BBS Software Development News

June 2, 1999

EleBBS News:

EleBBS Gamma5 (0.05g1) will be released to the public this month, according to developer Maarten Bekers. EleBBS Gamma5 will offer several new features, including an NNTP NewsServer. The NewsServer will allow sysops connected to the internet to offer their JAM messagebases as if they were internet NewsGroups. Users can read and write to the messagebases using programs such as MS-Outlook, Netscape Communicator, or Eudora.

Gamma5 also uses a completley new communications engine, which is considerably faster and more efficient then the previous one. Bekers is releasing the source to this new communication engine to the public, to allow other BBS and door developers to create multi platform code that can run under Windows32, OS/2 and DOS. The Win32 communications even offers internal telnet support! The com engine is written in Pascal, and will compile under TurboPascal, VirtualPascal, Delphi 2-4 and FreePascal. Several developers have already recieved an early copy of this comm engine, including James Coyle (author of Mystic BBS), and Korombos (author of the KDrive door development kit). The code will be made publicly available later this month when Gamma5 is released.

Other new features in Gamma5 include additional scripting commands, support for 250 fido AKAs, ability to provide downlinks with usenet feed via .PKT files, multiple keyword file search engine, enhanced support for long filenames, and Windows2000 compatibility. Most importantly dozens of minor bugs have been fixed since Gamma4.
http://home.wxs.nl/~elevator


COM/IP News:

Tactical Software released another version of their COM/IP Telnet Server/Virtual Modem driver last week. COM/IP 2.02 fixes issues under Windows NT and Windows2000, and offers improved performance.

A Windows fossil driver for COM/IP is currently being beta tested, and performs very well under NT so far. This fossil driver even allows a Native Win32 BBS to run DOS fossil driven doors under the COM/IP virtual modems, and of course it also works with DOS based BBS's under Windows.

In addition to the fossil support, the programmers at Tactical are also considering adding the ability to display a list of the IP addresses connected to each com port (as Netmodem does) in an upcoming release of COM/IP 2.10. If you have additional features you would like to see added you can email them at support@tacticalsoftware.com
http://www.tacticalsoftware.com


UltimateBBS News:

As of April 30, development of UltimateBBS has stopped. This was the result of several factors, mainly that the current developer no longer had sufficent time required for the project. Rather then turning into another vaporBBS, they are looking for someone to take over the (Pascal 7.0) source code and complete it. Anyone intrested in can contact Siegmar@ultimate-systems.com. UltimateBBS is esimated at more then 90% complete currently.
http://www.ultimate-systems.com


RGC BBS News:

RGC BBS is now in the first ALPHA stages while they develop the GUI and server portion of the BBS. Currently development is very slow. Developer Brian Tafoya is trying to get the command processor completed, and talking to the com ports & telnet sessions. He had originally intended to release a beta in late April, but is NOT confident at this time that it would operate at what he feels the beta stage should be. He plans to place the BBS online by the end of this month for viewing & testing, which should be followed by a beta release.
http://www.rgcomputing.com/rgcbbs.htm


Xenotetra BBS News:

Two more public updates to Xenotetra have been released in the past 10 days. Xenotetra now offers both a chat plugin and email plugin. It still lacks some of the basic features you would expect in a functional BBS such as file transfers, doors, or message bases, but this Windows based BBS has a simple interface and shows a lot of potential.
http://pw1.netcom.com/~spelwevr/xenoterra


X-Board BBS News:

Ben Marsh recently announced that he is too busy to continue working on X-Board BBS for "a while longer", though he does hope to work on it again someday. He originally planned to release X-Board back in October, then November and December. One of the key features was that updates would be released once a week.

Ben is now working on several BBS doors, including a Rubiks Cube game, a radio pager, and a split screen chat door, in addition to offering a BBS news page simular to ours. :) http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/%7Eautotron/x


Mystic BBS News:

James Coyle is about to release Mystic BBS version 1.05a in the next few days. This will be a minor revision with a few new features and small bug fixes added since the 1.05 release. Mystic is a freeware BBS with native versions for DOS, Win32, and OS/2.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Horizon/9426/


Inverse BBS News:

zoob announced today that he has ported Inverse BBS over to OS/2. He says there are still some bugs to iron out, but he will release a public alpha soon which will include DOS, OS/2 and Linux ports.
web site currently down


Legend of the Red Dragon News:

Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD) was the all-time most popular door game in BBS history. Now after four years it is back in development! Seth Robinson sold the rights to the game to Metropolis Gameport Inc. last year, and they have recently allowed a programmer named Michael Preslar to continue its development.

Version 4.02 of LORD is already complete and awaiting approval from Gameport to be released. This is just a cosmetic release recognising the new owners and updated copyright info. Future versions will fix some of the minor problems such as the currently poor CPU timeslicing under Windows. Michael plans to offer multiple platforms of LORD for differnt operating systems such as DOS, Win32, and perhaps others.

Michael is currently replacing the DDPlus door kit that LORD was build around with the more modern Kdrive kit by Korombos. Michael says that using Kdrive will be a big plus since the Ele Win32 communication and telnet drivers are being incorporated into Kdrive. Michael plans to keep the gameplay in LORD basicly the same, but would like to add more role-playing to it. He would also like to re-work the registration routines to protect his work, but version 4.02 will use the same code.

Gameport has not yet desided if they will also contract Michael to bring the other Seth Robinson doors (LORD2 and TEOS) into the next century as well, but this is a definate possibility.
Update June 3rd: LORD 4.02 was released today!
http://lord.darktech.org


Max Graphics News:

Larry Athey has pulled the plug on Max Graphics development. He has lost all intrest in the dial-up BBS or telnet BBS scene, and has decided to release the source code for all BBS related programs that he has written in the past.

These programs are all written in Borland Pascal 7, and all require the FastGraph and Async Professional development kits. He will be releasing one more update to the MAX Graphics programs which will be the same as the current versions, but will be recompiled with the latest version of FastGraph, and MAXpaint will no longer require a registration.

Larry says he will start building a completely new BBS package that is run under MS Internet Information Server (IIS) as well as Microsoft Personal Web Server. Other web servers such as Xitami and Apache that dont offer VBScript support will not be compatible. Larrys project will be written using the Visual BASIC Script language, and will be distributed with full source code (except for the system manager component which is written in Delphi and will not be include with the source code).
http://www.maxgfx.com



If you have any additional BBS related news, please send to mike@pcmicro.com




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