Weltensaga — Overview

Weltensaga is a browser-based game set in a sci-fi universe. The players take control of their civilization. They can build, research, fight, explore, trade, and more.

This site gives some background information on the game.

Facts And Numbers

  • Weltensaga was online from October 2005 till August 2010.
  • The game had hundreds of active players constantly and at its prime more than 1,500.
  • According to many players, the game is unsurpassed in complexity, depth and possibilities.
  • The original design, concept and game was created by three friends, but since early 2006 only Johannes Kuhlmann has continued working actively on the game.
  • The game universe comprises 2,500 planetary systems and about 15,000 planets (including suns, nebulae and asteroids).
  • The game's techtree contains 194 buildings, 315 researches and 83 spaceships.
  • It was completely free to play.

The Technical Side

The client side:
  • Weltensaga is completely browser-based, meaning that it doesn't even need Flash or Java. Any sufficiently modern webbrowser should work.
  • It only uses HTML, CSS and Javascript. A few areas make use of AJAX.
The server side:
  • Weltensaga actually is its own HTTP server, completely written in Java.
    For those who know a little about such stuff, it implements the HTTP protocol and supports persistent connections, GZIP compression, file uploading and many more useful things.
  • Furthermore, there is a powerful template system built into the server that helps providing the representation. Session management is an integral part, too.
  • Extending the game's functionality is rather easy because of a sophisticated module and event system.
  • MySQL is used as the backend through JDBC.

My Involvement

I have been working on Weltensaga since its beginning, i. e. when it was not even called Weltensaga yet. The initial game design was created together with two friends who quickly left the team when the game had been only a few months online. Since then I worked on the game alone, only sometimes helped by some players from the game's community.

All programming was solely done by me.

Screenshots

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