Slashdot Log In
A Little Bit Of BBS Nostalgia
Posted by
Hemos
on Fri Dec 08, 2000 07:19 AM
from the i-want-a-genesis-torpedo dept.
from the i-want-a-genesis-torpedo dept.
Ron Harwood writes: "I was getting nostalgic for the BBS door games of the late 80's and early 90's -- and decided that some of these could quite easily be brought onto the Web. So, with help from some of the players, I've created a Web version of the old BBS game TradeWars -- and released it as open source. You can try it out at BlackNova.net or download the source for your self at SourceForge. It's made with PHP and MySQL and it's getting reasonably bug free. :)"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
A Little Bit of BBS nostalgia
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 221 comments
(Spill at 50!) | Index Only
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
DOS door games under linux? (Score:3)
Where's BRE ? (Score:3)
Damn, i loved that door game BRE. Barren Realms Elite, anyone else used to play it ?
There is planetarion [planetarion.com] nowadays, but it just didn't seem to "cut it" like BRE used to.
and also Usurpers, Vgaplanets... *sniff* major bbs...
bbs.ufies.org (Score:3)
You can telnet directly to bbs.ufies.org - there is a web page at http://bbs.ufies.org/ with a couple of useful links like who is oneline now, etc. They have been up for about a year and a half, and are running the game doors on dosemu on a linux box.
Of course, I expect them to get /dotted by all the fresh attention.
Blacknova Traders (Score:3)
Re:Where's BRE ? (Score:3)
www.swirve.com
The most BRE-like game there is:
games.swirve.com/utopia/
It has about 50,000 players in kingdoms of 25 each. It is similar in flavour to BRE with a kingdom forum, thieves (spies), etc.
His first attempt to bring BRE to the web is at:
games.swirve.com/earth/
The Earth2025 game evolved in to something different than BREE with more emphasis on infividual play in some games and alliances in others but it is still quite popular.
Oh man... (Score:4)
Maybe slashdot was like this. In the beginning. A little. But I'm sure I could configure a machine to be much more like a BBS, on the web, or not. I think that having a small community of quirky people is a requirement as well...
But if it had to be a web page, then I suppose you'd have to have topics and comment threads (we have those, but the topics are somewhat regulated). You'd also have to "Login" and "Logout", and optionally be able to post silly comments that show up at Login. You'd have a file area, with lots of useful stuff (freshmeat.net?) random text files ("How to get HBO for free" => textfiles.com?) and funny stuff. Of course we always had polls...
So yes, the Internet has elements of the BBS community, and places like slashdot have it more than most, but it still isn't the same, and every BBS feels different, too, with a very unique, ingrown sense of community.
I remember Another World felt very friendly and homey, and Cedar Republic felt more serious, (but it had TWO lines! You could chat with a friend!) and Psychotronic was basically a nest of Trolls...
In retrospect, I wouldn't give that up for anything. Maybe not even for the computer I have now instead of my 386 back then...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Re:Nostalgia *sniff* (Score:3)
I started BBS'ing around 1990 or 1991 in the central Jersey area (201/908 - now 732 area code). Ran a BBS off my 8088, 2400 baud modem, 20 meg hard drive. The small hard drive space kept my BBS from turning into a warez BBS, but I still tried to do as much as possible with what I had. Joined FIDOnet, DementedNet, and was co-founder of an ANSI art group, SNaP! The people I BBS'd with were local people, and I often met them in real life.
By the mid 90's, most of my friends were switching over to the commercial multi-line chat MBBS's. Cheers, The Imperial Fortress, Excalibur, etc. While I waxed nostalgic about the old one-line BBS's sitting in a chat room with thirty people on TIF, I didn't know how short that form of community's lifespan would be. After 96, I worked for Cheersoft, a company that wrote utilities and doors for MBBS/Worldgroup. At that point the internet was taking over most of the local BBS scene. The one-liners were dying, and the 50-100 liners were becoming mom and pop ISP's. It was sad, in a way, working in part of a scene that was dying. But the BBS scene was one of the greatest things I was involved with, and I had tons of fun. One of my best friends from high school married a girl that we met on a BBS years ago. Some of my good friends to this day are people I met back in the mid 90's on BBSes.
The thing I miss the most about it all is the geographical closeness, as another poster mentioned. One night sitting in the Worldgroup teleconference, some girl expressed interest in pizza. Within an hour, a dozen of us had driven all over Jersey to make it to a pizza place. I can't do that with people as easily over the internet. Local BBS's would do photoshoots with the sysop's girlfriend or other random female users, then post up the bikini pix on other sites to advertise their BBS. You would call these BBS's, knowing you could score with them.
A group of former BBS'ers in central jersey have formed a very Linux-friendly telnetable BBS at darkplanet.org [darkplanet.org]. If you were part of the community back in the day in that area, you might just run into a few dozen old faces.
Because I like PHP... (Score:3)
I could have used perl, or python or even C if I had wanted... but I wanted to learn PHP...
I don't regret that choice.