Summary

  • Netrek introduced a shared server finder in 1992 to help players locate games already under way.
  • The COW client’s local cache kept another route to servers available, but its Active label carried no player count.

An empty galaxy can have excellent uptime. The September 1995 COW client manual gives Netrek players the administrative version of that joke: a server reached through the MetaServerCache appeared as Active whenever it was contactable. The cache did not count the people playing. The machinery could be ready for war while the combatants had made other arrangements.

Finding those combatants had become a job of its own. The project’s design history describes the client/server work that Kevin Smith and Scott Silvey began in 1988 and the spread of servers beyond Berkeley. Each running server offered a place to play. A player also needed to know where a game was happening. A collection of addresses supplied destinations; participation made a destination worth choosing.

Eric Mehlhaff’s metaserver began in June 1992, according to Andy McFadden’s contemporary timeline. McFadden’s MetaServer II followed that August. The service polled known servers to find out how many people were playing, giving someone looking for a pickup game a useful view across separate machines. In December 1993, MetaServer II moved from charon.amdahl.com to metaserver.ecst.csuchico.edu. Even the galaxy’s information desk occasionally changed address.

The COW manual records what that shared view became at the player’s desk. The client could ask the metaserver or use a locally stored server list. Its display settings distinguished games with players, servers with queues and empty servers. Further settings included servers whose checks had timed out or whose connections had failed. Choosing a filter meant choosing how much of the possible evening remained visible.

The cache offered a quicker, thinner answer. It could find a contactable machine without supplying the population figure. That restriction reached into the controls: the client treated cache display levels below three as three, because the cache could not make the player-count distinctions on which the narrower filters relied. Active was a useful answer to a small question. The player had a larger one.

Distance complicated even the small question. The manual offered an example in which the American metaserver struggled to contact a server in the Netherlands, while a player’s route from England could work well. A timeout belonged to a particular observer and path. From another chair, the same server might still be a perfectly sensible destination.

COW kept an escape route in each direction. When the metaserver timed out, the client tried the cache. When the cache could not find its list file, it tried the metaserver. The fallback preserved another way to look for a server, with a reduced set of information. The little address book earned its place beside the grander directory.

Behind the live service stood a more human record. McFadden’s 1994 catalogue tracked public servers through the start of that year, using appearances in collected FAQ postings to estimate their dates. Names changed; one host could run several servers; maintainers moved on. Recent inclusion was tied to metaserver advertisement, and private or temporary games lay outside its chosen scope. Assembling the galaxy required some filing.

Netrek’s discovery service solved a wonderfully social computing problem: the game needed people to arrive at the same place. Player counts gave the list purpose, and the cache kept addresses within reach when the shared view failed. The green light could open the door. Someone still had to turn up.