Improving Worldgroup

[Malakai]

I've just been pondering ideas that might would make Worldgroup better, IMO.

#1: Being able to select Telnet/Rlogin ports for both servers and clients
If DSpain ever gets his ICO done with these features, it'll be of great help

#2: Making worldgroup 2.x and 3.x be able to compile a worldgroup manager that doesn't have to be patched on any current operating systems.

#3: Adding Javascript support as an alternative to c+ modules, which would make it easier and probably faster to program some programs and games for worldgroup.

#4: Possibly adding its own unique scripting language, which is what a lot of the BBS systems of the past and present have used. While not as powerful as c++ or javascript, it will allow about any non-programmer to make their own small programs/utilities. I could see some thing like this great for making global commands, time banks, one-liners, or any thing.

#5: Inter-BBS gaming. I don't know what the hell the people who created worldgroup were thinking over the years, as inter-bbs gaming would have been very successful on worldgroup. I know there was some type of score-sharing programs on like mutants and such but can't ever remember any game where you competed with other bbs systems.

There are a few DOS/W32 bbs systems I go on, and I think about the only reason why people log on to them is for Inter-BBS gaming. Having an average of 8 users on-line most of the time, all playing different BRE games for different Inter-BBS Networks.. Very few people playing the local games. That's a lot of people on-line for a dos/w32 board.

#6: Update the NNTP server to automatically pull newsgroups from the news servers. I'm on a static IP myself, and every time we get a power surge, my IP changes, and I lose newsgroups for a week. Even right now, my news groups are not working.

#7: As stated before, the IRC client just is really outdated as well. It doesn't support any services, to secure nicknames and such on servers, and it doesn't support any type of scripting commands, which would also be nice. I would even be in favour of just having IRCII or BX ported to worldgroup.

#8: When I first started messing with the new BBS, I have been wondering if it was possible to also use worldgroup manager for some thing even bigger than itself.

The interface and such just isn't that great, and the games that are available haven't been updated in probably 8-10 years. They may have been great in the win 3.11 days, but not now.

My vision - Mini MMORPGs - could worldgroup be able to hold large databases for games, be able to serve these games effectively, and would worldgroup manager be able to both launch an external program and tie it in to its system resources and communicate through all of the programs and worldgroup server correctly?

No, I'm not talking about porting over everquest or world of warcraft, but let's say a programmer wanted to build a really awesome but low-resource on-line strategy or rpg. Not some graphically-intense game, but some thing around the 16 or 32-bit console gaming graphics.

I figure a turn-based strategy game probably wouldn't use that much resources on the server side, but I suppose it depends on how many items, monsters, spells, levels, items, etc there were in the game, how movement is done, how many people played the game at once, etc.

Many times, I've played an older game called Dark Wizard, which is an older 16-bit mega cd game which is sort of a mix between strategy, rpg, and simulation, with its main emphasis on strategy and have thought "If this game was just on-line, it would be awesome," but there are a lot of other games that would be great if they were on-line. Romance and the three kingdoms, genghis kahn, nobunaga's ambition, tenbu, tenka fubu. I'm not saying that any one should rip the games off, but take the good, and expand them for on-line play is a great idea. They pretty much all originally came from the concepts of board games like RISK I believe.

The main problems I see with the way they are, and even most of the BBS war games is that they're so limited to how many countries or territories are in the game. It probably wouldn't be too much harder to make X ammount more kingdoms, or even have the game set to expand the map with each new player. Set the max ammount of kingdoms to like 500 total and then have it so that any one who doesn't play in 30 days is deleted, to keep it cleaned up a bit.

Could worldgroup handle doing some thing like this? or would you have to use some type of sql server?

[Questman]

#1: Being able to select Telnet/Rlogin ports for both servers and clients

Actually, to be able to set ports for all internet services would be appropriate, including web, ftp, sftp, ssh, etc. And adding ssh.

#2: Making worldgroup 2.x and 3.x be able to compile a worldgroup manager that doesn't have to be patched on any current operating systems.

Well, the key is to have a manager that is either Java cross-platform or .NET, rather than 16 bit Windows that is there today.

#3: Adding Javascript support as an alternative to c+ modules, which would make it easier and probably faster to program some programs and games for worldgroup.

Apples and Oranges. However, exposing the API to Java could allow Java-based modules.

Something similar could also work nicely with the web stuff by providing a plug-in to Apache to further integrate with the web.

AJAX should be a big component of this suite too, which IS Javascript aalong with XML, etc.

#4: Possibly adding its own unique scripting language, which is what a lot of the BBS systems of the past and present have used. While not as powerful as c++ or javascript, it will allow about any non-programmer to make their own small programs/utilities. I could see some thing like this great for making global commands, time banks, one-liners, or any thing.

They thought of this - I have the source to a prototype BBS system that was entirely written in a script like this - Galacticomm did it.

That said, I'm not sure if it's useful. Better to not go the proprietary route.
Better to include scripting hooks through standard coding schemes.

#5: Inter-BBS gaming. I don't know what the hell the people who created worldgroup were thinking over the years, as inter-bbs gaming would have been very successful on worldgroup. I know there was some type of score-sharing programs on like mutants and such but can't ever remember any game where you competed with other bbs systems.

There are a few DOS/W32 bbs systems I go on, and I think about the only reason why people log on to them is for Inter-BBS gaming. Having an average of 8 users on-line most of the time, all playing different BRE games for different Inter-BBS Networks.. Very few people playing the local games. That's a lot of people on-line for a dos/w32 board.

It was thought of, actually. Graphic Wares/Wizard software was going to do something, and I think a few others had started it too... problem was, things were going in the tank fast, and the best add-on guys switched to Internet development over WG development to feed their families.

InterBBS isn't so good on dialup networks.. works best on persistent connections.

#6: Update the NNTP server to automatically pull newsgroups from the news servers. I'm on a static IP myself, and every time we get a power surge, my IP changes, and I lose newsgroups for a week. Even right now, my news groups are not working.

So you're a dynamic IP, not static. But anyway, Newsgroup support should be seamless.. it should do it in the background while the system is online. Same with Fido...

#7: As stated before, the IRC client just is really outdated as well. It doesn't support any services, to secure nicknames and such on servers, and it doesn't support any type of scripting commands, which would also be nice. I would even be in favour of just having IRCII or BX ported to worldgroup.

Right.

#8: When I first started messing with the new BBS, I have been wondering if it was possible to also use worldgroup manager for some thing even bigger than itself.

The interface and such just isn't that great, and the games that are available haven't been updated in probably 8-10 years. They may have been great in the win 3.11 days, but not now.

It was originally meant to compete with Notes and GroupWise. It just never evolved there. It still could.

My vision - Mini MMORPGs - could worldgroup be able to hold large databases for games, be able to serve these games effectively, and would worldgroup manager be able to both launch an external program and tie it in to its system resources and communicate through all of the programs and worldgroup server correctly?

No, I'm not talking about porting over everquest or world of warcraft, but let's say a programmer wanted to build a really awesome but low-resource on-line strategy or rpg. Not some graphically-intense game, but some thing around the 16 or 32-bit console gaming graphics.

I figure a turn-based strategy game probably wouldn't use that much resources on the server side, but I suppose it depends on how many items, monsters, spells, levels, items, etc there were in the game, how movement is done, how many people played the game at once, etc.

Many times, I've played an older game called Dark Wizard, which is an older 16-bit mega cd game which is sort of a mix between strategy, rpg, and simulation, with its main emphasis on strategy and have thought "If this game was just on-line, it would be awesome," but there are a lot of other games that would be great if they were on-line. Romance and the three kingdoms, genghis kahn, nobunaga's ambition, tenbu, tenka fubu. I'm not saying that any one should rip the games off, but take the good, and expand them for on-line play is a great idea. They pretty much all originally came from the concepts of board games like RISK I believe.

The main problems I see with the way they are, and even most of the BBS war games is that they're so limited to how many countries or territories are in the game. It probably wouldn't be too much harder to make X ammount more kingdoms, or even have the game set to expand the map with each new player. Set the max ammount of kingdoms to like 500 total and then have it so that any one who doesn't play in 30 days is deleted, to keep it cleaned up a bit.

Could worldgroup handle doing some thing like this? or would you have to use some type of sql server?

Yes. And maybe, but that isn't a big deal. Worldgroup should lose the Btrieve and switch to MySQL (or other SQL-based RDBMS) at this point.

[Malakai]

Well, the thing about the NNTP server is that DNEWS caches the IP address. So, once DNEWs connects to the address (nostalgiabbs.servebbs.net) for the first time, it doesn't matter if the IP changes. DNEWs is pointing to the first IP it had, until the cache is cleared. It would just be a lot better if worldgroup did every thing itself with out worrying about DNEWs.

[ccs]

Well, the thing about the NNTP server is that DNEWS caches the IP address. So, once DNEWs connects to the address (nostalgiabbs.servebbs.net) for the first time, it doesn't matter if the IP changes. DNEWs is pointing to the first IP it had, until the cache is cleared. It would just be a lot better if worldgroup did every thing itself with out worrying about DNEWs.

I think what he wants is that the WG server would suck the news off the server. Dnews does this by acting like a nntp reader. And posting the same way. I know that is not the way nntp is designed but most bbs's dont have a large number of groups and in a way it makes more sense to suck what you want rather then have a provider set up a small feed.

Joe

[Malakai]

Well, I would probably do a lot more feeds, but I don't want to take up so much bandwidth from some one just because I can for free. I'd probably do about 300+ instead of the 38 or 40 or whatever I chose.

Well, the thing about the NNTP server is that DNEWS caches the IP address. So, once DNEWs connects to the address (nostalgiabbs.servebbs.net) for the first time, it doesn't matter if the IP changes. DNEWs is pointing to the first IP it had, until the cache is cleared. It would just be a lot better if worldgroup did every thing itself with out worrying about DNEWs.

I think what he wants is that the WG server would suck the news off the server. Dnews does this by acting like a nntp reader. And posting the same way. I know that is not the way nntp is designed but most bbs's dont have a large number of groups and in a way it makes more sense to suck what you want rather then have a provider set up a small feed.

Joe

[dspain]

My vision - Mini MMORPGs - could worldgroup be able to hold large databases for games, be able to serve these games effectively, and would worldgroup manager be able to both launch an external program and tie it in to its system resources and communicate through all of the programs and worldgroup server correctly?

No, I'm not talking about porting over everquest or world of warcraft, but let's say a programmer wanted to build a really awesome but low-resource on-line strategy or rpg. Not some graphically-intense game, but some thing around the 16 or 32-bit console gaming graphics.

I figure a turn-based strategy game probably wouldn't use that much resources on the server side, but I suppose it depends on how many items, monsters, spells, levels, items, etc there were in the game, how movement is done, how many people played the game at once, etc.

Many times, I've played an older game called Dark Wizard, which is an older 16-bit mega cd game which is sort of a mix between strategy, rpg, and simulation, with its main emphasis on strategy and have thought "If this game was just on-line, it would be awesome," but there are a lot of other games that would be great if they were on-line. Romance and the three kingdoms, genghis kahn, nobunaga's ambition, tenbu, tenka fubu. I'm not saying that any one should rip the games off, but take the good, and expand them for on-line play is a great idea. They pretty much all originally came from the concepts of board games like RISK I believe.

The main problems I see with the way they are, and even most of the BBS war games is that they're so limited to how many countries or territories are in the game. It probably wouldn't be too much harder to make X ammount more kingdoms, or even have the game set to expand the map with each new player. Set the max ammount of kingdoms to like 500 total and then have it so that any one who doesn't play in 30 days is deleted, to keep it cleaned up a bit.

Could worldgroup handle doing some thing like this? or would you have to use some type of sql server?

mal yeah it can be done and as rick said losing btrieve all together is whats best.
i got source codes for both infibase and powerlink which uses a totally diff db program than bt, however from what i have found out playing with it is its a bit laggy.
for something like using it to make a registry of users or something not a problem.
but a game with constant read/write was laggy.

for something of that nature even if someone did develop it it would prolyl cost somewhere around 4k
thats just an estimate, i actually stripped phpbb down into a shell one day and reworked it to act like a server like wg,aol,etc.. and it ran rather good i did it for nastyplaymates.net
they played with wg for close to 2yrs and found it lacked what a corporate site would need in terms of competing with that market of system types.
yes wg is user friendly and cost efficient but if you buy the "non legitimate" versions of wg from netvillage llc its like $9,995.00 for the enterprise server and out of the box lacks close to 100 features you can get if you buy a $3,000 dollar php/sql program

back in 2002 i actually helped a slew of adult sites go online promoting worldgroup 3.2 and all of em swithed by 2004

wg 3.2/3.3 even the infamous 4.0 <<jesus i hate even say8ing 4.0 after what i spent, lol>

what needs to happen is someone needs to aqquire the complete source package no libraries whatsoever and start from the beginning and redo the complete setup removing things like 256 user max for one. the db routines all of it and make a complete server that handles the market of today on the internet.
i actually attempted to do it last year but lacked so many of the sources that i scrapped the project october of last year.

and to be honest until those sources can be found wg will never evolve, well nto found people got em but trust someone enough to let em take it and run.

[Malakai]

I just want to be clear. What I'm talking about is letting BBS users play these mini MMORGPs and such, and running it as part of the BBS. Thinking 256 or more players would be playing at once would almost be pointless, because it probably would never happen these days. So, let's say less than 75 visitors were on the largest bbs systems playing it.

Locatha actually made multiplayer on-line door games, with a vga terminal. I don't think they were that popular, and it was pretty hard to get it working correctly. I remember playing only 1 or 2 of those games: gridlock and some type of rpg. The main problem with that system was that you had to dial in to a bbs with a terminal program, then do some other stuff, exit out of the terminal, and load up their terminal program. Now, if worldgroup manager could be able to do some thing like this, and just either download all of the information it needed on logon as updated, or download the stuff when a visitor selects that game.

If I were going to run a stand-alone RPG or what ever, I would skip worldgroup all together. Pretty much all of the small and large on-line games use sql. Everquest, legend of the green dragon, pso, etc..

I understand why you said worldgroup might need more than 256 user limits, for corperate, download, or adult sites and such, but it would be a lot cheaper for those companies just to get a good version of linux or BSD for free.

[Questman]

Dan -what sources need to be found? I have the entire source code to the product including the GSBL, utilities, gcommlib, etc.

[dspain]

Dan -what sources need to be found? I have the entire source code to the product including the GSBL, utilities, gcommlib, etc.

i know you got them. im talking about the little guys like me
i have been hard atwork on a seperate pc improving the wg3.x the best i can with what i have to work with but alot of it comes from areas i cannot access the source to.
also the c/s sources i cannot unlock off of cd although i use the code sent to me from netvillage back in jan.

[Malakai]

Also, another thing that I've noticed is that if you put an rlogin or telnet link, let's say to space quest game server, trade wars game server, maybe a stand-alone mud on your server, or synchronet door game server, it only displays that person in either telnet client or rlogin client.

Adding an option to show where the visitors are would be nice, through some type of command line switch or whatever. Some thing like:

192.168.1.101 /p23 /n:Trade Wars 2002
or
192.168.1.101 /p2112 /n:Space Quest 2012
or
192.168.1.101 /p512 /n:Door Game Server
/n = short for name
you get the picture... It'd make it easier for visitors to see what type of games others are playing, where to find those people, etc, because once they're in those modules, there is no paging or global commands, etc..

[ccs]

Also, another thing that I've noticed is that if you put an rlogin or telnet link, let's say to space quest game server, trade wars game server, maybe a stand-alone mud on your server, or synchronet door game server, it only displays that person in either telnet client or rlogin client.

Adding an option to show where the visitors are would be nice, through some type of command line switch or whatever. Some thing like:

192.168.1.101 /p23 /n:Trade Wars 2002
or
192.168.1.101 /p2112 /n:Space Quest 2012
or
192.168.1.101 /p512 /n:Door Game Server
/n = short for name
you get the picture... It'd make it easier for visitors to see what type of games others are playing, where to find those people, etc, because once they're in those modules, there is no paging or global commands, etc..

I have this now with the DMA Client/Server. At the end of the module string I add #LOCATION_DESC and add a text varable to the users online listing and thats it!

check it out on my bbs..
telnet://bbs.retrobbsgames.net
Joe

[Malakai]

Yeah, I went to high society forums last night, and there is some pretty surprising info on there.. Apparently, there will be no trade wars 2002 worldgroup nt release ever. So, we do need some thing like that for twgs or whatever more than before..

What also shocked me is that the gameport deal is looking pretty bleak too. That means mutants or entertainment pack may never be for sale again, and any that are available may never go to a more competitive pricing scheme.

I wouldn't mind owning all of their c/s games, for when/if worldgroup was able to work in windows xp with out patching it. I have some fond memories of the old ladies playing crossroads and wheel of fame all day long on some of the boards I use to log on to. I know the c/s programs wouldn't be used very much, but I did have my first caller in c/s a couple days ago. It'd be there for nostalgic purposes and for the 1 in 50 or whatever callers that use worldgroup manager. Like I said, I wouldn't mind owning the whole collection, but not at their price.. I think $100-$150 for all of them is a good price.

Also, I've been telnetting in to numerous boards throughout the years since dialup has died, and especially worldgroup boards in the last 4 months or so, and I've come to the conclusion that there are really only two games worth over the $50 price tags: Tournament LORD and MajorMUD.

Legend of the red dragon is just so popular that every one knows about it. I'd hesitate to call it a great game, but it's just been there throughout the dos bbs systems, the mbbs systems, and now worldgroup nt systems..

MajorMud brings both people and some times donations to help run the system. When I log on to any mbbs/wg system that has majormud, it has people playing in it. When I log on to any mbbs/wg system that doesn't, there may be 1 or 2 visitors, and then again, there may be none.

Here are the cons I see with having majormud on your bbs though:
#1: MajorMud is expensive ($2000 for the complete setup?)
#2: more cpu/memory resources required
#3: more internet bandwidth required, for more visitors and multi-playing
#4: having to police script kiddies, hackers, and people finding exploits
#5: MajorMud takes over almost all other aspects of a bbs. So, other games or features on the board will be neglected
#6: When dealing with donation-ware or pay to play, or pay and get some thing cool in the game (use multiple accounts for multiplay, or get special items) then you have to worry about keeping the board up all of the time. Expensive ups backup systems are required and possibly an on-call paid technician to make sure downtime is reduced to minimum..

When I go in to bbses with wilderlands in them, no signs of people playing. The rose, swords of chaos, oltima 2000, tele-arena, the adventure games, and many others are just neglected. At one time, all of these games were popular.

When I first started getting in to worldgroup, I would have been willing to pay at least $150 for mutants alone, because of both the fond memories and how much I like the game alone, but after much reading, talking to others, seeing what's popular and not, etc, it's just not worth that any more. Just because they were popular 10-15 years ago doesn't mean they're going to be popular now. There are several boards with mutants for dos wg and a few with the nt one, and they get very little play.

I see more people in GE (freeware) and galactiwars than any of the above games mentioned.

I know a lot of people have heard me talk about crossroads of the elements as well, but it was way less popular than mutants back then. The world was small, what you could do was very limitted, and when you die, you lose 3 levels I believe. I was just part of the small group on several bbs systems that played it (there never was more than 6-8 players, even on the largest system i logged on to)..

With all of that being said, if my board gets enough regular visitors and such, next year I might be forced to put majormud on it. I have nothing against majormud itself, and I know it's a good game, as I've played it a little bit, but my feeling is that's been done before, and most worldgroup systems that have a lot of visitors have majormud. That's their success.

[dspain]

[quote="Malakai"]Yeah, I went to high society forums last night, and there is some pretty surprising info on there.. Apparently, there will be no trade wars 2002 worldgroup nt release ever. So, we do need some thing like that for twgs or whatever more than before..

HVS actually released NT versions of tw2002.
i have a twgs up if you wanna link to it.
as far as your before post with dma/rlogin and name string i agree cause
those that have DMA for major tcp/ip is not gonna come close to the users that are gonna be running WG3.xx and want to offer those connectivety services.

What also shocked me is that the gameport deal is looking pretty bleak too. That means mutants or entertainment pack may never be for sale again, and any that are available may never go to a more competitive pricing scheme.

how did that mutants install go on your bbs? get with me ill start playing it seeing how it works and ill write up a clone.
my other clone project is on hold cause the user that was a die hard XROADS fan went to iraq so i had noone to help me with the mechaniocs.
ill begin playing on your system to see how it works and whala we'll have mutants back.
ill connect in today.


Also, I've been telnetting in to numerous boards throughout the years since dialup has died, and especially worldgroup boards in the last 4 months or so, and I've come to the conclusion that there are really only two games worth over the $50 price tags: Tournament LORD and
MajorMUD.

T-lord is a good short-hit game log in the bbs use your turns and roll on.
majormud is nothing ,more than a script haven.
i actually modified tele-arena I to be better than majormud but i cannot sell it but feel free to link to it if you want.



MajorMud brings both people and some times donations to help run the system. When I log on to any mbbs/wg system that has majormud, it has people playing in it. When I log on to any mbbs/wg system that doesn't, there may be 1 or 2 visitors, and then again, there may be none.

yeah but for players to donate to ya for majormud they want edits, and sysgo command cause they are too damned lazy to walk to their next area to script for for a month at a time.


Here are the cons I see with having majormud on your bbs though:
#1: MajorMud is expensive ($2000 for the complete setup?)

-> and not worth it.

#2: more cpu/memory resources required
-> v1.1o actually corrupts the db structure

#3: more internet bandwidth required, for more visitors and multi-playing
-> its a text mud you're ok on bandwidth unless they released a C/S

#4: having to police script kiddies, hackers, and people finding exploits
-> scripting and megamud is gonna happen, the game was built for scripting not live playing. thats why it takes so freakin long to get levels even newbies take hours just to get level 2


#5: MajorMud takes over almost all other aspects of a bbs. So, other games or features on the board will be neglected
-> depends on what ya got. tele-arena will actualyl beat out majormud
if some of my functions could be coded into the core of the game.

#6: When dealing with donation-ware or pay to play, or pay and get some thing cool in the game (use multiple accounts for multiplay, or get special items) then you have to worry about keeping the board up all of the time. Expensive ups backup systems are required and possibly an on-call paid technician to make sure downtime is reduced to minimum..
-> majormud is pretty stable and unless you get a cat error it reboots itself, UPS backup for power outages, nah my tele-arena bbs goes up and down and i got a slew of users, they get over it right quick and i charge to play in credits.


When I go in to bbses with wilderlands in them, no signs of people playing. The rose, swords of chaos, oltima 2000, tele-arena, the adventure games, and many others are just neglected. At one time, all of these games were popular.

majormud took over the aspect of muds and nobody else that was developing muds ever really looked at the direction majormud was heading.
i mean of all the WG muds out there look at the features of majormud vs other muds.
i emailed sean ferrell right after tele-arena gold was released asking him if he ever intended on adding skills,clans,higher allotments for monsters,items,etc...
his response was ta was designed to chat and play not script 24/7 he didnt wanna destroy what ta was.

well that was 1998 here in 2006 majormud still stands out like the statue of liberty in the bay.


I see more people in GE (freeware) and galactiwars than any of the above games mentioned.

yeah sci-fi attracts people i actually based a mud i got on my bbs called empire wars in the star wars flavor cause i really never seen a ta / majormud like muds built around science fiction.
and im getting bitched at about that cause some people that are running some win32 door games i wrote for synchronet want me to drop from wg module creation and make more door32.sys doors for synchronet, but something in me says wg can be salvaged just gonan take time.
so dont give up bro it will happen.

[Malakai]

*HVS actually released NT versions of tw2002.
*i have a twgs up if you wanna link to it.

Yeah, I didn't even know they made one. I thought rick compiled it for HS, and I read that HS took it down because it was crashing the board. I'm not that big of a trade wars fan, but I have a friend that loves it, and have had several others visitors ask me about it. The DOS version should be up in the next few days though.

*how did that mutants install go on your bbs? get with me ill start playing it seeing how it works and ill write up a clone.
*my other clone project is on hold cause the user that was a die hard XROADS fan went to iraq so i had noone to help me with the mechaniocs.
*ill begin playing on your system to see how it works and whala we'll have mutants back.
*ill connect in today.

It went great initially, but check out my other post called "Access Violation" for more information. The spell "CLONE" is crashing the whole board for some reason.

*yeah but for players to donate to ya for majormud they want edits, and sysgo command cause they are too damned lazy to walk to their next area to script for for a month at a time.

yeah, I really didn't expect to make money or enough donations to actually run all of the BBS if I did run majormud. 2 OR 3 players multiplaying 3 players each would probably take all of my upload bandwidth anyway. So, I couldn't compete with the big boys even if I wanted.

*majormud is pretty stable and unless you get a cat error it reboots itself, UPS backup for power outages, nah my tele-arena bbs goes up and down and i got a slew of users, they get over it right quick and i charge to play in credits.

The problem isn't majormud. I live in Florida... that's the problem. Yesterday, we probably had 7 power surges. They started around 4 pm, usually when people start coming home from work, which means lots of A/Cs kicked on at that time, because it's like 91-92 degrees outside (which probably translates to 104-106 inside), but later that afternoon, it started storming, more power surges. So, I definately need some type of backup power any way one day.

*yeah sci-fi attracts people i actually based a mud i got on my bbs called empire wars in the star wars flavor cause i really never seen a ta / majormud like muds built around science fiction.
*and im getting bitched at about that cause some people that are running some win32 door games i wrote for synchronet want me to drop from wg module creation and make more door32.sys doors for synchronet, but something in me says wg can be salvaged just gonan take time.
*so dont give up bro it will happen.

yeah a friend of mine is starting to get in to the space quest 2112 game server I have up. I think he keeps getting his ass handed to him fast though hehe. I've ventured in to it a few times, and it's a hard game.

Also, I don't see why you can't make a balance between the two systems, or clone off some of the better features that would connect to worldgroup kind of like a DMA server. It has some very easy qwk mail fido mailer system, it has instant email server with very little or no configuration required, and best of all, you can run dos door games better than the doors/ghost thing worldgroup has. I know that wouldn't stop the bitching from die-hard synchronet or dos-only bbs sysops/fans, but hey, it'd make worldgroup a little easier.

[dspain]

Also, I don't see why you can't make a balance between the two systems, or clone off some of the better features that would connect to worldgroup kind of like a DMA server. It has some very easy qwk mail fido mailer system, it has instant email server with very little or no configuration required, and best of all, you can run dos door games better than the doors/ghost thing worldgroup has. I know that wouldn't stop the bitching from die-hard synchronet or dos-only bbs sysops/fans, but hey, it'd make worldgroup a little easier.

well heres the thing, synchronet was up for commercial sale the same time mbbs and wg1&2 were. when rob started seeing the bbs scene dying due to the internet he immediately began development on a win32 version and it took him quite a while but synchronet 3.0 released and people loved it
now hes up to 3.13b and hes open sourced everything as well as his personal addons that used to be for sale.
and its so customizable i mean hell email verifiers that auto email codes and update the account is only done in like 22 lines of javascript.

worldgroup never launched a major overhaul.

and in my personal opinion from what i've gathered they didnt know how.
seems they got strykers code made some slight modifications but never did a total rewrite.

if ya look at alot of code it has remarks like

/* v6 mods or WG mods */

they just modded ti to work with the new setup.

synchronet has an active system count of 1140 and about 400 sysops are active in the dovenet echoes.

for wg to get to that level as rick has said and a few others here have said and ill say it again.

it needs to be totally rewritten to tdays standards.

theres alot of addons sources floating around but addons dont do ya any good if noone runs the software to add them to.

[Malakai]

One thing mutants had for it was that it was a good mindless pvp game, but it also had some thing going for it to make a few people play with more strategy (or to simply keep people interested longer). By dividing up different types of spells, it made it almost essential for hardcore mutants players to play more than 1 character. For example:

Thieves may have good thieving abilities, but they also have find, to help track other players on-line to kill them. They also have Area lock. Priests have ion force field.. Wizards have write, for writing scrolls, warriors have clone to clone rare items (eazy armor, satan armor, hellblade) and hercules. Mages have meteor swarm, which is good for wiping out whole flocks of enemies. They also have enchantment, which i believe makes an unbreakable item and probably gives it stats but can't remember.

All of these spells were essential for protecting your stores while still being able to steal from other peoples stores, making sure you had backups of rare items incase you did die, blocking off areas, picking up items too large for you to hold, finding people to kill, and just generally kicking some ass. No quests, no bologna.. just good ass kicking... lol

Even with all of that said, mutants was always still fun just to pick a warrior, dive in, and play with no knowledge of spells or any thing. Just pick up a melee weapon and armor and have at it..

how did that mutants install go on your bbs? get with me ill start playing it seeing how it works and ill write up a clone.
my other clone project is on hold cause the user that was a die hard XROADS fan went to iraq so i had noone to help me with the mechaniocs.
ill begin playing on your system to see how it works and whala we'll have mutants back.
ill connect in today.

[dspain]

I've just been pondering ideas that might would make Worldgroup better, IMO.

#1: Being able to select Telnet/Rlogin ports for both servers and clients
If DSpain ever gets his ICO done with these features, it'll be of great help

thats done, nate sent me some stuff never released in any baseline where you can actually script that in a command line.
some reason jack alvirus scrapepd it from the galrlgn.

#2: Making worldgroup 2.x and 3.x be able to compile a worldgroup manager that doesn't have to be patched on any current operating systems.

thats cause of what it is compiled in.


#3: Adding Javascript support as an alternative to c+ modules, which would make it easier and probably faster to program some programs and games for worldgroup.

you mean modules running entirely in JS?

#4: Possibly adding its own unique scripting language, which is what a lot of the BBS systems of the past and present have used. While not as powerful as c++ or javascript, it will allow about any non-programmer to make their own small programs/utilities. I could see some thing like this great for making global commands, time banks, one-liners, or any thing.

actually creating a globals package would be alot faster than scripting one.
int ret=0;

if(sameas(margv[0],"-x")) {
kilchn(usrnum);
ret=1;
}
return(ret);
}

kinda generic but you see my point?

#5: Inter-BBS gaming. I don't know what the hell the people who created worldgroup were thinking over the years, as inter-bbs gaming would have been very successful on worldgroup. I know there was some type of score-sharing programs on like mutants and such but can't ever remember any game where you competed with other bbs systems.

actually gcomm released something like that before and nate sent me an email a few weeks ago where we were discussing that, it plugged into the ent-telecn and dialed out at night and ran its routines.

There are a few DOS/W32 bbs systems I go on, and I think about the only reason why people log on to them is for Inter-BBS gaming. Having an average of 8 users on-line most of the time, all playing different BRE games for different Inter-BBS Networks.. Very few people playing the local games. That's a lot of people on-line for a dos/w32 board.

#6: Update the NNTP server to automatically pull newsgroups from the news servers. I'm on a static IP myself, and every time we get a power surge, my IP changes, and I lose newsgroups for a week. Even right now, my news groups are not working.


#7: As stated before, the IRC client just is really outdated as well. It doesn't support any services, to secure nicknames and such on servers, and it doesn't support any type of scripting commands, which would also be nice. I would even be in favour of just having IRCII or BX ported to worldgroup.

#8: When I first started messing with the new BBS, I have been wondering if it was possible to also use worldgroup manager for some thing even bigger than itself.

The interface and such just isn't that great, and the games that are available haven't been updated in probably 8-10 years. They may have been great in the win 3.11 days, but not now.

My vision - Mini MMORPGs - could worldgroup be able to hold large databases for games, be able to serve these games effectively, and would worldgroup manager be able to both launch an external program and tie it in to its system resources and communicate through all of the programs and worldgroup server correctly?

No, I'm not talking about porting over everquest or world of warcraft, but let's say a programmer wanted to build a really awesome but low-resource on-line strategy or rpg. Not some graphically-intense game, but some thing around the 16 or 32-bit console gaming graphics.

I figure a turn-based strategy game probably wouldn't use that much resources on the server side, but I suppose it depends on how many items, monsters, spells, levels, items, etc there were in the game, how movement is done, how many people played the game at once, etc.

Many times, I've played an older game called Dark Wizard, which is an older 16-bit mega cd game which is sort of a mix between strategy, rpg, and simulation, with its main emphasis on strategy and have thought "If this game was just on-line, it would be awesome," but there are a lot of other games that would be great if they were on-line. Romance and the three kingdoms, genghis kahn, nobunaga's ambition, tenbu, tenka fubu. I'm not saying that any one should rip the games off, but take the good, and expand them for on-line play is a great idea. They pretty much all originally came from the concepts of board games like RISK I believe.

The main problems I see with the way they are, and even most of the BBS war games is that they're so limited to how many countries or territories are in the game. It probably wouldn't be too much harder to make X ammount more kingdoms, or even have the game set to expand the map with each new player. Set the max ammount of kingdoms to like 500 total and then have it so that any one who doesn't play in 30 days is deleted, to keep it cleaned up a bit.

Could worldgroup handle doing some thing like this? or would you have to use some type of sql server?

it "could" question is will someone be willing to do it.
i personally dont play with db programming, i find most the wg db modules laggy as hell.
powerlink,infibase,etc...

[Questman]

Because they use ODBC. ODBC is slow and crappy. Best to do direct calls to the DB using a native driver. The performance is 100x... another valid choice is an embedded engine (like btrieve) but is sql based.

[Malakai]

#2: Making worldgroup 2.x and 3.x be able to compile a worldgroup manager that doesn't have to be patched on any current operating systems.

thats cause of what it is compiled in.

*I THINK THIS WOULD BE WORLDGROUP'S BIGGEST FEATURE, AS LONG AS OTHER MODULES WERE FIXED TO WORK WITH WIN2000 AND XP. THERE'S A PROBLEM WITH CROSSWORDZ NOT REFRESHING IN WIN2000 C/S SIDE, PROBABLY MORE, BUT I'M NOT ON C/S SIDE MUCH.


#3: Adding Javascript support as an alternative to c+ modules, which would make it easier and probably faster to program some programs and games for worldgroup.

you mean modules running entirely in JS?

*YES, LOOK AT SYNCHRONET. THEY HAVE ENTIRE IRC CLIENTS AND SERVERS RUNNING IN JAVA.

#4: Possibly adding its own unique scripting language, which is what a lot of the BBS systems of the past and present have used. While not as powerful as c++ or javascript, it will allow about any non-programmer to make their own small programs/utilities. I could see some thing like this great for making global commands, time banks, one-liners, or any thing.

actually creating a globals package would be alot faster than scripting one.
int ret=0;

if(sameas(margv[0],"-x")) {
kilchn(usrnum);
ret=1;
}
return(ret);
}

kinda generic but you see my point?

*THE REASON BOARDS USED THEIR OWN LANGUAGES IN THE PAST WERE SO THAT NORMAL EVERY DAY SYSOPS COULD PROGRAM THEM (PPL, BAJA, ETC) - IF CREATING A BORLAND C++ PROGRAM IS EASY FOR YOU, THEN YOU'D HAVE BETTER CAPABILITIES WITH IT, BUT PEOPLE THAT DON'T PROGRAM WOULDN'T.

#8: When I first started messing with the new BBS, I have been wondering if it was possible to also use worldgroup manager for some thing even bigger than itself.

The interface and such just isn't that great, and the games that are available haven't been updated in probably 8-10 years. They may have been great in the win 3.11 days, but not now.

My vision - Mini MMORPGs - could worldgroup be able to hold large databases for games, be able to serve these games effectively, and would worldgroup manager be able to both launch an external program and tie it in to its system resources and communicate through all of the programs and worldgroup server correctly?

No, I'm not talking about porting over everquest or world of warcraft, but let's say a programmer wanted to build a really awesome but low-resource on-line strategy or rpg. Not some graphically-intense game, but some thing around the 16 or 32-bit console gaming graphics.

I figure a turn-based strategy game probably wouldn't use that much resources on the server side, but I suppose it depends on how many items, monsters, spells, levels, items, etc there were in the game, how movement is done, how many people played the game at once, etc.

Many times, I've played an older game called Dark Wizard, which is an older 16-bit mega cd game which is sort of a mix between strategy, rpg, and simulation, with its main emphasis on strategy and have thought "If this game was just on-line, it would be awesome," but there are a lot of other games that would be great if they were on-line. Romance and the three kingdoms, genghis kahn, nobunaga's ambition, tenbu, tenka fubu. I'm not saying that any one should rip the games off, but take the good, and expand them for on-line play is a great idea. They pretty much all originally came from the concepts of board games like RISK I believe.

The main problems I see with the way they are, and even most of the BBS war games is that they're so limited to how many countries or territories are in the game. It probably wouldn't be too much harder to make X ammount more kingdoms, or even have the game set to expand the map with each new player. Set the max ammount of kingdoms to like 500 total and then have it so that any one who doesn't play in 30 days is deleted, to keep it cleaned up a bit.

Could worldgroup handle doing some thing like this? or would you have to use some type of sql server?

it "could" question is will someone be willing to do it.
i personally dont play with db programming, i find most the wg db modules laggy as hell.
powerlink,infibase,etc...[/quote]

*IT WAS JUST A THOUGHT.

[dspain]

[quote="Malakai"]Also, another thing that I've noticed is that if you put an rlogin or telnet link, let's say to space quest game server, trade wars game server, maybe a stand-alone mud on your server, or synchronet door game server, it only displays that person in either telnet client or rlogin client.

actually i built a galrlgnd as galdoors.dll and its mdf says "Door Server"

it is pretty universal whatever you put in the mdf is what will be displayed.
that way you dont modify the core galrlgnd.mdf so a programs dependancy to it ownt be conflicted.

my mbbs fron 1992-1996 and my wg2 from 1996-1998 are still online offering things unavailable in nt and it lets me know where the user is connected to

ie: AzoneBBS-MBBS, AzoneBBS-WG2, etc...

the program is still undergoing some feature-surgery which passes username and password from one to another so far i have it accepting the username with no problem but if connecting to an ip thats not on your local internet the password option dont work.
ill let ya know, in anotherwords it would act as a dma server

[frcorey]

Also, another thing that I've noticed is that if you put an rlogin or telnet link, let's say to space quest game server, trade wars game server, maybe a stand-alone mud on your server, or synchronet door game server, it only displays that person in either telnet client or rlogin client.

actually i built a galrlgnd as galdoors.dll and its mdf says "Door Server"

it is pretty universal whatever you put in the mdf is what will be displayed.
that way you dont modify the core galrlgnd.mdf so a programs dependancy to it ownt be conflicted.


I finally got your wg2 dev kit to build.
hmm, some of my mbbs 6.25 moduals won't compile with the wg2 dev kit thou.

my mbbs fron 1992-1996 and my wg2 from 1996-1998 are still online offering things unavailable in nt and it lets me know where the user is connected to

ie: AzoneBBS-MBBS, AzoneBBS-WG2, etc...

the program is still undergoing some feature-surgery which passes username and password from one to another so far i have it accepting the username with no problem but if connecting to an ip thats not on your local internet the password option dont work.
ill let ya know, in anotherwords it would act as a dma server

[The Storm]

Is it possible to code a module to allow DOS with DOOR32 door games work within WorldGroup? Let me know if this is possible by creating a module.

[Questman]

I doubt it. The thing is that door games (and other DOS games) are regular programs.. The only way to do it would be to somehow adapt DOSBOX as a module.. which, frankly, I don't think could ever work.

[The Storm]

I doubt it. The thing is that door games (and other DOS games) are regular programs.. The only way to do it would be to somehow adapt DOSBOX as a module.. which, frankly, I don't think could ever work.

SynchroNet figured it out for their software but that's comparing apples to oranges. Why is this not possible?

[frcorey]

I doubt it. The thing is that door games (and other DOS games) are regular programs.. The only way to do it would be to somehow adapt DOSBOX as a module.. which, frankly, I don't think could ever work.

SynchroNet figured it out for their software but that's comparing apples to oranges. Why is this not possible?

Synchronet started out life as multi-node software,
then was ported to multi-line, keeping it's ability to spawn
dos sessions.
Worldgroup started out as multi-line software.
and can't spawn dos processes.

[The Storm]

I doubt it. The thing is that door games (and other DOS games) are regular programs.. The only way to do it would be to somehow adapt DOSBOX as a module.. which, frankly, I don't think could ever work.

SynchroNet figured it out for their software but that's comparing apples to oranges. Why is this not possible?

Synchronet started out life as multi-node software,
then was ported to multi-line, keeping it's ability to spawn
dos sessions.
Worldgroup started out as multi-line software.
and can't spawn dos processes.

WorldGroup's core can't spawn dos processes but can a module written in C++ made for WorldGroup do so??

[frcorey]

SynchroNet figured it out for their software but that's comparing apples to oranges. Why is this not possible?

Synchronet started out life as multi-node software,
then was ported to multi-line, keeping it's ability to spawn
dos sessions.
Worldgroup started out as multi-line software.
and can't spawn dos processes.

WorldGroup's core can't spawn dos processes but can a module written in C++ made for WorldGroup do so??

I don't think so, or someone would have done it when it was still popular.

[dspain]

Also, another thing that I've noticed is that if you put an rlogin or telnet link, let's say to space quest game server, trade wars game server, maybe a stand-alone mud on your server, or synchronet door game server, it only displays that person in either telnet client or rlogin client.

actually i built a galrlgnd as galdoors.dll and its mdf says "Door Server"

it is pretty universal whatever you put in the mdf is what will be displayed.
that way you dont modify the core galrlgnd.mdf so a programs dependancy to it ownt be conflicted.


I finally got your wg2 dev kit to build.
hmm, some of my mbbs 6.25 moduals won't compile with the wg2 dev kit thou.

correct, gotta change the make file from calling \bbsv6 blah blah
look at some of the LNK files on how i ported those and look at majorbbs.mak on how i did that and change all of your mbbs modules to reflect it.


my mbbs fron 1992-1996 and my wg2 from 1996-1998 are still online offering things unavailable in nt and it lets me know where the user is connected to

ie: AzoneBBS-MBBS, AzoneBBS-WG2, etc...

the program is still undergoing some feature-surgery which passes username and password from one to another so far i have it accepting the username with no problem but if connecting to an ip thats not on your local internet the password option dont work.
ill let ya know, in anotherwords it would act as a dma server

[dspain]

#2: Making worldgroup 2.x and 3.x be able to compile a worldgroup manager that doesn't have to be patched on any current operating systems.

thats cause of what it is compiled in.

*I THINK THIS WOULD BE WORLDGROUP'S BIGGEST FEATURE, AS LONG AS OTHER MODULES WERE FIXED TO WORK WITH WIN2000 AND XP. THERE'S A PROBLEM WITH CROSSWORDZ NOT REFRESHING IN WIN2000 C/S SIDE, PROBABLY MORE, BUT I'M NOT ON C/S SIDE MUCH.

wg works with 2k/xp just c/s stuff is messed up cause of the 15yr old programming language its written in.



#3: Adding Javascript support as an alternative to c+ modules, which would make it easier and probably faster to program some programs and games for worldgroup.

you mean modules running entirely in JS?

*YES, LOOK AT SYNCHRONET. THEY HAVE ENTIRE IRC CLIENTS AND SERVERS RUNNING IN JAVA.

again look at the exploits too. as it may look good its easy for someone to jump in your system where they dont belong. even synchronet is exploring this technology as it comes available and is still in the early phases of deployment.

i agree where you're going with it, however why not just plug the java engine directly into your web server?

#4: Possibly adding its own unique scripting language, which is what a lot of the BBS systems of the past and present have used. While not as powerful as c++ or javascript, it will allow about any non-programmer to make their own small programs/utilities. I could see some thing like this great for making global commands, time banks, one-liners, or any thing.

actually creating a globals package would be alot faster than scripting one.
int ret=0;

if(sameas(margv[0],"-x")) {
kilchn(usrnum);
ret=1;
}
return(ret);
}

kinda generic but you see my point?

*THE REASON BOARDS USED THEIR OWN LANGUAGES IN THE PAST WERE SO THAT NORMAL EVERY DAY SYSOPS COULD PROGRAM THEM (PPL, BAJA, ETC) - IF CREATING A BORLAND C++ PROGRAM IS EASY FOR YOU, THEN YOU'D HAVE BETTER CAPABILITIES WITH IT, BUT PEOPLE THAT DON'T PROGRAM WOULDN'T.

i see where you're heading with it, but a really good scripting language would just end up being c anyway with a diff syntax.

synchronets baja language i think you're referring too? if you look at the syntax its nothing but a mini c that compiles to bin from src.


#8: When I first started messing with the new BBS, I have been wondering if it was possible to also use worldgroup manager for some thing even bigger than itself.

The interface and such just isn't that great, and the games that are available haven't been updated in probably 8-10 years. They may have been great in the win 3.11 days, but not now.

My vision - Mini MMORPGs - could worldgroup be able to hold large databases for games, be able to serve these games effectively, and would worldgroup manager be able to both launch an external program and tie it in to its system resources and communicate through all of the programs and worldgroup server correctly?

No, I'm not talking about porting over everquest or world of warcraft, but let's say a programmer wanted to build a really awesome but low-resource on-line strategy or rpg. Not some graphically-intense game, but some thing around the 16 or 32-bit console gaming graphics.

I figure a turn-based strategy game probably wouldn't use that much resources on the server side, but I suppose it depends on how many items, monsters, spells, levels, items, etc there were in the game, how movement is done, how many people played the game at once, etc.

Many times, I've played an older game called Dark Wizard, which is an older 16-bit mega cd game which is sort of a mix between strategy, rpg, and simulation, with its main emphasis on strategy and have thought "If this game was just on-line, it would be awesome," but there are a lot of other games that would be great if they were on-line. Romance and the three kingdoms, genghis kahn, nobunaga's ambition, tenbu, tenka fubu. I'm not saying that any one should rip the games off, but take the good, and expand them for on-line play is a great idea. They pretty much all originally came from the concepts of board games like RISK I believe.

The main problems I see with the way they are, and even most of the BBS war games is that they're so limited to how many countries or territories are in the game. It probably wouldn't be too much harder to make X ammount more kingdoms, or even have the game set to expand the map with each new player. Set the max ammount of kingdoms to like 500 total and then have it so that any one who doesn't play in 30 days is deleted, to keep it cleaned up a bit.

Could worldgroup handle doing some thing like this? or would you have to use some type of sql server?

it "could" question is will someone be willing to do it.
i personally dont play with db programming, i find most the wg db modules laggy as hell.
powerlink,infibase,etc...

*IT WAS JUST A THOUGHT.[/quote]

yeah and its a really good ideam only with the new technology the plan would have to be to toally rewrite galwebd from scratch to allow plugging of php,perl,sql databasing, oracle, know what i mean.
im not an internet developer more of a game developer so rebuilding a web server wouldnt be my cup of tea.
marc freda from dialsoft would be the man to talk to about that.
or rick.

[dspain]

I doubt it. The thing is that door games (and other DOS games) are regular programs.. The only way to do it would be to somehow adapt DOSBOX as a module.. which, frankly, I don't think could ever work.

SynchroNet figured it out for their software but that's comparing apples to oranges. Why is this not possible?

you mean basically have wg produce door32.sys?

thing is, wg runs DLL addon modules not .EXE files.

i played with the idea about 3months ago and wrote a module that attached a drop file to each usrnum, but the process of making wg run a dos EXE file is what caused me to scrap the project.

ever find anyone willing to try it ill send em the source to my door file generator.

bascially you link it to the menu tree and it does all the work.
only enter feature is the sysop control panel where you tell it which drop files to generate.

supports only door.sys,chain.txt, dorinfo#.def, and wgdoor.bin

creates a dir called CHANDAT in the wgserv dir and stores the files in CHANDAT/CHAN#
deletes em when the usrnum logs off so new ones can be created.

but thats the easy part, as rick mentioned hard part would be coding wg to execute the EXE files.

[The Storm]

I doubt it. The thing is that door games (and other DOS games) are regular programs.. The only way to do it would be to somehow adapt DOSBOX as a module.. which, frankly, I don't think could ever work.

SynchroNet figured it out for their software but that's comparing apples to oranges. Why is this not possible?

you mean basically have wg produce door32.sys?

thing is, wg runs DLL addon modules not .EXE files.

i played with the idea about 3months ago and wrote a module that attached a drop file to each usrnum, but the process of making wg run a dos EXE file is what caused me to scrap the project.

ever find anyone willing to try it ill send em the source to my door file generator.

bascially you link it to the menu tree and it does all the work.
only enter feature is the sysop control panel where you tell it which drop files to generate.

supports only door.sys,chain.txt, dorinfo#.def, and wgdoor.bin

creates a dir called CHANDAT in the wgserv dir and stores the files in CHANDAT/CHAN#
deletes em when the usrnum logs off so new ones can be created.

but thats the easy part, as rick mentioned hard part would be coding wg to execute the EXE files.

Actually, we believe we have figured out how to make dos and DOOR32 games/doors work in WorldGroup without the need of a game server. We found that WE CAN spawn a process to run an EXE. We found that WE CAN redirect the input to WorldGroup...so, all in all, YES IT CAN BE DONE. Since doors use a COM port, we are able to redirect that to any other type of port we want and with that we can intercept the output of the program and can even input back to it...so, it can be done....I guess others were just lazy...

[ccs]

SynchroNet figured it out for their software but that's comparing apples to oranges. Why is this not possible?

you mean basically have wg produce door32.sys?

thing is, wg runs DLL addon modules not .EXE files.

i played with the idea about 3months ago and wrote a module that attached a drop file to each usrnum, but the process of making wg run a dos EXE file is what caused me to scrap the project.

ever find anyone willing to try it ill send em the source to my door file generator.

bascially you link it to the menu tree and it does all the work.
only enter feature is the sysop control panel where you tell it which drop files to generate.

supports only door.sys,chain.txt, dorinfo#.def, and wgdoor.bin

creates a dir called CHANDAT in the wgserv dir and stores the files in CHANDAT/CHAN#
deletes em when the usrnum logs off so new ones can be created.

but thats the easy part, as rick mentioned hard part would be coding wg to execute the EXE files.

Actually, we believe we have figured out how to make dos and DOOR32 games/doors work in WorldGroup without the need of a game server. We found that WE CAN spawn a process to run an EXE. We found that WE CAN redirect the input to WorldGroup...so, all in all, YES IT CAN BE DONE. Since doors use a COM port, we are able to redirect that to any other type of port we want and with that we can intercept the output of the program and can even input back to it...so, it can be done....I guess others were just lazy...

If you can get all this to work I will move from wg2.0 to 3.X. I can run my older modules on a WG2.0 DMA server.

Joe

[dspain]

SynchroNet figured it out for their software but that's comparing apples to oranges. Why is this not possible?

you mean basically have wg produce door32.sys?

thing is, wg runs DLL addon modules not .EXE files.

i played with the idea about 3months ago and wrote a module that attached a drop file to each usrnum, but the process of making wg run a dos EXE file is what caused me to scrap the project.

ever find anyone willing to try it ill send em the source to my door file generator.

bascially you link it to the menu tree and it does all the work.
only enter feature is the sysop control panel where you tell it which drop files to generate.

supports only door.sys,chain.txt, dorinfo#.def, and wgdoor.bin

creates a dir called CHANDAT in the wgserv dir and stores the files in CHANDAT/CHAN#
deletes em when the usrnum logs off so new ones can be created.

but thats the easy part, as rick mentioned hard part would be coding wg to execute the EXE files.

Actually, we believe we have figured out how to make dos and DOOR32 games/doors work in WorldGroup without the need of a game server. We found that WE CAN spawn a process to run an EXE. We found that WE CAN redirect the input to WorldGroup...so, all in all, YES IT CAN BE DONE. Since doors use a COM port, we are able to redirect that to any other type of port we want and with that we can intercept the output of the program and can even input back to it...so, it can be done....I guess others were just lazy...

i thnk calling em lazy would be the wrong word, we're talking about a man who gave a dos box the ability to run 256 simultaneous sessions without any 3rd party multitasking software.

strictly using ms-dos 5 or later.

and as you dive deeper into it you'll see the other problems that arise.

and if you're using NT its gonna be laggy as hell especially with uart communication.

[The Storm]

i thnk calling em lazy would be the wrong word, we're talking about a man who gave a dos box the ability to run 256 simultaneous sessions without any 3rd party multitasking software.

strictly using ms-dos 5 or later.

and as you dive deeper into it you'll see the other problems that arise.

and if you're using NT its gonna be laggy as hell especially with uart communication.

I was speaking of the OLD isvs...before they were called ISVs. UART isn't a problem at all. We can overcome any problems...

[Questman]

The problem essentially is that Worldgroup is a single process. It's a single program. When you shell out of a traditional BBS, that traditional BBS suspends. You can't have Worldgroup suspend, or all the other "channels" (which are given life by sequential polling, basically) will be suspended too.

That is the crux of the issue. You can easily shell out of Worldgroup, but keeping the program running while it shells was always the problem.

Of course, now with Win32 OS's, it's as easy as forking a new process. But that was definitely NOT the case with the DOS systems.

But the Win32 versions of the product came about at the very end. A lot of planned additions never made it to light.. adding forking for new program threads was definitely not at the top of the list.

[The Storm]

The problem essentially is that Worldgroup is a single process. It's a single program. When you shell out of a traditional BBS, that traditional BBS suspends. You can't have Worldgroup suspend, or all the other "channels" (which are given life by sequential polling, basically) will be suspended too.

That is the crux of the issue. You can easily shell out of Worldgroup, but keeping the program running while it shells was always the problem.

Of course, now with Win32 OS's, it's as easy as forking a new process. But that was definitely NOT the case with the DOS systems.

But the Win32 versions of the product came about at the very end. A lot of planned additions never made it to light.. adding forking for new program threads was definitely not at the top of the list.

We are able to FORK...no worries.

[Questman]

Yep, you can. But of course, to all the DOS BBS junkies here, the program won't work for them

[The Storm]

Yep, you can. But of course, to all the DOS BBS junkies here, the program won't work for them

Actually, it will work. You're not thinking outside of WG...anything is possible if you have C++.