What is "netwars"

n. (plural of netwar English)

NetWars (originally called LiteYear) was an IPX-based 3D vector-graphics computer game released by Novell in 1993 for DOS to demonstrate NetWare capabilities. It was written by Edward Hill, one of Novell's engineers in its European Development Centre (EDC) in Hungerford, UK. Development had started in 1989.

NetWars 2.06 came bundled with Novell DOS 7 and Personal NetWare 1.0 in form of a single executable named NETWARS.EXE. It thereby replaced the text-based game NLSNIPES.EXE, that came with NetWare Lite 1.1 since 1991, a newer implementation of the original Snipes, that traditionally came with Novell NetWare.

Since 1997, a much improved version 3 named Advanced NetWars shipped with Caldera OpenDOS 7.01, DR-DOS 7.02 and DR-DOS 7.03. It added support for SoundBlaster sound, Joystick control, up to six players in multi-player mode, missiles and computer-controlled ships in multi-player mode, and it featured a new multi-player shoot-out mode, an improved single-player mode, an external view mode, as well as a shape editor to design own space-ships. Despite all these additions, the executable maintained a file size of less than 77 KB.

NetWars and Advanced NetWars inspired the development of independent clones such as Ingmar Frank's NetWarsGL for Win32 platforms with OpenGL in 2002 to 2004, or the Botolib-based NetWorst.