BBS Software Development News

August 6, 2000

Note: Users are encouraged to post their own news articals in our Discussion Forum. If you are intrested in taking over as the editor, please email mike@pcmicro.com.

DOOR32 News:

Last month the Door32 dropfile standard was officially released, for creating 32-bit cross platform BBS door games. Door32.sys is a text based drop file for Windows, OS/2 and Unix based BBS packages which allows the BBS to pass the com handle to the application, and also tells the application if its a serial, telnet, or local connection. This standard is now supported by Mystic BBS, EleBBS, and Synchronet BBS packages.

There are already some Door development kits which support the new drop file. James Coyle (author of MysticBBS) and Maarten Bekers (author of EleBBS) combined forces to create the D32 programming library for Pascal. Mike Hodgson just relesed a similar developer kit called FreeDoor, which is available for both FreePascal and VirtualPascal. Demonic Productions just updated their Xtreme doorkit (XDOOR 3.0) to support Win32 and the Door32 dropfile. All three of these development kits are based on EleCOM, the EleBBS Communication Engine written by Maarten Bekers. Currently there are not any door32 development kits available for C++ or VB.

Some Door32 compatible BBS doors have also appeared. Brian Zhou just released a Win32 version of his SimBBS door with Door32 support, and James Coyle released a Win32 update of the PimpWars door with Door32 support. Hopefully more door developers will jump on the Door32 bandwagon and release 32-bit versions of their software.
http://www.mysticbbs.com/door32

RemoteAccess News:

RA 2.62 is expected to be released later this month. Most of the remaining problems in version 2.61 seem to have been found and fixed, according to developer Bruce Morse.

This will be the final 2.6x version of RA, and once it's released Bruce plans to rewrite the RAMSG util (a messagebase tosser/scanner) to become Y2K aware, after which he will focus on the next major version of RemoteAccess.
http://pcmicro.com/ra


Ezycom BBS News:

Ezycom version 1.49 was released last week. This is the first public release of Ezycom put out by the new Ezycom development team, which consists of Craig Jansen, Paul Sanders, and Stephen Gibbs. All three devlopers are located in Australia, which is where the original developer Peter Davies is located as well.

Ezycom started out as a RemoteAccess clone, with some added features such as an improved Questionnaire scripting language and both QWK and Bluewave offline mail support. Rather then using the industry standard Hudson and JAM message formats, Ezycom uses its own propritary messagebase and therefore includes its own mail processors.

Besides fixing several bugs, the new features in version 1.49 include:

  • Now allows 3 alternative file & msg groups per area.
  • Changed structures to support upcoming featres.
  • Ezymail has been optimized for better speed.
  • Added support for upto 5 WELCOMEx.A** Screens.
  • The previous version was released in April 1996, After which Peter Davies lost intrest in it and allowed the new development team to take it over in December 1999.
    http://www.ezycom.cjb.net


    Infusion BBS News:

    Grant Passmore (Skaboy101) released Infusion version 1.5-alpha-rev17 on July 14th. This release is almost a full rewrite, and Grant says it's now 100% rock solid stable. It also has many new features, including:

  • LightBar Menu system allows multi-column lightbar menus.
  • Lightbar File Tagging System , totally configurable look.
  • New Wait-for-Call Menu shows everything a sysop may need.
  • New Communication Routines, which are faster then ever.
  • Infusion is an Oblivion/2 style scene BBS, and comes ready to run with some incredible old school ANSi's.
    www.demonic.net/infusion


    RCG BBS News:

    RGC BBS has been put on hold again, until deveoper Brian Tofoya can devote time to it's development. Due to a lack of resources, the former web site at rgcomputing.com will no longer be in service.

    RGC never made it past the early beta stage this year, as the author vanished just as the beta cycle started in February. The development had previously been placed on hold for the better part of 1999.

    RGC BBS had planned to include ppp / telnet / web / ftp / email / news/ dns servers all in one package.
    http://www.rgcomputing.com


    Tempest BBS News:

    Tempest BBS has been under development for about 3 years now, and the author plans to finally release the first version. Tempest is a Linux based BBS package, which allows DOS based doors to run via DOSEMU. Additional info and screenshots are available at their web site.
    http://www.abend.com


    Mystic BBS News:

    A new version of Mystic BBS is will be released shortly. Version 1.07 will include a Linux port in addition to the DOS, OS/2, and Win32 versions. Dozens of minor enhancments and bug fixes have been added since the previous (1.06) versions were released back in January 2000.
    http://www.mysticbbs.com


    If you have any additional BBS related news, please post them in our BBS Development News Forum




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