The Kingdom of Philtopia

Ever hear of Parsec? probably not, it was a hopeful Internet space shooter back in 1999-2001. The team developing it released a running demo version and 2 LAN builds and that’s all the public ever really saw.

In 2003 they released the source code!

Then nothing happened.

A couple times 1 or 2 people (myself included) tried to fiddle with the source but this usually ended in frustration and giving up.

About a week ago I was searching for any sign of activity ANYWHERE regarding this and I found a mailing list from 2008. It turned out someone named Jason W had modified the source to some degree and had set up a linux build that worked better with the GNU tools than the original distribution and got a linux client to build. Turns out the SVN still worked for his branch and i tried it out myself. Sure enough it did work! I was back in.

Then I took his code and made a mac x11 client out of it
Then I took the original server code and got it to build

The server was fairly broken, it would crash out the second anyone fired anything other than a laser. I did some tweaking, properly defined some objects and I was able to get it to run pretty stable.

Yesterday I had a 3 client match over the internet over the server and clients I had built, something that probably hasnt happened with this code in a long time.

Also Jason W’s interest has been captured again and he is working on getting the Windows build working again.

Sure this is a very old project that technically died long ago, but in that time no one has created anything similar so it is worth a second look.

Linux build: parsec-linux-net-alpha.tar.gz

This was made on Ubuntu, I have tested it on debian as well, other linux distro’s success may vary depending on library naming.

Mac x11 build: parsec-macx11-net-alpha.zip

This requires X11 installed , the resolution currently can’t be changed

Known Issues with clients:

-The menu data is from the LAN build and some options do not work

-Mac client does not do fullscreen or resolution changes

-No joystick support on mac

-Joystick support built in linux client but untested

Current server limitations:

-Missiles do not work (you can fire them but the server doesn’t process them yet)

-No helix cannon

-No lightning gun

However, this is just the beginning and less than a weeks work…And it’s still fun even in this state