BBS door

A door in a bulletin board system (BBS) is an interface between the BBS software and an external application.[1] The term is also used to refer to the external application, a computer program that runs outside of the main bulletin board program. Sometimes called external programs, doors are the most common way to add games, utilities, and other extensions to BBSes.[2] Because BBSes typically depended on the telephone system, BBSes and door programs tended to be local in nature, unlike modern Internet games and applications.[2]

From the 1990s on, most BBS software had the capability to "drop to" doors. Several standards were developed for passing connection and user information to doors; this was usually done with "dropfiles", small binary or text files dropped into known locations in the BBS's file system. Most doors were responsible for operating the serial port or other communications device directly until returning control to the BBS. Later development of FOSSIL drivers have allowed both BBSes and their doors to communicate without being responsible for direct operation of the communications hardware.

Door games

A major use of doors is for door games: computer games played on the BBS.[3] These games included strategy games such as TradeWars 2002, Food Fight!, [4] Solar Realms Elite,[5] Space Dynasty, Usurper,[6] and Barren Realms Elite.[7] There were also role-playing games (RPG), often derived from earlier email-based games. One such game was Seth Robinson's Legend of the Red Dragon,[8] and another popular dystopian RPG: Operation: Overkill,[4] another was Mutants!. BBSes often published high scores, encouraging players to beat others.[9]

InterBBS leagues allowed users of different BBSes to compete against each other in the same game. A modern version of this known as BBSlink exists allowing sysops to offer door games on their BBS which are hosted on a remote server, thereby increasing the user base of the game.

Other door applications

While many of the most popular and memorable BBS doors have been games, numerous doors had non-entertainment applications such as user polls or the time bank, permitting users to time-shift their rationed BBS use. Frequently they act as a front-end to themed databases on subject such as astrology, numerology and fortune-telling, recipes, weather prediction, personal ads (sometimes with additional match-making functionality), classified ads and "for sale" listings (sometimes permitting auctions), BBS lists, and parting comments from the most recent BBS callers.

gollark: Because the economy is the reason we *produce* things. Important things we need for, well, stopping epidemics and treating people.
gollark: It's not *that* disastrous and the economy is really important.
gollark: The UK is apparently considering shutting down schools. I'm not sure whether it's sensible or not, but it'll definitely be problematic for me.
gollark: It does seem like the governments responding to this have two states: completely ignoring the problem and wildly implementing over-the-top restrictions too late.
gollark: They do have other non-coronavirus stuff to compute too, don't they?

See also

References
  1. "A Glossary of BBS Terms". InfoWorld: 41. 15 Aug 1988.
  2. Wolf, Mark J P (2008). The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to PlayStation and Beyond. ABC-CLIO. p. 155.
  3. "BBS Door games". Moby Games. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  4. Edwards, Benj (October 1, 2010). "The Internet's Forgotten Games: BBS Door Games". PC Magazine. Retrieved May 28, 2016Slide 10 of 12.
  5. Wolf, Mark J P (2012). Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology, and Art of Gaming. ABC-CLIO. p. 568.
  6. Wolf, Mark (2012). Encyclopedia of Video Games: A-L. ABC-CLIO. p. 80. ISBN 978-0-313-37936-9.
  7. Morrow, Blaine Victor (1996). Dial Up!: Gale's Bulletin Board Locator. Gale.
  8. Tresca, Michael J (2010). The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games. McFarland. pp. 93–94.
  9. Shefski, William J. (May 1993). "A survey of gems to be found on private bulletin board systems". Computer Gaming World. p. 64. Retrieved 7 July 2014.


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