. That’s why it is version independent.” Walz created the fonts himself as a bitmaps, 5×7 pixels. Easy to read. The bitmap graphics did not have to be replaced. The graphics are therefore no longer up to date, but they still offer a clear game world. The entire interface can also be enlarged today and no longer needs to be viewed in the laptop screen size of the 1990s. Walz continues: “The endgame would take a very long time, so I also introduced a quitting criterion: if you own ca. 50% of all ships in the universe (2.5 times as many as the second best), you’ve won. But you can still play on if you really want to. And Vrkljan adds: “And once the game is over, the ranking is updated on the server. Then you get your ELO points for the world ranking.” (ibid.)

Figure 12: Galactic Empires for networks with two players on two computers in September 2024. The different areas of the universe seen by each player are clearly visible. Source: Suter
Figure 12: Galactic Empires for networks with two players on two computers in September 2024. The different areas of the universe seen by each player are clearly visible. Source: Suter

You can still play the game today, via WLAN in Jochen Walz’s apartment (fig.12). The only requirement is to bring a Windows laptop. Then it is possible to download the client from the server, register and start playing. Walz says that it would also be possible to play Galactic Empires over the Internet, but he would first have to configure the firewalls differently, and he no longer wants to go to that trouble. But Vrkljan and Walz agree that there should be a new session soon.

Peter Leikauf

Peter Leikauf (fig.5) was the oldest of the three developers of Galactic Empires. He was born in 1958, grew up in Fislisbach (AG), and attended the Type A Kantonsschule in Baden. He began studying mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), later switching to the new computer science program and earning his doctorate in 1990. In the 1990s, Leikauf wrote the server connection for the network version of Galactic Empires in Java. Some of the late-night gaming sessions took place in Peter Leikauf’s office at BZ Informatik. Walz and Vrkljan do not recall Leikauf programming any other games. Leikauf had excellent skills, says Walz, but he was not the designer and concept developer, but someone who could always implement everything perfectly. After 2000, Walz and Leikauf went back to ETH together and attended a semester-long lecture on neural networks. Leikauf had helped set up the IT department at BZ Bank since 1985. BZ Informatik was spun off from BZ Bank and later became the independent company Avaloq, which developed standard software for banks. Avaloq became one of the most important Swiss banking IT developers and has been active worldwide since the 2000s. As a founder, Leikauf held stake in the company from the outset. The company migrated all Swiss Raiffeisen banks to its new software system, Rainbow, in 2019. It also works for major international banks such as HSBC. And then in 2020, it was sold to the Japanese group NEC for 2.2 billion dollars.

Jochen Walz

Jochen Walz (fig.9) says he already made a game for the Texas TI 59 (a programmable calculator with LED display and magnetic memory card) called Hamurabi. He also made a game of Patience (Solitaire). And he made a game for the Apple II called Gosh. Walz: “It was about building castles, and those castles had an influence on the castles next to them. It looked like a chessboard, and you could place up to three towers on it. Each tower influenced the adjacent square. If there was an opponent’s castle on the neighboring square, it was an influence point. If you could score a second point, your opponent’s castle was gone. You could take turns placing a tower, and you had to try to play strategically that way.” A few years ago, Walz made a remake in JavaScript for the browser. The remake, however, had a new feature like the robots: “I built in engines that would play against you. But one of those engines blasted me out of the universe! I didn’t stand a chance.” (ibid.) He didn’t work on it much further. The idea was that each player could make their own engine, and then those engines would compete against each other. This way you wouldn’t be competing as a player, but as an engine programmer.

Walz says that he programmed other things in the years 1980 to 1984, most of them in the ETH computer rooms. These included, for example, a simulation of the solar planetary system called Gravitat, which was also the inspiration for the planets in GalEmp. After graduating, Walz mostly worked as a management consultant for companies such as Steinbeck Logistics, NCR and BZ Bank. His real expertise was in organization or re-organization. In some places, he acted as a troubleshooter and turned accounting systems around so that the company could get back on its feet with the changes. His own company lasted until 2014.

Peter Vrkljan

Peter Vrkljan (fig.7) grew up in Wettingen. Like Jochen Walz, he attended the science gymnasium type C at the Kantonsschule in Baden. He began studying computer science at ETH Zurich in 1982, where he met Jochen Walz and Peter Leikauf again. Vrkljan attended the lectures of computer science pioneer Niklaus Wirth. He says that in 1982 the computer room at ETH was equipped with Apple II computers. These were replaced by Apple MacIntosh computers around 1985. And then one of the computer rooms was fully equipped with Lilith stations. Vrkljan goes on to say that there were about 10 to 15 Liliths there, and that he wrote his master’s thesis in 1987 on a Lilith, using Niklaus Wirth’s excellent word processing system. He wrote his thesis on the subject of computer networks because it was something completely new with a future and there were no courses or lectures on the subject at that time. After graduation, Peter Vrkljan worked for 15 years in commodity trading and later in real estate trading in Eastern Europe (until 2005/06 in Kiev, Ukraine). Today he works for an investment fund and a law firm in Zurich advising foundations and funds.

At that time, Vrkljan had also developed a second game on his own: a complex strategy simulation game about trading metals. In Metal Trader there were islands with iron ore and oil as resources. The players had one to many (7-10) ships with which they had to transport the resources. They could trade the ore and oil. The game had a spot and futures exchange for each resource. The computer was the “market maker” and provided the necessary liquidity. You could also take out loans. Interest had to be paid. Interest was paid on cash balances. The goal was to become a multimillionaire by exploiting resources and trading cleverly. Vrkljan programmed the game in Turbo Pascal for the DOS platform. However, the game remained a prototype, mainly because it was a bit too complex. It had no graphical visualization and consisted only of Excel-like tables. The big problem, however, came when playing the game. When playing with friends, Vrkljan himself or the computer won every time. His friends did not like that. They did not want to to play Metal Trader anymore, and he stopped further development. According to Vrkljan, the prototype was created in or around 1990.

40 years of Galactic Empires

In contrast to Metal Trader, the strategy simulation game Galactic Empires should not be described as an unreleased game or prototype. Walz and Vrkljan point out during the game demonstration at the end of September 2024 with the author of this text, 40 years after the Apple II version, that their game, at least in the finished network version by Walz and Leikauf, had a public release and could therefore be played not only in a circle of friends, but worldwide. And it was played worldwide.

Basically, there were three development stages or three independent games: 1. a first Apple II version as a local turn-based multiplayer game played on a single computer. 2. a LAN-capable version that could be played on multiple computers in a LAN network with a server connection. And 3. an Internet version that could be accessed worldwide via a browser and a website for multiplayer games. In other words, at least from the year 2000, the multiplayer game GEn Galactic Empires for networks by Walz, Leikauf and Vrkljan can be described as a strategy simulation game that was published, accessible worldwide and, above all, not inferior to many later releases in the same genre. Amazingly, it still runs perfectly today and is still able to convince fans of the genre.

Sources

jnby (2010). Galactic Empires – Apple ][c – Best Games You’ve Never Played. Youtube, 28.12.201, https://youtu.be/RbY7fNG_8qg?si=xFRoOCg3dJiCHSs2 , (09.09.2023).

Suter, Beat (2023), Talk with Peter Vrkljan in “Haus am Fluss”, Zürich, 06. September 2023 (unpublished).

Suter, Beat {2024), Talk with Jochen Walz and Peter Vrkljan in Walz’s apartment in Kreuzlingen, 27. September 2024 (unpublished).

Vrkljan, Peter (2000), Video of the launch of the first international gaming session of GEn Galactic Empires for Networks, Zürich, 26. November 2000 (unpublished).

Vrkljan, Peter (2023), E-Mail by Peter Vrkljan to Beat Suter, 09. September 2023 (unpublished).

Walz Jochen (2024), Demonstration of GEn Galactic Empires for networks on two computers (for Peter Vrkljan and Beat Suter) on 27. September 2024.

Walz, Jochen (2024a), E-Mail by Jochen Walz to Beat Suter from 05. November 2024 (unpublished)

Ludology

Galactic Empire (1984), forApple II, Paul Rinde, Keypunch Software. In: 5 ¼ floppy disk by Keypunch Software named “Strategy Simulations” (1984), for Apple II.

Galactic Empires (GalEmp) (1984), for Apple II, Strategy Simulation Game by Peter Vrkljan (used with friends, unpublished).

Galactic Empires for networks (1995), Windows XP, Jochen Walz und Peter Leikauf (LAN version used with friends).

GEn Galactic Empires for Networks (2000), Windows, Internet Browser, Jochen Walz and Peter Leikauf: Website by Jochen Walz on form.ch. http://www.form.ch/galactic_empires/,(09.09.23) (not accessible anymore) (offline version of static html pages are in archive CH-Ludens).

Gosh (1982), for Apple II, Strategy Game by Jochen Walz. Later enhanced version in JavaScript with webpage on form.ch (2012).

Hammurabi (1978), for Texas TI 59 by Jochen Walz. Later enhanced version in JavaScript with webpage on form.ch (2012).

Metal Trader (1990), for DOS, Strategy Simulation Game by Peter Vrkljan (unpublished)

Strategy Simulations (1984), for Apple II, 5 ¼ floppy disk, Paul Rinde, Keypunch Software, Keypunch Software, St. Paul, MN.  [1. Space Trek, 2. Galactic Empire, 3. Star Rebels, 4. Star Traders].

 

1 The game abbreviations of the three developers were: JtW = Jonathan the Wise (Jochen Walz), KK = Royal Imperial (Peter Leikauf), PtC = Peter the Champion (Peter Vrkljan).

2 Keypunch Software was founded by Paul Rinde in 1984 in St.Paul (MN). The company sold budget software mostly by mail and was known to make compilations of unlicensed games. Keypunch disappeared from the market in 1989. From 1988-2003, Paul Rinde worked for Infogrames in Minneapolis (MN). Over the years he held several key positions in the game industry, he was vice-president of Atari from 1998-2003, and from 2003 to 2011, he was the owner and CEO of Destineer. In 2011, the company was silently dissolved.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Beat Suter (November 25, 2024). “And it is still running perfectly today!”. Confoederatio Ludens. Retrieved February 11, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12qxd


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