Simutronics
Encyclopedia
Simutronics is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 online games company
Video game developer
A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...

 whose products include GemStone IV
GemStone IV
GemStone IV is a multiplayer text-based online role-playing game produced by Simutronics. Players control characters in a High Fantasy game world named "Elanthia". The first playable version of the game was known as GemStone ][ and was launched in April 1988 on GEnie...

and DragonRealms
DragonRealms
DragonRealms is a medieval fantasy game set in the world of Elanthia. One of the oldest and most popular examples of the MUD genre, it was developed from 1992-1995 and released in February 1996. It was originally intended for an online service planned by the Ziff-Davis company...

. It was founded in 1987 by David Whatley, with husband and wife Tom & Susan Zelinski. The company is located in Saint Louis, Missouri, with additional offices in Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

.

The company's flagship product is the text based game, GemStone IV, which has been running for around 15 years. GemStone was originally accessed through General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

's internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

 GEnie
GEnie
GEnie was an online service created by a General Electric business - GEIS that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around 350,000 users. Peak simultaneous usage was around 10,000 users...

, later becoming accessible through AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...

, Prodigy, and CompuServe
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...

 before Simutronics finally moved all their games to their own domain in 1997.

Simutronics Products

All of the following titles are multiplayer online games:
  • GemStone IV
    GemStone IV
    GemStone IV is a multiplayer text-based online role-playing game produced by Simutronics. Players control characters in a High Fantasy game world named "Elanthia". The first playable version of the game was known as GemStone ][ and was launched in April 1988 on GEnie...

    , Simutronics' flagship product, a text-based multiplayer fantasy game, which has seen over one million users over the years, and is the longest-running commercial MUD
    MUD
    A MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...

     in the world.
  • DragonRealms
    DragonRealms
    DragonRealms is a medieval fantasy game set in the world of Elanthia. One of the oldest and most popular examples of the MUD genre, it was developed from 1992-1995 and released in February 1996. It was originally intended for an online service planned by the Ziff-Davis company...

    , set in the same fantasy world as GemStone, only at a later place in time. Additional versions include DragonRealms Platinum, and DragonRealms: Fallen.
  • Modus Operandi, a MUD set on a fictional Caribbean island, originally designed to encourage mystery-based roleplay.
  • Alliance of Heroes, formerly Hercules & Xena: Alliance of Heroes, this adventure-based MUD
    MUD
    A MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...

     was set in the universe of the TV shows Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
    Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
    Hercules: The Legendary Journeys is a television series, filmed in New Zealand and the United States. It was produced from 1995, and was very loosely based on the tales of the classical Greek culture hero Heracles...

     & Xena: Warrior Princess
    Xena: Warrior Princess
    Xena: Warrior Princess is an American–New Zealand supernatural fantasy adventure series that aired in syndication from September 4, 1995 until June 18, 2001....

    . In later years the game changed its license, and removed specific Hercules & Xena trademarks, but is still running as a retooled "tongue in cheek" mythology
    Mythology
    The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

     MUD.
  • CyberStrike
    CyberStrike
    CyberStrike is a futuristic 3D combat online game by Simutronics Corporation, involving team combat between customizable mechs, each of which is controlled by a different player....

    , also known as CyberStrike Classic, a graphical futuristic ship combat game. It won the first ever "Online Game of the Year" award from Computer Gaming World
    Computer Gaming World
    Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...

     magazine in 1993.
  • Orb Wars, (no longer available) an early graphical game involving team combat between wizards
  • GemStone ][ (no longer available), an early commercial text-based multiplayer fantasy game
  • GemStone III (morphed into GemStone IV), a text-based multiplayer game which was originally based on the Rolemaster
    Rolemaster
    Rolemaster is a role-playing game published by Iron Crown Enterprises. Rolemaster has come in four separate editions. The 3rd edition, first published in 1995, is also known as the "Rolemaster Standard System" . There are two editions currently in production...

     rules from Iron Crown Enterprises
    Iron Crown Enterprises
    Iron Crown Enterprises was a publisher of role playing, board, miniature battle, and collectible card games.ICE was incorporated in 1980 shortly after the principal founders graduated from the University of Virginia...

  • CyberStrike 2, a sequel to CyberStrike, released in 1998
  • Hero's Journey, an unreleased graphical MMORPG
    MMORPG
    Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

      utilizing the "HeroEngine
    HeroEngine
    HeroEngine is a 3D game engine and server technology platform originally developed by Simutronics Corporation specifically for building MMO-style games...

    ", an MMO engine developed by Simutronics for the game. The game had been in development since the late 1990s, but its release date was pushed back several times and in March 2009, all remaining developers and game masters assigned to Hero's Journey were laid off or reassigned, though no official announcement of the game's cancellation was made. During pre-release demonstrations, the game won a number of awards:

Interactive Fiction Engine

Simutronics' products GemStone IV, DragonRealms, Modus Operandi, and Alliance of Heroes are text-based multiplayer games built on a proprietary Interactive Fiction Engine (IFE) written in the C programming language
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

. The IFE is responsible for managing the server's memory, interacting with the game's database, and communicating with the clients. It also includes an interpreter for the proprietary GemStone Scripting Language (GSL), a relatively simple language which abstracts away most of the complex details that the IFE handles. Originally, many core game command
Command (computing)
In computing, a command is a directive to a computer program acting as an interpreter of some kind, in order to perform a specific task. Most commonly a command is a directive to some kind of command line interface, such as a shell....

s (such as those relating to movement and inventory management) were implemented directly by the IFE. Over time, most of those have been migrated to GSL to allow for easier modification.

HeroEngine

HeroEngine is a 3D game engine
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...

 and server technology platform developed specifically for building MMO
Massively multiplayer online game
A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...

-style games, based around a system similar to the IFE using the Hero Script Language (HSL). Originally developed for the company's own game Hero's Journey, the engine has since been licensed by other companies.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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