XPilot Related Information on the Internet

• Access statistics for the whole year, this month, or just this week.
• The XPilot Newbie Manual contains a lot of information on XPilot; from how to compile it to playing strategies.
• The XPilot newsgroup (hopefully soon to be rec.games.computer.xpilot).
• The XPilot mailing list.
• The XPilot FAQ.
• The world-wide XPilot ranking server.
• The European XPilot Team Cup
• The XPilot meta server.
  • The meta server keeps a list of registered XPilot nicknames. If you treasure yours, I'd suggest you register your XPilot nickname as fast as possible.
  • NADA at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden also has a very nice interface to the XPilot meta server.
  • The Unix Computing Group at the Michigan State University has a list of active XPilot servers and their current status.
• FTP stuff.
  • The official XPilot FTP directory (also available via HTTP) is at the University of Tromsø, Department of Computer Science's ftp server, but
  • you can also get XPilot from ftp.x.org, though the version there might be a bit outdated.
  • HP-UX users may want to get HP-UX adapted versions of XPilot from the excellent Software Porting & Archive Center for HP-UX in their networked games section.
  • Binaries for a number of platforms are available from PVV (ProgramVareVerkstedet), University of Trondheim, Norway. The filetree layout and conventions may seem a bit strange, but that is because it is installed in their excellent system for managing and installing third party software; the system is called STORE.
  • The San Diego State University archives have lots of
    • sounds and
    • maps for XPilot.
    To use sound you have to get and install rplay from the same site.
• Information on the authors;
  • Bjørn Stabell
  • Ken Ronny Schouten
  • Bert Gÿsbers

• Günther Nowotny has set up a XPilot FamilyBook for those of you who want to leave their XPilot footprints in net.land.
• Christian Engstler has some more information on XPilot, among other things a list of contributed software.
• Stig Sæther Bakken has some nice snapshots from XPilot games.
• Carl Forsythe (Static Sea) has some XPilot information.
• Russ Glaeser has maps and special (non-standard!) patches to XPilot, courtsey of Delirium and Eustace R. Flod.
• Eric Matsui a.k.a. StudentDriver has his own XPilot Page, which includes The XPilot FAQ in HTML.
• Patrick G. Kenny runs a special server with a special map, and has attracted quite a following. Check out Blood's Music Server Web Page.
• In the same vein, you have Lismond T. K. Bernard's Corroded Treasures server and map.
• The BYU/ECGL server has some special features, including ranking.

What is XPilot?

• True client/server based game; optimal speed for every player.
• Meta server with up to date information about servers hosting games around the world.
• A web of world-wide rating servers; compare your skills with pilots from all around the world, and climb the ladder of the world-wide rating list.
• 'Real physics'; particles of explosions and sparks from your engines all affect you if you're hit by them. This makes it possible to kill someone by blowing them into a wall with engine thrust or shock waves from explosions.
• Specialized editors for editing ship-shapes and maps.
• Game objective and gameplay adjustable through a number of options, specified on the commandline, in special option files, or in the map files. Examples of modes of the game:
  • classical dogfight; equipped with only your gun, you have to rely on your maneuvering and tactical skills
  • team; fight together, steal other teams's treasures (involves flying around with a ball in a string, much like in Thrust) and blow up their targets (which are, no doubt, heavily guarded)
  • all out nuclear war; chose carefully between more than 15 weapon and defense systems to stay alive and annihilate your enemies
  • race; make it through the deadly course before your opponents
• Adjustable gravity; adjustable by putting special attractors or deflectors in the world, or by adjusting the global gravity in various ways.
• Cannons and personalized and vengeful robot fighters give you a hard time.
• Watch your energy, and remember to 'dock' with a fuel station to refuel before it's too late.
• Defend your home base, or terrorize and steal someone else's.
• Equip your ship with the 15+ defense and weapon systems: afterburners, cloaking devices, sensors, transporters, extra cannons, mines and bombs, rockets (smarts, torpedos and nuclear), ECM, laser, extra tanks, autopilot etc.

To start playing, you need to connect to a server by using a client program called xpilot. There are always servers running if you check with the meta server, but if you for some reason do not want to join them, you'll have to start a server of your own (see man-page xpilots(6)).