The origins of Terra Solaris are shrouded in myth and legend. The stories tell of a truly gifted super-programmer from the heavens who slaved for 6 days to create the Terra Solaris universe. Ok, well, maybe not. I don't quite remember when I started on the game; I was playing around with the idea for a few months before I finally built up enough drive and acquired enough caffeine to program the beginnings of the game. Terra Solaris actually started as a clone of another game made by a bunch of crazy brits, Crimson Sphere, which had disappeared from the internet a few years ago. However, due to bad memories and my laziness, Terra Solaris is only very loosely related to Crimson Sphere. Only the unit names, a few building names, and federation system has remained the same. I started developing the database scheme and laying the foundations for the game in late February of 2004, by mid-March the basics of the game were complete. You could extract, build, train, research, and sell your soul to the game forum. The game had a few people signed up at this point, mostly members of my old Crimson Sphere federation. They signed up before I even had the tick and attack scripts finished. It was a bumpy road at first, with at least 5 bugs in every script, but because of their boredom and lack of lives, I was able to squash most of them. The game officially started ticking on March, 23rd, 2004, which kicked off Alpha 1. A few weeks later I kicked off Alpha 2, which I finished 2nd in. w00t. However, by the end of the game, I noticed there was a lot of net worth whoring, so I decided to implement a completely new points system, which punished turtling and allows the truly good players to win. Even without the biggest army or economy. From Beta 1 up to Game 3, there weren’t many additions, other than the federation fund. In Game 3, I wanted to mix it up a little so I got rid of the whole random return time non-sense and added a new feature: races and planet types. By choosing one of the four races and 4 planet types, I added 16 different combinations to the game. Which seemed to really change things, new players joined, last rounds newbies were doing much better as everyone adjusted to the new feature.

That's basically where we are now; at the beginning of Game 4, racking our brains at those damn brainteasers, and overall having a good time.

Written by Ryan0rZ. Last updated Dec 6, 2004.