If you are unfamiliar with Novell's nsnipes, read this.
Yes, nsnipes is quite likely the first networked, multiplayer, real-time action game ever written.
Years before DOOM™ would grace our hard drives with dark and gorey goodness, we enjoyed playing nsnipes
on our highschool's token ring network of IBM 80286's running Novell Netware. And it was glorius fun.
Although less relevant today, the game is still enjoyable for its nostalgia. The original game is difficult to
get working on a modern LAN and does not work at all over the Internet as it was never designed
with lag compensation in mind. The original does not support sound, the version we played all those years ago was
monochrome (the later ncsnipes is multicolor) and it certainly did not have MP3 support, CD audio,
load/save, demo recording, user scripting capabilities or even a pre-gameplay user interface (!).
Enter WinSnipes. Download it and enjoy it by yourself, with friends
over your LAN, or with players from around the world over the Internet. The game is totally free and released as
an homage to the original classic, enhanced with the basic features we've all come to expect from twenty years
of game evolution since its heyday. Any feedback is more
than welcome!
Objectives
Destroy all the hives and the little snipes. If you run out of lives or time first, you lose.
Keys
You only have two verbs in the simulation. You can move, and you can fire. The movement keys
are W/A/S/D (arranged like your arrow keys), with Q/E/Z/C handling the movement angles. Your number pad is for
firing (you must leave NumLock turned on). If you imagine your avatar is positioned at the
number pad 5 key, then you can shoot all around yourself using the keys surrounding it. You may hold down
movement or fire keys, or press your fire keys as quickly as you can. Note these are not the keys from the original
- a future release of WinSnipes will support re-mapping your keys. You can also press the SPACEBAR at any
time to view the scoreboard, which shows the current standings in both single player and multiplayer.
Enhancements
Unlike the original, in WinSnipes when you shoot enemies, sometimes they drop power-ups.
These either grant you extra lives (hearts) or extra time (clubs). They can be the
difference between winning and losing in both single player and co-operative multiplayer! Please
see the upcoming features for details about more game types
and other play enhancements coming in the future.
The current version of WinSnipes is 1.02 (BETA) for all Microsoft Windows platforms. You can download
it here (4MB). This beta version was released November 17, 2008. Future releases
will include support for other platforms as well as additional features outlined
below. WinSnipes also runs under Wine on Linux, both single player and multiplayer.
To install WinSnipes, just create a new folder and unzip the download there. Then you can
either create a new desktop shortcut to winsnipes.exe for convenience or simply run the
game by double-clicking on winsnipes.exe directly.
Uninstallation is also a breeze - just delete the folder and you're done. WinSnipes
does not modify your registry or place any files outside its working folder. All configuration settings
are stored in winsnipes.ini in your installation folder.
I have contacted Novell's legal department in an effort to track down the current
copyright holder(s) of the original nsnipes.exe. The Snipes
entry on Wikipedia lists the game as
abandonware. Once I have tracked down the current copyright
holder(s), I will attempt to get written permission to link to sites where you can download the original version. In
the meantime, a quick Google search should turn up some hits. I am also seeking written
permission regarding the exercise of the copyright pertaining to derivative works (WinSnipes).
Update: Well, the Snipes wikipedia entry appears to be
quite accurate listing the game as abandonware. No one I have
contacted, directly or indirectly, including Novell, seems interested in laying
a current ownership claim to the original game and it's design. If any readers know one of the three original
authors (Drew Major, Dale Neibaur, Kyle Powell), I would like to get in touch with them - it's a shame to let
this piece of the game industry's history continue to go unrecognized!
Features currently implemented in WinSnipes V1.02 BETA that were not present in the
original nsnipes include:
LAN and Internet play powered by RakNet
Software, Direct3D, OpenGL
and OGRE3D rendering support
Spatial sound effects and MP3/CD audio powered by FMOD
Platform-agnostic user interface and input handling via wxWidgets
Text-based particle effects
IP geolocation for listing server and client countries
Scoreboard and pre-gameplay user interface
Dynamic event scripting via GameMonkey
Determinism that allows for efficient demo recording/playback
Save/resume game state
Command console (accessed by pressing the tab key, available commands will be documented in a future update)
Future releases of WinSnipes will include:
International user interface support. I would like to start with French, German, Spanish, Italian,
Japanese, Korean, Hebrew and Arabic. Anyone who is multilingual, your translation assistance is very
welcome, please email me. No technical skills
are required - if you can work your way around Windows notepad, you'll be fine, and I'll add you to
the credits
Team-based gameplay: 2-way and 4-way team deathmatch, team CTF and team maze domination
Increased player limit. The player count is currently limited to 8 players only because the application
color table has 8 entries defined. There is otherwise no hard-coded limit to the number of players supported,
meaning any number can play up to some limit imposed by the game server's hardware and bandwidth, at which
point play will simply degrade until the game is unplayable. I would be interested in doing 32, 64, 128
and 256 player matches to try and find where this point is and for what hardware, and to test how well the
customized network logic scales. Note that I am not using RakNet's
ReplicaManager. If you'd like to get involved, please
email me
Proximity and channel-based P2P voice support (microphone required)
User-defined GameMonkey event scripts for modifying
various aspects of WinSnipes. Documentation will be included, along with samples such as
server-side scriptable power-ups for temporary invisibility, shields, and ammo power-ups (seeking shots,
fire-through-walls, exploding shots, etc)
Pluggable support for Lua and Ruby in
place of GameMonkey
User interface menus for controlling CD audio/MP3 folder selection, as well as MP3 play list control
(note: CD/MP3 music are both currently supported if you simply edit winsnipes.ini directly)
User interface menus for selecting non-software rendering, fullscreen vs windowed support and font settings
(note: you can change these settings right now if you simply edit winsnipes.ini directly)
User interface menus for adjusting various maze and gameplay settings like time limits, initial hive counts,
maze properties, etc (note: you can change these settings right now if you simply edit winsnipes.ini directly)
Linux and Mac versions
Gamepad support as well as in-game menus to re-configure the default key bindings
A LAN game browser similar to the current Internet game browser. Currently, the client joins the first
LAN server that pongs back to a broadcast on a specific port
An option to force late-joiners to a match to spectate until the start of the next match
Support for the maze wrapping at its borders, like in the original
As of WinSnipes V1.02 BETA, the following are known issues that will be addressed in future releases:
You need to have num lock turned on, or you will not be able to fire
You may be having trouble finding online public matches to join. This is the first version of
WinSnipes released, on November 17, 2008. Internationalization will increase the potential
audience size, and I'm spreading the word about WinSnipes all this week. Try checking again
every few days. Text games are not for everyone, and I would imagine that less than 5% of today's game
players have been around long enough to have enjoyed the original. Of course, the game is free to download,
distribute and play, it is not shareware or crippled in any way, so feel free to share it with your
friends!
If you are getting poor performance from the software renderer (the installation default), which is a
possibility on very old machines, then you should definitely edit your winsnipes.ini and select either
the Direct3D or OpenGL
renderers if you have any type of graphics hardware acceleration available. Even on the
fastest modern machines, these renderers will still likely out-perform the software renderer as long
as such hardware is installed. When using those renderers, the game is drawing texture-mapped triangles,
not using O/S-dependent text-drawing calls (that could be implemented in any number of ways) which is what
such hardware is principally designed for
In order to use the Direct3D renderer, you will need the latest
DirectX 9.0c end-user run time installed, this includes users of
Microsoft Windows Vista
The OGRE3D render driver was dropped from this release. If you check
the OGRE3D forums,
there are problems with how OGRE3D renders text on its overlays.
I have rewritten parts of OgreFont.cpp, OgreFont.h and OgreFontManager.cpp,
but there are still issues remaining. It will be released with a future build when it is fully
pixel-perfect with the OpenGL, Direct3D
and software renderers
If you're still using Microsoft Windows95 or Windows98, you will not be able to run
WinSnipes due to the lack of native support for Unicode-enabled applications on these O/Ss. I can
specially compile future Windows releases of WinSnipes to include support for these older O/Ss, if
there is sufficient interest
If you find anything else, please email me.
