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The original Space Empire was conceived and programmed by Jon Radoff of Middle Earth BBS in the USA a few years ago. Although it gained a fast following, it suffered from some unresolved bugs that quickly brought the game down in Europe. In an effort to revive what he felt was a superior game, Jurgen Van Den Handel of The Dutch Connection BBS in Holland recoded the entire game in GFA. His first release, a virtual "clone" of Radoff's SEE, appeared on The Dutch Connection in the spring of 1988. Since that time, Jurgen's versions received a warm welcome and he responded by adding new features to the game, as suggested by many users and SysOps. Beginning with version 9.03, Space Empire Elite achieved a new high in door gaming.
The game remained easy and quick to play, and retained all of its original look and feel despite the addition of the many new features, not the least of which are the marvelous Inter-BBS features. Support continued from Jurgen through version 9.06. In late 1989, Steve Reed, sysop of the DUTCH CONNECTION BBS, moved back to the USA. Down came the support BBS for SEE. With a lack of BBS's in Holland to effectively test SEE on, Jurgen and Steve agreed that the support for SEE would continue in the USA.
In February of 1990, a support program for SEE was written called SEE Companion. The authors of this program, Carlis Darby and David Pence (HyperSpace Software as they called themselves), wrote a program that was designed to be an aid to sysops running SEE by providing them with a database generator and an option to have their galaxy lists updated automatically by the leader of a group of galaxies. Steve and Carlis conversed through Fnet on several occasions, mostly concerning questions on SEE to enhance the SEE Companion. Steve mentioned to Carlis that he was looking for someone to support SEE in the USA, and after a short phone conversation, Steve decided that it was in the best interest of SEE to turn the source code of SEE to Carlis. HyperSpace Software then took over the support of SEE starting with version 10.0.
In early 1990 David was off to college so the support of SEE fell on Carlis. During the middle and late 90's and early 91, SEE continued to evolve, new features were added and bugs were fixed (and created). While the game was originally designed as a game to be played locally between players on a single BBS, it became more and more apparent that the real mystique surrounding SEE involved the Intergalactic functions. Users on the same BBS no longer fought amongst themselves, but worked together to wage war against the other BBS's involved in their game. These groups of BBS's involved in the same Intergalactic game became know as LEAGUES.
In late 1990, while still supporting the 10.x versions, Carlis began developing v11.00 of SEE. By this time, so much of the code had been changed and so much added that it became increasingly difficult to work with it. Since it had become far more popular to play SEE intergalactically rather than locally, Carlis decided to make some much needed changes in the code to make it easier to work with. These were also necessary so that SEE could continue to evolve as an intergalactic game. A decision was made to "split" the code into two separate versions. A LOCAL version that keeps all the features of local play and add any that would also have an effect on local play. An INTERGALACTIC version that removes some of the seldom used local options, making more room for new features and generally making the game much easier to work with and easier to play.
In November of 1991, Carlis passed the programming of SEE to Doc Wynne and David Jones. Doc and David were the authors of another SEE Utility called SEE List. Doc and Dave supported SEE from Forgotten Realms BBS and supported SEE through versions 11.31. They fixed numerous lingering bugs and split SEE into two program modules, an input module and a game module. Many portions of the code were improved for processing efficiency. When other personal demands became to heavy, Doc and David passed the code to Dick Pederson (DOC HOLIDAY) whose first release was 11.32 in May 1992. While the version number has surely changed, this is where SEE sits today.
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