There are hundreds of TradeWars servers scattered across the internet, each hosting a multitude of games. Yet, the designers of the TWGS software have failed to include a way to search them all. Until now, no one has bothered to assemble a single comprehensive resource of TradeWars games.

In lieu of such a system, EleqTrizi’T and I set out to build one. Powered by PHP, PostgreSQL and Perl, the new TWGS Search Engine launched today with listings from select servers.

Every night, Eleq’s search program connects to all of the TradeWars servers in the database and refreshes the list of games. This allows us to index a massive number of games without any (human) effort required. The search engine website, coded by me, allows game searches based on 17 different game settings. Several sorted views are available. An extended display, which lists all of the information about the game, server, and other games on that server, is available, including the raw telnet session converted to HTML.

Before this system even gets off the ground, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: We are not in the business of rating SysOps or servers. Our goal is to provide open access to all SysOps and interested players, not to be a TWLeague. We will not take action against cheating SysOps or refuse to list sub-par systems. This decision comes after thorough consideration: We do not want this system to die a controversial death or become so embroiled in TW-politics that it does not function as intended.

Interested SysOps may submit their server for indexing on this page.