BigWeather's Blog

Back when I was in high school one of my good friends, Steven White, ran a BBS called Magic Foam.  A friend had written a really neat BASIC game that the BBS software, CNet, was able to load into its memory space and run.  It seemed like it’d be fun to write one as well, so Steven and I wrote a game called “Rings of Chaos.”

"Rings of Chaos" title screen

It wasn’t anything super special, but was my first experience in games programming.  It also was my first encounter with a serious bug, one where the player records could be wiped.  I solved it, a proud moment for this budding programmer!  More importantly, a gentleman named Jim F. Young, Jr. from New Jersey (no relation) bought the rights to ship the game with his BBS software.  I received checks for a couple of years through high school and into early college.  Not a ton of money, and I eventually just let him have the rights to it entirely, but it helped me choose my curricula in college and my eventual career.

I had long thought it lost (I mean, how many running BBSes are there in the Internet age?!) but ran across a version running on a BBS.  Downloading a telnet client I connected and there it was.  It was very, very strange playing it after so many years.  I giddily snapped some screenshots and used my allotted 20 moves for the day.  I also eliminated another player (sorry about that!) but sadly didn’t find any rings.  Maybe tomorrow.

Yay! Registered and ready to play!

I honestly can’t remember how far Steven and I took RoC before it was bought and don’t know how much of the work was ours and how much was Jim F. Young, Jr.’s.  Regardless, it still plays nice nearly twenty-five years later.  My heartfelt thanks to Jim F. Young, Jr. for helping give a young programmer much needed confidence.  And Steven, if you stumble upon this, please contact me via Facebook or something.  It has been far too long since we’ve talked!

The player wanders around a landscape (all rendered in your imagination via text!) with the goal of collection twenty rings.  In addition the player can wield a weapon and wear armor.  The player gets 20 moves a day and, once used, is logged out at their current location.  Other players, on their turn (remember, only one player at a time back then), can stumble upon the logged out players and kill them.  Victory allows the player to loot the other player’s weapon and armor and any rings the player had are scattered throughout the world.

The world of "Rings of Chaos"

Weapons and armor, "Magic Foam" being a reference to Steven's BBS

Uh-oh, one move left and about to fight another player!

Victory is mine!

Alive, but no rings in hand. Ten are in players' possession, and ten are still loose in the world.