Call for reviewers Help us vet an early draft of the chronology and code of the early Star Trek games. See the timeline →

Playing, studying, and preserving DECWAR

DECWAR was among the first multiplayer computer games—eighteen players battling across a shared galaxy on UT Austin's PDP-10 in 1978. We're working to ensure this pioneering software and its cultural context survive.

Playable alpha

The current version is offered for feedback and testing as a sustainable modern implementation of DECWAR.

Explore Play Learn More

TELNET PLAY.DECWAR.ORG 2423 Live

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Click to play Alpha version

Prefer a Telnet client? telnet play.decwar.org 2423

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About Us

Our Mission

An organization bringing together faculty, alumni, archivists, and technologists.

DecwarOrg exists to provide a permanent institutional home for the research, preservation, and historical reconstruction of DECWAR—a multiplayer space combat game that emerged from the University of Texas Computation Center in 1978.

Written in MACRO-10 assembly and Fortran for the DEC PDP-10, DECWAR allowed up to eighteen simultaneous players to engage in tactical starship combat across a shared galactic map. The university distributed the game on magnetic tape for a nominal $50 fee, and it spread to PDP-10 installations worldwide.

More than a technical artifact, DECWAR represents an early example of networked social gaming. The terminal rooms where players gathered became proto-online communities, complete with their own social hierarchies, cultural norms, and collective memories.

1978

First Release

Simultaneous Players

$50

Distribution Cost

Active Work

Current Initiatives

Our current work spans source preservation, historical emulation, formal specification, software reconstruction, public access, and scholarly research.

Preserving the Sources

Cataloging and preserving the Austin and CompuServe source archives, documentation, maps, and build materials.

Running Austin 2.3

Maintaining a reproducible PDP-10 reference build of the reconstructed Austin game and documenting every required intervention.

Open the Austin 2.3 reconstruction

Coming soon

Specifying DECWAR

Writing a platform-independent specification of the game’s commands, state, rules, timing, multiplayer behavior, and output.

Coming soon

Building the Modern Port

Reimplementing DECWAR in TypeScript, with Austin as the default and CompuServe retained as a distinct variant.

Early alpha

Restoring Playable Access

An early alpha of the modern port is available for testing. Play in a web terminal or connect with a Telnet client:

Play in your browser telnet play.decwar.org 2423

Researching the History

Developing the early Star Trek chronology, oral histories, and scholarly work in game studies, platform studies, and software preservation.

Help review the early Star Trek chronology

Preserved & accessible

Archives & Code

Begin with the preserved game, then explore its source, documentation, and stories.

1979

DECWAR 2.2 in the Briscoe archive

UT Austin’s institutional record preserves binary executables migrated from a DECUS magnetic tape, along with a historical description of the game.

View the archival record →

Open DECWAR.org repositories

Source code & documentation

Browse the Austin source archive and related player manuals, technical notes, and historical documents.

Source code → Documents →

Watch & listen

Videos & demonstrations

See the preservation work in action and hear from people connected to DECWAR and its history.

Visit the video channel →

Detail of the PiDP-10 control panel and keys

Related project

Run DECWAR on a PiDP-10

The PiDP-10 is a physical PDP-10 replica built around the SIMH simulator and a Raspberry Pi. It supports TOPS-10 and can be used to install and run DECWAR.

Learn about the PiDP-10

Timeline

A Brief History

The lineage of Star Trek games at UT Austin and the current preservation project, 1971–present

1971

Star Trek (Mayfield)

High school senior Mike Mayfield creates a text-based Star Trek game on an SDS Sigma 7 at UC Irvine—inventing the tactical starship simulation rendered entirely in ASCII.

1972

HP 2000C Port

Mayfield rewrites in HP BASIC. The version spreads widely via David Ahl's 101 BASIC Computer Games, seeding Star Trek variants worldwide.

1973

UT Trek

Grady Hicks and Jim Korp develop a BASIC Star Trek variant for UT Austin's CDC 6600, gaining popularity among Computation Center students.

1974

UT Fortran

Dave Matuszek and Paul Reynolds create an expanded Fortran version on the CDC 6600 with significant gameplay depth.

1976

UT War

The first multiplayer variant emerges—a two-player Fortran game demonstrating the appeal of human-versus-human starship combat.

August 1978

DECWAR 1.0

Bob Hysick and Jeff Potter release DECWAR for the PDP-10. Supporting eighteen simultaneous players, UT Austin distributes copies on tape for $50—spreading globally.

July 1979

DECWAR 2.0

Major update adds new ship classes, expanded combat mechanics, and improved multiplayer synchronization.

November 20, 1981

DECWAR 2.3

The final major release. DECWAR runs on dozens of systems globally before fading as institutions migrate to newer architectures.

Present

DECWAR Preservation Project

DecwarOrg preserves the surviving source archives, maintains the Austin 2.3 reference build under PDP-10 emulation, and researches DECWAR and its predecessors. The modern TypeScript port is available as an early alpha Telnet service; the formal specification and public access to the historical emulation remain in preparation.

Firsthand accounts

DECWAR interviews

Conversations about early Star Trek computer games, DECWAR, and the machines and networks around them.

Dave Matuszek · Part 1

From Star Trek to DECWAR

How early Star Trek games developed into DECWAR.

Dave Matuszek · Part 2

Building Star Trek in FORTRAN

A closer look at building an early Star Trek program.

Clive Dawson

DECWAR, the DEC-10 & ARPANET

Memories of DECWAR, DEC-10 systems, and the early ARPANET.

Updates

News

Recent developments in DECWAR preservation and related projects.

January 2026

SIGGRAPH SOIREE 2026 Symposium
Virtual event

Presentation

DECWAR: Collaboration Across Coding, Installation, Creative, and Archival Teams

A discussion of the collaboration among two classes, the symposium, and university resources required to revive DECWAR as a historical game and creative work.

November 2025

UT Austin
AudioPixel Collider installation

Exhibition

DECWAR: Then and Now

An interactive installation presenting DECWAR as both a historical artifact and a living system: a game that can be replayed, studied, and interpreted through new media, especially sound.

The installation placed the original terminal experience beside a contemporary reconstruction whose live game activity drove spatial audio and student-created visual and sonic works.

The War Room (1978)

The original text-only terminal experience, reconstructed through coordinates, commands, and system messages.

DECWAR Reforged

A modern reconstruction translating movement, combat, and destruction into spatial audio.

Student Works

Sonification, ambient sound, and visual interpretations using DECWAR as a generative system.

Related Project Timecapsule Preservation

The ITS Reconstruction Project

While DecwarOrg focuses on software preservation, our colleagues at Obsolescence are undertaking a complementary effort: a complete virtual AI Lab - hardware and software - as it stood at MIT in the 1970s, free to play with on your laptop.

Unsurprisingly, this AI Lab of the 1970s has become a mythical place in the world of computer science. A lot of computer jargon and the Hacker Ethic can be traced back to the Lab and its people, as do a lot of now-common software tools.

Read about the ITS reconstruction

Join Us

Get Involved

DecwarOrg is led by faculty and alumni of The University of Texas at Austin. We welcome researchers, developers, archivists, former players, and others who can contribute evidence, expertise, or code.

Join the Discussion Contribute on GitHub

Project team

Eric Freeman, PhD

Faculty, The University of Texas at Austin

Noah Smith, PhD

Alumnus, The University of Texas at Austin

Mk Haley

Faculty, The University of Texas at Austin