Dude just download Pablo Draw or even better, Moebius and learn it. If you’re going to run a BBS you have to do it at some point. Now’s the time to get those skillz back. Also, you already have a reference image so that’s much easier.
I think you have some good points, though I do not agree fully on them all. Responses to each:
I really like this. I've been working on my own soft in Node.js, and I think a "out of the box hookup" may have to be something I invest some time in after some of the higher priority bugs are worked out. There are a lot of good technologies out there for auto discovery, message passing, and even distributed protocols (e.g. no central server required) that could be looked at for a slick design here. Another option may be to leverage an existing system such as Discus REST APIs.
I'm writing ENiGMA½ in Node.js for this very reason.
I agree that the web must be integrated in various ways, but I completely disagree about "web based not text based". We already have the web. It's an everyday thing, and one can build vibrant web apps and communities with it very easily. When you really think about it, these are just modern extensions to what a BBS is/was back in the day. Text based ANSI/ASCII is where it's at for a lot of us. Nostalgia? Sure, but I don't think that should (with other modern features) prevent people from joining in the fun.
In today's world it's easy to make real time multi-system games, but again I disagree about making them non-textual, because again, we already have those dime a dozen. However, there are some very interesting things one can do now with larger (> 80x25) surface areas and fast connections. Take a look at what Josh Renaud has been doing with parallax scrolling and such. Very cool!
For me this is SQLite, though it could easily be PostgreSQL, MySQL, or a NoSQL such as MongoDB.
Sure
Absolutely. Real time all sorts of stuff honestly. This stuff is cake (and expected) these days.
I'll second Mystic.
In my case, I use a USB-to-SATA cable (like this https://www.amazon.com/SATA-Drive-Adapter-Converter-Power/dp/B07PVX682Q/ref=sr_1_2_sspa) and a 2.5" SATA drive as the BBS storage media. Too much writing to the SD card will make it fail over time.
With a Pi3, you can power 1 of those SATA drives off the USB port.
I put the whole thing in a NAS case for the Pi and hid it behind my TV with a wired network port into my router.
i think it is a matter of 'when' ... TW2002 was insanely popular from what I remember but I honestly never had the patience for it.
I'm also the one that got bored, and found the Trade Wars 200/QuixPlus pascal source, and ported it to C. there is no bigbang, and I've only played against myself for 5-10 minutes until I got bored but yeah...
I asked the TW guy about the source, and was banned from his site for even asking. So yeah... LOL
I'd say if you're making a profit on the BBS you should get permission for and register everything. If it's just a hobby board I wouldn't sweat it too hard. I got some ANSi from a couple artists on AgoraNet (A Fidonet type network, has a nice Ansi Artist following), a couple of them said they were doing some freebie commissions.
I gave them the overall theme, got the art, changed a couple typos, made sure the artist mark was clearly visible and that was that.
I'd also recommend Pablodraw which is a great ANSI drawing program. A little practice and you might surprise yourself
So, Citadel is maintained in this form:
http://www.citadel.org/doku.php
There is a link on the download page to Source. I am guessing this can be compiled on OS/X and the only reason a package isn't available is because no one has taken the effort to create one.
What operating systems are supported?
> Citadel is intended to run on any Unix-like operating system. The primary development platform is Linux, running on 32-bit Intel. It is also known to work on Solaris (version 8 or newer), FreeBSD (version 6.0 or newer), OpenBSD (version 4.0 or newer), and Mac OS X (version 10.1 or newer).
The link to the source is currently broken. Probably you could just compile it if you nudge the Citadel gods to fix the link.
It's not free, but it's the best one I've found. Far better than Juice and everything else mentioned.
The internet archive has some BBS archives that contain some FLI/FLC files: https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28collection%3Adiskdrives%20OR%20mediatype%3Adiskdrives%29%20AND%20-mediatype%3Acollection&sort=-downloads
You can play it on archive.org with no ads. You still won't be able to save progress, though. For that, you need to download the game (you can do so on archive.org) and run it under DOSBox.
If you don’t know it already, you could try installing the Homebrew version of Python from https://brew.sh. Brew is a community maintained package manager and contains many many well tested linux-style packages and will most likely include a slightly more compatible version of Python. MacOS may have become the best OS in the world, but their bundled software (in this case Python) errs on the side of caution and isn’t always as up-to-date as you may think. Also, you never know what internals the Apple engineers may have fiddled with to make the installed version of Python more ‘OSXy’.
I highly recommend brew. With it, you basically end up with a pretty OS, but with the power of all the linux tools that are normally missing. It’s the first software I install when setting up any Mac.
Here's the tl;dr:
Well a string like 'reddit.com:80' isn't a phone number, so maybe that's part of your problem... Your client might be expecting that to be a phone # and doing something funny to it.
Maybe try setting up a speed dial? Or you could try using PuTTY[1] or TeraTerm[2], both should support Win 9x at least.
[1] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
[2] https://ttssh2.osdn.jp/index.html.en
It's a dos program, so at the command line, to convert an existing file you'd run this:
ans2asc filename.ans filename.asc
where filename.ans is an existing ansi file that you've created or edited in an ansi editor, like pablodraw... and filename.asc is the new file you're creating.
ex: ans2asc main.ans main.asc
You can read more here: http://wiki.synchro.net/util:ans2asc
...and pablodraw can be found here: http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw/
The artpacks on Sixteen Colors can also be browsed from directly within PabloDraw, which is a great program for viewing and editing ASCII/ANSI/RIP art on modern platforms.
There are several ways to get on the very few Dial-up BBSes these days.
I vave done this two ways with Windows 10. For the software, I have used both modern SyncTerm and also using old school Telix for DOS in DOSBOX.
As far as a modem is concerned, you can either use an external modem via a serial port (some ASUS motherboards still have them, but you need to buy the actual serial port jack) or you can use a USB modem. I have a USR Courier modem from 1996 that still works and this is primarily how I call BBSes, using Telix and DOSBOX. You may also be able to use a USB to Serial adapter, but I haven't tried this method yet.
Be careful you don't buy a "Winmodem" which means that it does NOT have a controller built in. Most are of this variety and will NOT work!
Recently, I bought a Zoom USB modem on Amazon that interestingly enough DOES have a built in controller. I have successfully used this with SyncTerm and Windows 10 with a laptop!
Here's a link to the Zoom USB modem if you wish to get one. If I recall it's around $50.
If you're serious about getting things set up, send me a DM here, or visit the BBS Corner & Telnet BBS Guide group on Facebook and I can help you there.
Actually, you might want to check this out if you're familiar with linux and you have an android phone.. Termux
I haven't tried this method myself but seeing as syncTERM is compilable on ARM, I think it should be theoretically possible to compile and run it using the app above...somehow.
I have not tried this app, but it looks promising: ANSI Terminal Mobile by Hordequester ($1.00): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hordeq.ansiterminalmobile
However, on a tablet (held portrait instead of landscape), my.ftelnet.ca is really a great solution. Even on my S5 phone it works pretty well.