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Classic BBS 'Door Games' Reborn
digirave writes "Most multiplayer strategy/RPG 'door games' didn't survive the change from the BBS scene to the Internet. The few that did mostly stayed dialup and telnet only. Here are three BBS door games that were quite popular at the time, remade as open-source games for the Web using PHP and MySQL. First of all, there's the Tradewars 2002-inspired game Blacknova, and secondly the LORD (Legend Of The Red Dragon) remake, Legend Of The Green Dragon. Finally, there's a game similar to Solar Realms Elite, QM Promisance, which itself is a modified version of the original Promisance source."
anyone who wants to take on my level 2 LOGD theif in a duel TO THE DEATH is welcome to try
I think that you guys should have a topic FOR text games cause, well, err, they are our HISTORY, man!! where would slashdot be without zork, trinity, tradewars, and the rest of them that we all *cough over 30* cut our teeth on??
Who remembers timebank?
Way back when BBSs were popular, when you registered , you were given a limited number of minutes and downloads per day. I think it was in the order of 30 minutes and I can't remember how much data you could download. (200KB?)
After you exceeded either your download quota or your time quota, you could not log back onto the BBS.
And that's where timebank comes into the picture. On top of all the other text games available, there was a game, called timebank, that let you gamble part (or all) of your download/time quota, with the chance of winning more of either.
Needless to say, I was naive for thinking I could win anything on a computerised gambling game, but it was fun nonetheless!
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
Looks like my game made it on Slashdot. Not exactly front page, but I'm not gonna complain :-)
;-)
I strongly urge everyone to head on over to http://lotgd.sourceforge.net and play on your lunch break, this is a well done game even if I do say so myself
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Wow. I can remember logging in to no less than 3 BBS's to play all of my Trade Wars turns every day. It always sucked to find your fighters destroyed, your planetary defenses overrun, and someone squatting on your planet.
Perhaps one day a gaming company will get multiplayer space battle right. (And I don't mean like Earth and Beyond.)
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Where the hell is PIMP WARS?
...and I didn't even submit the story...
BlackNova Traders
Total flashback for me there. Ahh, I remember running Maximus in 4 shells under OS/2. My phone bills soared. Fidonet stuff.
What I want to know is, where is Bordello? Managing a bordello was pretty fun as I remember it.
traders.jointhesaga.com If you'd like a place to play that's started up in the last month or so.
Hosting for Creators: http://rpg-works.net
Could anyone give a comparison between Tradewars 2002 and Seth Able's less known great door game Planets: The Exploration of Space (or TEOS). I've never played Tradewars and Blacknova traders seemed a little... complicated last time I tried it. I'd really like to relive some of those memories but Blacknova just didn't seem as good for me with a brief attempt at playing it.
;)
I'd like to see something else than web-based, maybe something like freeciv with separate server and client so we could get cool graphical clients and ones that would look like the old text-based door games. One of the coolest things was the real-time interaction with players simultaneously online and that doesn't work well in a web-based version. Even just a remake that'd work like a mud on the net would be great.
Oh well, maybe I'll just need to use lynx to play.
HOly shit, read the f'ing article.
It was never as popular as any of the doors that have been mentioned already, but the game I wrote has been released under the GPL and is available at here: http://theclans.sourceforge.net/
Anyone here ever play Lords of Cyberspace? If I recall correctly, it was only available for MajorBBS/WorldNet systems, and so I have found very few BBSs that still carry it (one, in fact, but it is extremely lagged).
It was a simple door game, with a small 30x10 text window in the upper left that you navigated around, and some stats on the right. Your mission was to hack as many systems as possible, get your level up to 30, and find the ?three? keys to let you try to get into Valhalla and destroy the Divine Document. You get money and experience through hacking into systems, destroying programs, selling/destroying sensitive documents, and going on special hacking missions. It was kind of a Gibson novel meets a text MUD.
I would love to see this game revived, and I have even managed to find a demo copy floating around the internet, but I have never been able to find the company or the author of it. It was distributed by Adept Communications, and made by Muinet. I believe they also created a game called Sword of Chaos, but I never played it.
Even in my smallish town of 25000 we had two dialup bbs. I remember going home every day and setting my modem to auto-redial each one until I got on so I could use my turns in TradeWars, LORD, and Exitilus. For some reason I absolutely loved Exitilus and wish there was a free open source version now. I guess I could get off my butt and code one.
I used to run a BBS, the best were interbbs games of Falcon's Eye, though I think some of our enemies used to cheat something fierce. Tons of fun nonetheless. Was always thinking about writing something similar that runs off a central server so that no one could easily cheat :)
My favourite door game was a rip off of Risk. What was it called?
http://use.perl.org
Oh come on guys!!! None of you remember Operation Overkill!!!!?!?!?!? ooii.vbsoft.org/
One of the best sci-fi based doorgames (next to TradeWars that is)
Only 8 away from being prime (569919 - 569927) And mom told me I'm unique!!! Sheesh
heh.. i setup Legend of the Green Dragon game at http://www.digirave.net
try it out if you liked L.O.R.D. since it's almost a new game you should have a fair start
A post is all the more entertaining when someone goes out of their way to explain, and link intricate details about it, and they are catastrophicly out of touch.
I would mod up funny if I had such an ability.
(Which is probably why I do not.)
http://use.perl.org
Am I the only person who preferred Usurper to LORD? I just found LORD to be boring for some reason.
...play it at BlackNova.Net ;)
BlackNova Traders
Anyone ever played Medievia?
Its probably the most played MUD today, and I'm still an avid player. Telnet to it here or download a MUD client.
I played those games like mad back in my BBS days. I hosted all of those on my own BBS (as well as Operation Overkill ][ and many others). I made several of the ANSI drawings for LORD, maybe I can contribute something to LOGD as well. I have been waiting for someone to do this, I will be setting these up on my webserver ASAP! Ah, the good 'ole days of ANSI gaming.
...I ran The Laser Connection in Clifton, NJ years ago on MajorBBS and loved having people logged in for hours playing CrossWORDS, a real-time chat and Scrabble game. Tradewars 2002, and a few others, all were very popular. I have to get back into more workon the telnet version we have running at www.ssabbs.com, get TW2002 back up and running. Ah, the past, great bbsing before the internet.
Relive the BBS Past - One Byte at a Time! www.ssabbs.com
Hey, can anyone reccomend a good BBS software package?
I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this page, but..
I'm looking for Linux x86, preferably reasonably mature, and supporting telephone and telnet. I'd like to hook it up with some of the BBS games.
~Will
sig?
Most BBS door games that were popular seem to have survived and made the jump.
Maybe the submitter just never paid mutch attention to telnet BBSing.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.