Editing Trade Wars (section)

==History==
{{refimprove section|date=March 2024}}
The first game with the title, ''Trade Wars'', by Chris Sherrick, was developed in [[BASIC]] for the [[TRS-80 Model II]], and soon ported, by Sherrick, to the [[IBM PC]] for the Nochange BBS system in 1984.<ref name="twhistory">[http://www.eisonline.com/twhistory/ History of Trade Wars Variants<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Sherrick conceived his game as a cross between Dave Kaufman's [[BASIC]] program ''[[Star Trader]]'' (1974), the board game ''[[Risk (game)|Risk]]'', and Gregory Yob's ''[[Hunt the Wumpus]]'' (1972).<ref name="twhistory"/>

Because Sherrick released his earliest versions with a free license, many variations of the game appeared over the next few years, including ''TWV - Galactic Armageddon'', ''Yankee Trader'', and ''TW2'' (a development of the original by John Morris who took over from Chris Sherrick).

One of the more popular variants is the ''TradeWars 2002'' series (Gary Martin, John Pritchett, 1986).  ''TW2002'' was designed originally as a [[WWIV]] [[Chain loading|chain]] (a way of calling external programs which was a part of [[Turbo Pascal]] 3 - and one that often required the [[source code]] to work, which is why so many people were able to get copies) in September 1986 by a sysop named James T Gunderson with the [[user (computing)|handle]] "Lord Darkseid" (his BBS was called Apokolips, and he was apparently a [[DC Comics]] fan). Its original name was ''TW2 for WWIV'' - and it shared no source code with the Sherrick version, which was written in Basic. Another WWIV sysop - B0b "OM" Mosley - made additional modifications, including porting the code to Turbo Pascal 4.x specifications, numerous [[bug fix]]es, a series of cosmetic changes to allow the game to reflect a ''[[Star Trek]]'' theme, and development of a map editor that allowed for both larger maps and the ability to randomly generate new maps as well as reinitialize the game's databases to reflect the new map data. High school student Dylan Tynan ("Sorcerer" and "Alex and Droogs"), worked with Mosley during the rewrite, serving as the primary tester, as well as contributing source fixes and additional features. After two years of development, Mosley released the source code for the game and editor, which allowed fellow WWIV sysop Gary Martin to make his own changes to the included source code. Gary's first version was ''Trade Wars 2001'', and it contained many of the base features. It also used exactly the same TWSECT.DAT file (the file which contains the information on all of the warp points in the game) as ''Trade Wars 2002''.

While ''TW2001'' was well received, Gary decided to expand the game further. In addition to the port in Sector 1 where the players could buy fighters/shields/holds, another port was added called the Stardock where the players could buy new types of ships. Over a period of time, feature after feature was added, so that ''Trade Wars 2002'' v0.96 was a different game than ''Trade Wars 2002'' v1.00. ''TW2002'' v1.00 was released in June 1991. One of the major design choices made was influenced by changes in the BBS software – WWIV author [[Wayne Bell (computer specialist)|Wayne Bell]] had rewritten the WWIV BBS System using Turbo C instead of Turbo Pascal. This meant that classic [[Chain loading|Chain]] programs would no longer work, and ''Trade Wars 2002'' v2 used a general purpose [[BBS door|door]] library which allowed the game to be run under other brands of BBS software for the first time.

''TW2002'' v1, v2, & v3 were BBS mainstays throughout the 1990s. In 1998, Gary Martin sold the ''Trade Wars'' license to John Pritchett, who had written ''Tradewars 2002'' v3 and its gold expansion. John and his company, EIS, developed a stand-alone game server, ''TradeWars Game Server'', which has allowed ''Trade Wars'' to survive beyond the BBS era.