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Anyone play TradeWars 2002? That's what I was doing in '93 on my BBS.
Oh yeah. I recall writing Telix scripts to traverse the galaxy and then calculate the shortest path from a->b based on the portals it discovered. I also recall quite the scandal when a sysop peeked into the admin console and gave an advantage to someone.
Anyway, that constraint was also somehow reflected on the choice of tools, maybe in this case especially in the software used by the BBS itself. The US had plenty of different BBS software being used. I know Wildcat was popular in Europe. In my native Brazil it was dominated by PCBoard (major) and Remote Access (minor), and the underground scene was heavily invested in the "cool" Oblivion. I actually thought PCBoard was a major player until I realized very few boards in the USA used it.
After that, the problem was paying for long distance calls to more "3l33t" BBS's (usually in Sweden). But we had our ways :-)
Thank you for your post and thanks for all the comments... it takes me years back. Maybe a dumb question: why we all miss those days? I don't think it is only related to being young. I am convinced it is something related to a "less noise/new tools" and probably I agree about "the more constraints more creativity". Is there anybody who can better articulate or have a different vision?
If I was retired and didn't need to work, I'd still find some software to build and spend my time building it because that's something that I love to do. That's essentially what we were doing back then, so it was a good time.
I think there is some truth to what you're getting at with less noise and constraints and creativity.
Although - during this time, I dreamed of a future when every house and every business had their own BBS. That basically happened in the form of the www. The www and internet would have AMAZED a teenage me, it still does.
I remember that past fondly because they were exciting times for those reasons, but current times are also exciting. :)
Fellow obscure BBS software author here. Mine was Apocalypse / ApX (a hack of Havok, which was a hack of something else, which was a hack of Emulex/2, which I think was a hack of Forum?), around '92. I, too, remember recruiting ACiD guys to help out with the menu art. Ah, memories.
Pfft, iCE > ACiD any day of the week!
The late 80s/early 90s BBS scene was an amazing time for me. I was in high school and I've never been as interested in computers and communications as I was then. I never ventured into the "dark" side like OP--I was too scared of my parents--so I ran a legit FidoNET BBS using the RemoteAccess BBS software and the Frontdoor mailer (and later, Maximus and BinkleyTerm). The most amazing thing about it all was that it wa…
There's a Website that helps you find FidoNet address in case you've forgotten it, it helped me find mine: http://nodehist.fidonet.org.ua/?address=2%3A400%2F466
WWIV BBS and "doors" (games, basically) were my intro into system administration and further experience programming back then. I had so much fun setting that up. My parents even let me have 2 telephone lines so that I could have 2 users (plus someone in the house) on at the same time. I had exactly 1 multiplayer "door", but that was fine. My favorite door was Legend of the Red Dragon (LoRD) and I remember playing it…
This is awesome, thanks for sharing. For yet more nostalgia, I recommend you check out the /r/bbs Reddit, or for EVEN MORE nostalgia, take a look at ENiGMA BBS - it's BBS software developed in Node and can be spun up on any Linux box - https://github.com/NuSkooler/enigma-bbs/ . Thanks again, enjoyed this thread!
Anyone play TradeWars 2002? That's what I was doing in '93 on my BBS.
Dude, I still play TW2002! SWATH is the best modern helper I know about: http://swath.net/ My meagre collection of SWATH scripts: https://github.com/irtnog/swath-scripts/tree/master/src The ICE9 game server: http://www.oregonsouth.com/ice9/ I don't know if ICE9 still does this, but they used to have a bunch of interesting customizations, like where sectors 1-2000 were a lightly regulated federation space were connect…