UT Austin Computation Center and Decwar; Some History

Halloween, October 31, 1982, the DECsystem-10 at the University of Texas at Austin was  turned off for the last time. Photo shows some of the staff and users in attendance that night.

The existence of analog computers to solve specialized problems goes back thousands of years, the discovery of the Greek Antikythera mechanism (ca. 205–60 BCE) being a much discussed example.  A more recent example was the subject of the movie Imitation Game (2014), about Alan Turing who designed a digital computer to automate the process of deciphering Nazi Enigma-encrypted messages during World War II (1940). And after WWII the ENIAC (1945) is cited as the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer.

All to say, yes, computing is definitely a topic of historic importance.

In May 2023 I wrote a short article "Some History of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Austin": 

https://traviscountyhistorical.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-history-of-ai-winter-and-austin.html  

This is another article in that same theme: the history of computer science in Austin. 

Several faculty and alumni of UT and their collaborators [1] have been working to document the history, restoration, preservation, and archiving of historical computing, especially associated with UT Austin and the UT Austin Computation Center. The effort began in 2025 with an emphasis on Decwar, among the first multiplayer computer games (eighteen players battling across a shared galaxy) developed in 1978 on UT Austin's first time-sharing system, the DECsystem-10 (PDP-10). That project will continue including oral interviews. The goal of this short blog is simply to link to the excellent work they are doing; it's part of Austin's history.

Here's a link to their blog; the bottom of their page provides additional links [2]:

https://decwarorg.blogspot.com/p/about.html

Photos

Below, sign from Fall 2025 event on UT campus: 

DECWAR: THE ORIGINAL SYSTEM BRIDGE

In 1978, computer science students and researchers at the University of Texas at Austin launched a game that would quietly transform the future of digital play. Known as DECWAR, this text-based space combat simulator evolved from an earlier two-player program called WAR, expanding it into one of the first true multiplayer video games. Inspired by Star Trek-style strategy games and early MIT experiments, DECWAR Invited players to command starships, capture planets, and engage in inter-galactic warfare within a shared virtual universe.

Running on a DECsystem-10 (PDP-10) mainframe, the game allowed 10-18 simultaneous players interacting in a common alpha-numeric environment. This architecture, remarkably advanced for its time, meant players could join, leave, or re-enter sessions without disrupting the experience for others. Within a sprawling 79 × 79 sector grid, players battled both human opponents and a computer controlled Romulan ship designed to keep the galaxy active even during off-hours.

What began as an academic experiment in Austin became a foundational milestone in online gaming foreshadowing the massive multiplayer worlds that define digital play today. 

Full video of Fall 2025 event https://youtu.be/uznDrk9JhDU?si=Wug3tWeIlP1lmDIO

Footnotes

[1] Dr. Noah Smith is a UT Aerospace Engineer alumni. Dr. Mk Haley and Dr. Eric Freeman are faculty in the UT School of Design and Creative Technologies. Mk, Eric, and Noah collaborated on a special campus event Fall of 2025, and the Decwar blog and website are now building on that. Collaborators on this project include former UT Austin Computation Center staff, in particular some that supported the DECsystem-10 such as Clive Dawson, author of Soul of An Old Machine, and also users of the DECsystem-10 such as Bob Hysick, one of the authors of Decwar.

 

DecwarOrg YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@decwarorg 

 

More on Decwar at UT's Texas Scholar Works, University of Texas Libraries, Briscoe Center for American History. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/items/e0e0aa09-2dc3-49c5-a919-19210d7916d3

[2] Some material on this topic has previously been filed with the Austin History Center: Richard Denney Photograph Collection (AR.2018.022). Austin History Center, Austin Public Library, Texas. https://ahc.access.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/1742 Accessed April 11, 2026.