What is BBS Door game?
Where do I begin?
What programming language is used?
How do you draw artwork for a Door game?
How popular was DDPlus?
How can I play these games?
What is BBS Door game?
Games played over a BBS are referred to as Door games. A Door is an external program that runs separately from the BBS. When a game is executed, the BBS creates a dropfile that stores the user's information and then hands the player off to a separate application. The most famous games are Legend of the Red Dragon, Trade Wars 2002, Land of Devastation, and Barren Realms Elite.
Where do I begin?
The easiest way to start writing a game is to use a DoorKit, a prepackaged program that handles the standard I/O for the BBS. But there are so many DoorKits that you can get lost looking through them. Fortunately, Scott Baker stripped one of his early programs to create the first versions of Door Driver. Along with Derrick Parkhurst, they put out Door Driver 5.0. This program would create Land of Devastation and be modified into DDPlus. DDPlus would be used to write a lot of L.O.R.D. mods and go on to write many more Door games in the 90s.
What programming language is used?
Door games were written in all the languages used at the time, C/C++, Turbo C/C++, QuickBasic, Pascal, Turbo Pascal, and others, creating 16-bit executables that would run alongside the BBS. 16-bit is no longer in use, so we'll be using a 32-bit environment set up virtually along with Turbo Pascal. With Virtual Box, we can set up Windows XP and then test the executable with DOSBox. To get these old DOS games to run on a BBS, you need to use something like NTVDMx64. We are making a 32-bit executable that will not run in a 64-bit environment.
How do you draw artwork for a Door game?
DDPlus displays ANSI files but it's a little slow. It also displays RIP graphics, but we won't go into that here. Even though ANSI is sluggish, you can make complex images and display information by moving the cursor around using X and Y cords. Any ANSI editor will work to draw artwork, but I use Moebius, a tool that works well for BBS development.
How popular was DDPlus?
When Scott Baker and Derrick Parkhurst released Door Driver 5.0, they copyrighted it: source code and examples. However, when Steven Lorenz enhanced the kit, they agreed to release it as Freeware, though they still held the copyright. This gave anyone with a Turbo Pascal compiler the ability to write Door games. The DoorKit took off with LORD, allowing authors to write addons for the game. It's easy to use once set up.
How can I play these games?
First, you need to find a BBS to play on. Many of them are out there, and more come online every day. The Telnet BBS Guide has a list of boards, some with descriptions listing the games they have. Once you find a BBS to play on, you'll need a Telnet Client to dial into one. I recommend SyncTerm. Once you enter the address and port, you can log on.