BBS door software reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dragnscalearmor · 2018-09-07 18:39 Were "door games" such as LORD and BRE and TEOS and all that written specifically to transfer the texts of the games through the BBS, or were they just standard files (EXE, etc) that ran locally, and the data was passed by the BBS to the user? I know PASCAL was used a lot to write the games, but I don't know if it was just a "standard" program that is somehow translated by the BBS software through the phone lines, or if the programs were written specifically to use communications, etc. Any information about this? Thanks very much. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dragnscalearmor · 2018-09-07 18:45 Not sure I worded that where it made any kind of sense. Here's another try. If I were to make an old BBS door "game" called, Hello World, would I do it like a standard compiled file? Example: 10 input "Enter your name: " $name 20 print "Hello, there, " $name ​ Or would I need to have the input and output going through special communications or something? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bwave1 · 2018-09-07 18:46 I believe they used "fossil drivers" so basically you wrote a dos program and didn't have to know much about how to interface the serial port. So if you select run a door on a bbs, the bbs would exit and run a batch file to run the bbs door game, then when the game exited the batch file restarted the bbs software (probably with a command line argument so it knew there was already a session, or based on a like user.dat file it knew you were logged in? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dragnscalearmor · 2018-09-07 18:48 Ah, I see... Thanks, I appreciate that. More reading for me to do - "fossil drivers" and stuff. BBS era was very interesting. Thank you again! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- YserviusPalacost · 2018-09-07 18:55 As far as I am aware, doors were all written to access the serial port directly. This used to require the hand-off in communication to the door exe. Don't forget that in the hey-day of BBSes, most computers did NOT have any multitasking capability, so for a door to run, it had to have full control of the hardware. The FOSSIL driver was a huge step forward in this regards, by creating a standard method of communication and thus relieving the programmer from having to reinvent serial i/o in every door. So the short answer is either the door program itself, or the FOSSIL drivers managed the communication, not the BBS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- genitor · 2018-09-07 19:06 This is all accurate. I wrote a few doors back when BBSes were popular. They were just standard DOS executables that communicated directly with the serial ports (or through a Fossil driver as was mentioned). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dragnscalearmor · 2018-09-07 19:31 So you could just write a standard program (DOS-based) and connect it a FOSSIL driver, and it'd be a door program? Seems that using a FOSSIL driver would be a lot simpler, if this is the case. Sorry, trying to get this clear in my brain.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- peterjschroeder · 2018-09-07 19:32 Standard. A lot of the doors can be run without a BBS. The BBS passes info to the door by a dropfile. ​ Here are some example open source doors: [https://github.com/rickparrish/LORD2](https://github.com/rickparrish/ LORD2) [https://github.com/rickparrish/Usurper](https://github.com/rickparris h/Usurper) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dragnscalearmor · 2018-09-07 19:35 Thanks, I appreciate the info. Trying to wrap my head around this pre- Internet programming. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dragnscalearmor · 2018-09-07 19:54 Got the LORD2 source, thank you! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- genitor · 2018-09-07 20:00 You didn’t have to use a Fossil driver, that was just supposed to make it a little easier for the developer to program and the Sysop to manage. Without the Fossil, you’d have to write the low-level I/O routines to send and receive data from the modem through the serial ports. Also the Sysop would have to configure each door to match his environment (whether the modem was connected to serial port on COM1, COM2, etc..). Actually as a door writer, I found the Fossil drivers to be a little annoying. I already had routines to write to the serial ports, but having Fossil driver support was sort of a feature to advertise. So in the end I supported both raw I/O and Fossil drivers and the Sysop could configure it however he wanted. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- peterjschroeder · 2018-09-07 20:17 You're welcome. That is not actually the official source, it's a remake. It may or may not support IGMs (I haven't tested it yet). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dragnscalearmor · 2018-09-08 00:00 That's cool. So when writing a door game, you had to write the code to make the text go through either the fossil driver, or to the serial port(s)? So not as simple as making a basic program, compiling it, and running it on a BBS system. Sounds pretty complicated. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sinesawtooth · 2018-09-08 13:13 Holy crap I haven’t thought of the FOSSIL driver in almost 30 years! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LakeRat · 2018-09-14 03:11 Thanks for the memories. I was a Sysop and remember always seeing a FOSSIL driver splash screen when certain door games loaded. "someone or other's DOUBLE AUGHT BUCKSHOT DRIVER!" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-10-03 04:36 It really wasn't, most languages had FOSSIL libraries that made it super-easy. I wrote a "Graffiti Wall" in QuickBasic and there was a FOSSIL library freely available. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Aplos9 · 2018-10-16 17:31 Wow, that's pretty intense!