PBM Game from IBM?

Does anyone remember the PBM game from IBM?

IBM :huh: , you say?

Well, IBM had a marketplace, back in the floppy disk days, for developers to sell software via IBM. You got a floppy disk in paper holder, and all documentation was on the disk. One of the offerings was a PBM game. I had a copy of the game, and if I still do, it's in storage. It was a space game, along the lines of Starweb. I ran a game of it for a while, and Nicky Palmer was one of the players.

I was wondering if anyone else remembers it and what the name was. My GoogleFu has not helped me find it.

That's unexpected!  No, I don't ever remember such a thing (though I bought one of the first IBM PCs released to write Galac-Tac on), but I wonder if it's good enough (if you can find it) to re-publish and run?  I kinda doubt that IBM or an original author would care much at this point.

I figured out what is was, by delving into the rec.games.pbm archives out there.

Imperial Space Command. It looks as if you would need a DOS computer (i.e. not even a DOS box in Windows) to run it.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/imperial-space-command-88#:~:text=Description%20of%20Imperial%20Space%20Command,race%20to%20conquer%20the%20galaxy.

I've looked in the various downloads that are available, and the documentation is in files with the .dpf extension. From the looks of it, it's some version of a dot matrix printer file.

I've created virtual machines with ancient versions of DOS on it - perhaps that would run it?

The notes from the abandonware site above say it probably won't, but it would be worth a try.

I ran the documentation through a dot matrix to PDF converter and got a big file that's sort-of readable, but obviously missing stuff. The program comes with a DOS .com file that you ran to print out the documents, but it won't run under Win 10. It may run in a DOS VM. That at least would get the documents out.

I found the home page of the designer. He's now at Bioware and works on SW:TOR.
https://sites.google.com/site/stjones/