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This page is dedicated to the history of Stellar Crisis, from its inception by the Creator, Sylvan W. Clebsch, to it's present multi-server form. I've tried to include important moments for the game. Information was supplied by Clebsch, several other old-timers, and from information kept in the SC Room's news update section.
If you know of other important dates for SC, let me know.
 February, 1993: BigB, a long time player, swears the game was up and running at this time as version 1. (Note: BigB wrote Jan. 12, 2003, to stellarcrisisclub@yahoogroups.com that he was playing the game in 1992.) There are no other players left from the early era to confirm this one way or another. Sylvan wrote in March 1999 that he remembers working on the game in Oct. 1993. There are no screen shots or icons of the first games.
December, 1994. The Lenox Group starts with Sylvan W. Clebsch as an employee. He begins working to get the game onto Lenox's server.
BigB says Sylvan said SC started as a web feasibility/capability demonstration and was written in perl.
February, 1995.Clebsch's Stellar Conquest makes its first appearance. The name was changed to Stellar Crisis due to tStellar Conquest being copyrighted by Avalon Hill.
Features of the original game included:
- Only attack, scout and colony ships existed. You could not change population levels on a colonized system. Other ships were added later. Engineers and star gates were added, then jumpgates, builders and builders for version 3.0.
- You had to keep a map yourself, if you could, of a three-dimensional world. The first maps allowed you to jump from any point to any other point.
"I personally liked these insane maps quite a bit. But most folks didn't and I made the move to a simple two dimensional grid," wrote Clebsch to questions posed July 24, 1997, by Doc Drastic (Adam Reed), one of the earliest players.
- The original game used the diplomacy screen to send messages. There was no alliance, trace or truce. As an aside, diplomacy allowed use of html. At least one player staved off being nuked by loading a 400K image of Godzilla. This feature has since been eliminated.
The initially game was written in perl4 as a cgi application. Later it was ported to perl5, which caused memory problems. Clebsch ported the game to Spinner and uLPC to fix the memory problem. Disk access was moved to memory. A custom C program for server use would have whittled 30 megs of ram to 500K (for faster running), but Clebsch "got sick of the game" and it was never written.
Clebsch credits major early improvements to beta testers Truth Seekers (Phillip George Jaros) and Dark Stalkers. Jaros wrote the first FAQ for the game. In many ways, the updated FAQ remains close in content and spirit to what Jaros wrote.
September, 1995 Lenox drops the game, which moves to Libertynet.
October, 1995. Clebsch, who was devastating when he played as Sick Boy, stops working on game code.
Changes Clebsch says he would like to have made include an equitable algorithm for generating game maps and a different scoring system. He felt added points could be earned for breaking an alliance and getting a win. Clebsch hoped such tactics would make people more vicious, which would make them think harder, never feel safe and have fun, too.
February 1, 1996. Stellar Crisis Room opens for business. The room initially included links to Libertynet and an update section for those not wanting to wade through 50+ sc-info messages each day. Nathan J. Mehl was moderator for sc-talk, which was instrumental in keeping those interested in the game together, especially after the game completely left the Net. Phil Jaros would later allow the FAQ be moved to the SC room, where it continues to reside and be cited by SC servers.
February 8, 1996. Simon Gilbee (Dread Pirate Roberts) makes first update to Jaros' original FAQ.
February 9, 1996. LibertyNet pulls the plug on the game due to its taking up too much memory and bandwidth on their server. It was not uncommon to receive 50 messages a day on sc-talk, all concerning how to get the game back up and running.
While the game was gone, there was a huge search for Clebsch, who was the only person who make changes in the game's code. People said servers would pick up the game if it had more efficient game code.
March, 1996. PC Gamer magazine features Stellar Crisis in an article. But, alas, all those readers would not find the game as it did not exist on the Net.
April 1, 1996. Stellar Crisis was released for public use under GPL (General Public License) due to Clebsch leaving for flight school in July.
April 9, 1996. Blessed be MarkM was the first to get SC up and running again at the Knotworks server.
April 10, 1996. Infovav comes online. Changes include more icons, produced by Ron Kinion, and one screen for building ships (by Bird of Prey's suggestion. A later suggestion also would be enacted, to show on all pages the maintenance ratio, fuel ratio, tech level and tech development. You had to go to the ship menu and info menu to get all this information during an update.). Infovav would change its name to Lysator. It initially was maintained by David Hedbor, though his brother, Per, would work on the game code and server later.
April 26, 1996. A third server, Jade at Princeton, comes on line. It's faster than Knotworks or Infovav. The server later changed its name to Vanaheim.
June 25, 1996. Q Continuum offers SC. Simon Gillbee, aka Dread Pirate Roberts, to be server administrator.
July 24, 1996. Clebsch decides not to be a pilot and heads to San Francisco.
July 30 1996. Knotworks officially leaves the Net.
Aug. 5, 1996. Internet provider PressEnter offers SC to its subscribers. Chris John (AZO) discovered the server searching through Alta Vista's 14,000 references to SC.
Aug. 25, 1996. SC comes to CyberChat server.
Aug. 26, 1996. VividNet is on the air, with Chris John as administrator.
Aug. 29, 1996. QContinuum and Vanaheim leave the Net.
Sept. 1, 1996. Fire destroys CyberChat server area. Trouble, the administrator, would later sell all server equipment to help pay expenses associated with his girlfriend getting pregnant.
Dec. 13, 1996. First mention that PressEnter and CyberChat have been down and gone.
Dec. 25, 1996. First mention of Chris John's Clan wars and SC tournament. BigB takes over administrator duties at VividNet.
Jan. 2, 1997. Aleksandr Sidorenko's successfully proposes a change in planet icon. Sidorenko would later design SC Room's banner that is displayed on Web pages through Link Exchange.
Jan. 30, 1997. David Hedbor releases version 2.8 for general public use. The version also is at Lysator.
This would be a good place to make an entry about the pop trick as told by BigB on Dec. 29, 2002.
"The Pop Trick" was first discovered and used by an empire known as
Dinotopia way back in Version 1.0 of SC when population setting DID NOT
EXIST. In order to create the desired effect, what he did was to build 50
Col ships...each one reduced planet population by one...net effect was to
reduce population in time to make a front line planet a builder, albeit
with a horrendous tech hit.
"This was the impetus to add population setting to SC, thereby enabling what has become known to the modern SC World as "The Pop Trick". Today, there is no winning player that doesn't use it in
virtually every game. We even have various game classes with varying Max
Pop settings to utilize the feature. As far as I know, the empire known as
Dinotopia is long since retired from SC."
Feb. 2, 1997. Regensburg joins the net. Regensburg, VividNet and Lysator all offer version 2.8.
Feb. 9, 1997. Version 2.9 of the game is put on the server CyberNex. The server hosted its own FAQ.
Feb. 12, 1997. Bird of Prey goes over the FAQ with a fine-tooth comb, bringing it up to speed with version 2.8 changes.
Feb. 19, 1997. Cyberchat returns from hiatus.
Jan. 2, 1997. Lysator's database went blewie. The most-popular SC server at the time would never recover and would leave the Net.
Feb. 25, 1997. Titan offers version 2.9 of SC.
Feb. 27, 1997. MKII, a completely new game by the Hedbor's, makes its first appearance.
April 28, 1997. Titan shuts down due to its administrator moving. The next day the server went to offering only long-term games.
May 27, 1997. VividNet connection improves.
June 14, 1997. VividNet splits into two servers, Scopio and, Virgo, with separate addresses.
Aug. 18, 1997. Titan server is fried and leaves the air, temporarily.
Cybernex moves to a better computer
Sept. 8, 1997. MKII returns, with code fixes.
Sept. 30 1997. Tool server is added to SC world, with version 2.8 games.
Oct. 10, 1997. VividNet closes servers.
Oct. 13, 1997. Titan II, Fourth Planet, returns with version 3.0 games.
Oct. 15, 1997. The game's many icons are minimized by Ron Kinion.
Oct. 17, 1997. Tool and Vividnet servers return.
Oct. 29, 1997. Stargate server is added, with version 3.0 games.
Dec. 2, 1997. Vividnet server leaves forever.
Dec. 13, 1997. Tool server leaves.
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