Netrek is the probably the first video game which can accurately be described as a "sport." It has more in common with basketball than with arcade games or Quake. Its vast and expanding array of tactics and strategies allows for many different play styles; the best players are the ones who think fastest, not necessarily the ones who twitch most effectively. It can be enjoyed as a twitch game, since the dogfighting system is extremely robust, but the things that really set Netrek apart from other video games are the team and strategic aspects. Team play is dynamic and varied, with roles constantly changing as the game state changes. Strategic play is explored in organized league games; after more than six years of league play, strategies are still being invented and refined.
If you're into RSS feeds, check out our Netrek special feeds and choose which ones you will watch. If you aren't into RSS yet, check out the HTML formatted versions which we generate using rawdog.
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News via RSS
continuum.us.netrek.org full feed,
netrek.warped.us full feed,
trac.us.netrek.org development feed,
wiki.us.netrek.org development wiki feed,
sourceforge.net/projects/netrek development feed,
sourceforge.net/projects/mactrek development feed,
mactrek.sourceforge.net news feed,
quozl's netrek server source changes feed.
Netrek development has really heated up. An example is this screen shot, cut from Bill's Netrek XP 2006 client, which uses Pascal's newly contributed artwork to nicely show James' conquest parade modification.
Now available on Continuum, this change brings all ships into a ring around the winner, with a spinning expanding ring of plasma, followed by the explosion of every ship.
The planet positions were forged for the purpose of testing.
The archived content from the Netrek Nexus has been restored by Dave Ahn, and is available for use in building the new content and the Wiki.
Netrek source may now be downloaded from www.netrek.org via darcs. Patches are accepted via email, please mail darcs patches to the mailing list.
darcs get http://www.netrek.org/repos/netrek-server/
darcs get http://www.netrek.org/repos/netrek-client-cow/
darcs get http://www.netrek.org/repos/netrek-client-xp/
See also SourceControl on the development Wiki.
Smallest and cheapest Netrek Server? One
of our developers
ported the Netrek Server to OpenWrt, the open source router firmware
platform, placing a test server on this Asus WL-HDD wireless hard
drive box.
The Netrek Server doesn't require much in the way of computing power, like a good house what it really needs is position. A good position in the network, so that the players have the least lag. This server is so portable you can take it to a LAN party in your pocket.
Running a 16-player game on the box worked okay, though the lag over the wireless was noticeable. Lag over the wired ethernet connector was between 1ms and 10ms in UDP mode with a 5ms standard deviation. In TCP mode it was between 10ms and 20ms with a 21ms standard deviation.
The box was easily able to sustain the necessary 300 packets per second for the 16 players, paced at exactly ten updates per second, with ample CPU time to spare. Load average was 0.05 over five minutes, peaking to 0.15 over one minute.
# Debian Sid (Unstable) deb ftp://ftp.real-time.com/linux/real-time sid custom main non-free contrib deb-src ftp://ftp.real-time.com/linux/real-time sid custom main non-free contrib # Debian Etch (Testing) deb ftp://ftp.real-time.com/linux/real-time etch custom main non-free contrib deb-src ftp://ftp.real-time.com/linux/real-time etch custom main non-free contrib # Debian Sarge (Stable) deb ftp://ftp.real-time.com/linux/real-time sarge custom main non-free contrib deb-src ftp://ftp.real-time.com/linux/real-time sarge custom main non-free contrib