What are Doors?
Bulletin board systems can link their users to online
games, called "Doors". Most doors are in text, though some feature ANSI graphics
and animation, and some even include more elaborate graphics and music. A neat
thing about doors is that most of them are multi-player games, where BBS users
can compete or cooperate with each other. (This was, of course, VERY exciting
back in the 80's when almost nobody had internet access!)
Most doors can
handle only one user at a time. Remember that back in BBS days, a server could
only accept one caller at a time unless it had multiple modems installed! Some
"multi-node" doors can handle multiple players at the same time - chatting, or
dueling, or teaming up against the world. Each BBS caller generally had a daily
time limit - 30 or 60 minutes, say - in order to let other users log on. The BBS
would disconnect them at the end of that time. Most doors limit the amount of
stuff a player can do in one day, so that even a large, complex door gets played
in 5-to-50-minute chunks.
Most doors were distributed as Shareware.
Sysops could download a limited version of the game for free, but would have to
pay $10 or $20 or $50 dollars to get the full version. The unregistered version
might have an annoying delay at startup, or limit the power-levels that users
can reach, or disable all sorts of features.
Some Favorite Doors
Here are some doors that I particularly like:
Operation: Overkill - My favorite door of all, an RPG set in a
futuristic wasteland. It reminds me a little bit of the Fallout series of games.
I love exploring grid-based map, and saving up water crystals to buy a newer,
better next weapon.
Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD) - This came out after I left the BBS
scene, but it's a superb game. Unlike most doors, it's extensible - so instead
of just spawning imitators, it gave rise to various add-ons. Maybe I'll write
more on this one after I figure out what's going on.
Usurper - Another fairly recent door; provides a somewhat
Shadowrun-ish blend of trolls and elves and guns and magic and sex and drugs.
There are computer NPCs, which is a neat idea (and makes the game feel less
empty to the first few players)
Trade Wars - A classic, which people still play (a lot). Fly around
space, buying and selling goods. After a while, you can construct new planets,
fight aliens, and have huge wars with other players. I remember seeing a Trade
Wars client, way back when, that would auto-trade between two star systems;
clients have come a long way since then. (Creating "bots" to play door games is
sometimes as fun as playing the games themselves)
Barren Realms Elite - A conquest game, which is now played on
inter-bbs leagues(!), making for some very large-scale war indeed. Rather
simple, with very short turns.
Thieves Guild - More info when (if) find it again
If you've
played BBS doors before, I'm sure you have plenty of favorites. I don't have the
space here to talk about all the doors. Maybe I'll put some sort of top-100 list
up at some point.
Breeds of door
Many doors fall into one of a few categories. That's
partly because the really successful doors spawned a host of imitators. There
are a lot of Trade Wars clones out there, for instance. Some types of
doors you'll see over and over are:
Empire building - Games like Global War, Barren Realms Elite. The
focus is on expanding and improving your kingdom, and on fighting other players
(and forming alliances).
Duel games - Direct combat with other players. Typically, one player
is logged in, and the opponents read the combat results when they next log on.
(Some newer games, like LORD, allow direct PvP combat). Games like Food Fight,
Air Combat, and The Pit are focused on duels.
RPGs - Role-playing games generally feature exploration, scumming for
experience and gold, and stat increases. Games like Operation Overkill and
Dungeon Master fit this description. Most RPGs do include duels versus other
players, so there's a very fine line between the categories "duelling game" and
an "RPG".
Trade games - Most of these are based on Trade Wars 2002, one of the
best (and most popular) doors ever written.
Trivia quiz doors - Easy to program, but hard to make really fun.
Text adventures - Some puzzle-driven adventure games ("Interactive
Fiction", if you prefer) in the style of classics like Zork. And some
menu-driven, "Choose Your Own Adventure" style games.
There are
thousands of doors out there. Most are not especially good. Doors are reasonably
easy to program, and many of the doors produced are amateurish, or derivative,
or buggy. However, there are some true gems out there. And I think that even
lackluster doors are worth preserving for historic interest and for nostalgia
value.
More Door Thoughts
What makes some doors fun, and others simply dull?
Perhaps it's a matter of having just the right amount of interaction between
users. Interaction with users is central to why doors are fun, and most
full-featured doors do include their own mail and message systems. But you don't
want TOO MUCH interaction. Otherwise, the first user to log on has nothing to
do, and a newbie has no hope of doing anything but getting pounded by veterans.
I think Trade Wars strikes a happy medium - you can always make some money by
trading, but (especially in the mid-to-late game) you have to pay close
attention to what other players are doing, and be ready to counter their
schemes.
Doors are a lot like MUDs. MUDs grew up around Unix systems on
university campuses, and doors grew up on BBSes in people's basements, but many
people played both MUDs and doors. Most doors are much simpler than even a
simple MUD system like DikuMUD. I think doors would make great mini-games for a
modern MUD, since MUDding can get monotonous (though still addictive) after a
while. The "chunked" gameplay of most doors (only a certain number of minutes or
turns allowed per day) has the great side effect that players can be competitive
without spending a lot of time online. Most MUDs are largely a contest of
committment - the top players spend hours online every day, and a casual player
- even a skilled one - has NO HOPE of topping the player ladders.
Notes on Inner Workings
To run a door, the BBS program first writes out
a a "drop file" (such as Door.sys, a common format); this file tells the door
who is playing. Drop files are a somewhat awkward way for the BBS to communicate
with the door, but they do reduce the need for a lot of command-line arguments).
There are many, many drop file formats out there. Most BBS systems can write
several, and most doors can read several, and if you're unlucky enough not to
have a match, there are conversion tools.
One tricky thing about doors
is that the program can access the modem in two ways - it can access the modem's
COM port directly, or it can use interrupt 14h (the FOSSIL interface). Older
doors tend to access the COM port directly, while newer doors generally support
FOSSIL. FOSSIL was created, in part, to free door authors from worrying about
differences between modems. If you want to run doors on a Windows system, you
probably want to use TCP/IP connections instead of a modem. To do this, you need
a FOSSIL driver (such as NetFoss), or a COM-port redirector (like
NetSerial), depending on how the door works.
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