In July 1992 KJC games launched its replacement to the sci-fi wargame Capital. This game, Beyond the Stellar Empire, or BSE for short, had been running for some years in America as a hand-moderated postal game. This version however had been programmed in qbasic by Adventures By Mail and while vaguely based on the events in the American version was sufficiently unique to be considered a brand new game.

Members of the KJC company spent a short working holiday at the ABM offices learning how to input the game and came back to the UK complete with floppy discs and rule books. Within a few short weeks the game was up and running.

As the two companies went their separate ways over the next few years it became clear that KJC was on its own. The Americans sold their license on and the version across the waters drifted through a successive number of owners before finally floundering. Others may know more about its fate but that’s another story.

The KJC version of BSE went through a quick succession of moderators until it was taken on by Mica Goldstone back in 1994. From there the game became relatively stable (there will always be ups and downs in an open ended game) and the fan base now having a dedicated GM could look forward to a long and relatively untroubled future.

As technology in the outside world progressed so too did the game. First, back around the beginning of 1998 the game was upgraded to send email turn reports. This was a big change in how the game was played. Suddenly the American and the European players were on a level with the British players.

Just over a year and a half later the beginning of a remarkable relationship started.

David Bethel, then a professional programmer and power behind one of the in-game factions offered his services in re-programming the planetary battle module of the game. These being grounds for occasional grumblings amongst the players, the offer was readily accepted.

Within a month the new program was integrated, though in effect as this new program was written in a different language (c++) it quickly started to reveal the ever widening cracks in the rest of the code. Maybe it was the beer, maybe seeing his colleagues going insane under the pressure of highly demanding jobs, or more likely the frustration of continually putting right other peoples’ dubious quality work, but David decided it was time for a career change. This project had also whet Dr Bethel’s appetite for the sheer ‘joy’ of coding professional games – the long nights shouting at monitors, stamping on bugs, explaining to players that their worst fears would only come true if the programmer was a complete moron, then having to explain that no, this was not an admission of being a complete moron… you get the picture.

So, with the unmitigated success of the new battle program, talks (largely beer induced) were undertaken to write a replacement to Beyond the Stellar Empire. To accomplish this Skeletal Software was founded by David Bethel in order to tackle the prospect of re-writing Beyond the Stellar Empire.

The first thing that was decided upon was to ditch all code belonging to the previous game including the new battle program. This was done for a number of good reasons:
First and foremost, everything about the new game code had to be under the control of Skeletal Software in order to ensure professional quality control and only code written by David could be guaranteed.
A new language C++ would be used as it was significantly better than qbasic.
The game mechanics would be new and unique to the new game. Very little of the old mechanics would be used and then only the generic terms and assumptions common to most sci-fi games.
The game would be purely email and require the use of editors at the players’ end in order to produce orders for their positions as well as making the creation of orders simpler.

In fact only the history, maps (modified for the new system) and equivalent assets would be converted over.

In many respects it was a bit like converting characters from one game setting to another.

While keeping the players up to date on progress, many of the aspects of the new game would have to remain a secret. The biggest one being turn costs. This was because Beyond the Stellar Empire was a game that required each and every turn to be manually entered - long days of doing nothing more than hitting the keypad, changing DOS screens in order to get to the right entry section. Even now I am a dab hand and can remember always being ahead of the computer – 22, 22, 1, 146, 22, 22, 5, 2951, 8, 22 (swap engines, jump to 146, swap engines, move to 2951 enter orbit of planet Mobile Bay). At a turn cost of £2.50 for a basic weekly turn or £4 for a fortnight turn, it was not a cheap game to play.

The new game would have the strong selling point that turns would be automated – no more inputting except for the unique special actions and scenario plot devices. As such we were going to make the running of ships free.

Surprisingly enough at this time we had still not decided on a name for the new game though we were certain that it should have one. We had already become jaded with the term Starbase to replace Colony – we couldn’t call it a colony because it no longer contains colonists. It was after considerable amounts of beers that once again a name for the new game was being thrown around – after a number of drunken rejections Phoenix was decided upon. From my perspective I was seeing the rise of the new game from the ashes of the old one though I suspect that David was looking at the other end of the Phoenix’s life and going down in flames. So the name fitted both our expectations and Phoenix it was called.

By December 2002 we were ready to convert – every position had been manually updated to determine what it would be converted into. Each new system had a corresponding system map, planet data and atmospheres. Minerals had been seeded in appropriate locations to match the previous game everything was looking peachy. We notified the players and for the first time since the launch of the game back in 1994 the game would be suspended for a week.

Converting the game within a week was no mean feat – coffee was consumed by the gallon. Laptops and wires were everywhere. Conversion programs were checked and the test version of the new game was scrubbed. It was early evening towards the end of the week when the big buttons were pressed and the old rusty data was changed into new sparkly data; data that initially didn’t fit due to the radical nature of the economy that underpinned the new game. More coffee and long hours into the night later we had knocked some sense into the game – modified populations, altered markets and shifted dynamics (though in a couple of cases we had to inform the players that they would not enjoy the excesses that were possible under the previously flawed game system).

And so the new game was launched and surprisingly enough it was remarkably smooth. Yes we discovered that the in-house programmer responsible for converting BSE data to Phoenix compatible data had left us with an older version and by the time we discovered this we were already two days into post conversion manipulation, but otherwise everything seems pretty good. Over the next few years steady improvements were made to the game. Most of these were refining construction and destruction (building things and blowing them up) but overall the core mechanics of the game remained pretty much unchanged.

Play by email however was only seen as a stepping stone not a final destination. This is because email doesn’t go far enough for modern gamers. We quickly determined that David’s vision of Phoenix would come true if we didn’t look to widening the appeal and playability of the game.

Our first consideration was to avoid falling into the trap of competing with the newly emerging online games. Graphics and animations unless done well actually detract from what could be considered a good game. Instead we opted for neat, clean and functional – giving our players what they needed rather than attempting to pander to fickle gamer that would only be interested in a game because it had rotating spaceships but no game behind the display.

Obviously a forum was a must – somewhere to meet and greet, argue and rant but also a place to hold the rules that could be modified on the fly – a Wikipedia. We could have picked something off the shelf and for a few years we did use a commercial forum, but this was always going to be a stop-gap. Work commenced on a forum-wiki in 2007 – this would be radically different to commercial ones because it was to be integrated into the game but also because it was to contain the facilities for factions in the game to have administration rights within their own sub-sections of the forum and wiki areas.

Skeletal Software, having reviewed all the things that the new online system would be capable of and its primary goal – the bringing of people and systems together on one site named it Nexus. Also as this was to be integrated into the game, game data was also to be displayed – automatically updated from the game as new data was generated or modified within the game. First up were system and planet maps along with all the data for items within the game. After the launch of this in March 2008 work continued, integrating more aspects of the game including a ship design editor that even included the secret information known to the specific player. After this turn reports were uploaded and a new all singing all dancing order editor.

There is still more to do as the more we do, the more there seems to be to do. Also the corporate look of the blue template for Nexus can fool even the most observant boss – how many Warcraft players can get away with gaming during work time? Not that we condone such things, nope, not us, nosireebob.

This seems to have paid off, we still have players that have been in the game for sixteen years with the average player having played on and off for at least eight years and new players (anyone under three years) now slowly taking over positions of power in the established power blocks.

During these long years we have kept our doors largely closed to new players. We have not advertised to any great degree yet despite this new players find us. Most are confused and put off by the lack of pretty pictures, but then we are happy to loose them. We are only interested in the players that are prepared to commit time and effort to our game but despite this, a few have sneaked in.

We are only just in a position to open the doors to new players, though at the time of writing we still do not have a new online sign-up system integrated into Nexus, though we expect to have it up and running soon. It has been a long haul but the end is now in sight. We will have a fully integrated email, online open ended space opera that is all set for another 16 years. We have a system that is future proof – Nexus has already been shown to be useable by the latest iphone – handy for looking at your positions and keeping in touch while on holiday.

This though is just the beginning – when we embarked on the recent developments of Phoenix and Nexus we had set ourselves new goals – the two systems had to be integrated with each other but more importantly also had to be game independent, i.e. a suitable platform for a range of game genres. This has been achieved and once this final push to complete Phoenix is over, we will be turning our attention to a new project. We had hoped to be in this position a couple of years ago, but the old adage runs true, everything takes twice as long as you predict, even when you take into consideration everything taking twice as long as you predict.