Atlantis is a free open-ended multi-player computer moderated fantasy turn-based strategy game for any number of players. It is played via email. The game world is populated by many races and monsters. Players may attempt to carve out huge empires, become master magicians, intrepid explorers, rich traders or any other career that comes to mind and interact with other players in trade, war and alliances. There is no declared winner of the game, players set their own objectives, and one can join at any time.
Russell Wallace developed the initial version and ran the first game, Atlantis 1.0 in 1993. Geoff Dunbar continued the legacy, first with the extensive playtest of Atlantis 2.0, and then the commercial game Atlantis 3.0. In 1999 Atlantis 4.0 was created by Geoff Dunbar and released under terms of GNU GPL. "AtlantisDev" Yahoo Group was formed sometime after that and Joseph Traub became the maintainer of the code. Atlantis 4.0 was later expanded on by various contributors from the AtlantisDev group.
Since 2011 development uses Git. Currently several developers contribute to server code on GitHub.
| Version | Release Date | Maintainer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Apr 1993 | Russell Wallace | Written in C. |
| 1.1 | Nov 1993 | Jim Cotugno | |
| 2.0 | Jan 1995 | Geoff Dunbar | Rewritten from scratch in C++ by Geoff Dunbar based on 2.0 rules by Russell Wallace. |
| 3.0 | Jun 1996 | ||
| 4.0.1 | Jan 1999 | First version released under GNU GPL. | |
| 4.0.2 | Mar 1999 | ||
| 4.0.3 | Apr 1999 | ||
| 4.0.4 | Jun 1999 | ||
| 4.0.5 | Feb 2001 | Joseph Traub | Added version control by CVS. |
| 4.0.6 | Apr 2001 | ||
| 4.0.7 | May 2001 | ||
| 4.0.8 | Jul 2001 | ||
| 4.0.9 | Nov 2001 | ||
| 4.0.10 | Dec 2001 | ||
| 5.0.0 | Jul 2002 | ||
| 5.1.0 | Jun 2011 | Loriaki | Version control moved from CVS to SourceForge SVN. |
| 5.2.0 | Jul 2019 | Stephen Baillie | Version control moved from SVN to Git at Aug 2011. |
| 5.2.1 | Sep 2019 | Artem Trytiak | |
| 5.2.2 | Sep 2019 | ||
| 5.2.3 | Oct 2019 | ||
| 5.2.4 | Oct 2019 | ||
| 5.2.5 | Dec 2022 | ||