On 5/10/2020 9:26 PM, "echicken" wrote:
Wow.. Congratulations. You achieved a first ever two-part
episode status of BBS REVIEW SORT OF THING!
A dubious honour.: D
Not at all. I think *finally* something entertained him to warrant a 2-parter. I think he enjoyed the honeypot specifically for him.
I didn't put a lot of effort into the script behind that
quiz since I wasn't sure it would ever get used. (The big
dynamic text is cool but from a little library I wrote ages
ago.) It was all really a lead-up to that last question. ;)
The larger chars at the end made him notice that something special was happening. Listening to him struggle with the WWIV question was worth the price of admission. But I still like his consistent pronunciation of BBS as an acronym. ;) That's his "personality". It was funny to see him cope with the same medicine thrown back at him though. But he remained a good sport and seemed to appreciate the customized quiz - just for him.
Even the arcade-style ansi games is a pretty good..
I wrote those a long time ago as a sort of proof of concept.
I'm not much for playing games in general, but I like the
challenge of writing them sometimes. I don't think these are
a great example of BBS/textmode games, but they do push the
envelope in a weird way.
I'm not much into games either. The heavily animated ones can be fun to look at, artistically.
There seems to be a lot of focus on door games in many BBSes in general. But I don't think that's something that will attract users (ie. non-sysops). I get a sense that most sysops are primarily implementing door games for the technical challenge of getting them to work right on their specific systems. And, there can be a fine appeal of getting the dynamics of inter-bbs games working too.
But how do you sell all that to newer generations?
If there was a bbs-ified/ansi clone of a popular game, maybe that would attract the curious?
For example, I remain astonished how popular Minecraft is with young kids. The blocky graphics totally reminds me of animated bbs games. Is there a Minecraft alternative for a BBS?
We *do* have a clues to what CB likes and dislikes, but
sadly he don't have an example of an uber BBS upon which to
compare.
I think there are a *lot* of dislikes. The main "like" would
seem to be content... but exactly what kind is unclear.
Heheheh.. It wouldn't be the BBS REVIEW SORT OF THING if there weren't any dislikes! Too many typical reviews are too serious. CB's reviews were totally unconventional.
But it would be nice to know what he *does* consider interesting or entertaining. Apparently, he's not impressed when the menus tend to look all the same from bbs to bbs. He's looking for customizations. But there can be a benefit to some menus remaining the same for the sake of familiarity when hopping from one bbs to the next especially if the visitor wants to stick with visiting bbbes within a specific software type. He doesn't always give constructive criticism. He just grumbles at most of the problems he encounters. Sometimes there is nothing more to say other than "FIX IT" when there is a clear problem; can't really expect more than that.
His customized version of CheeseBurgerTERM was interesting. It would have been nice if he said something about that.
Yeah, I think it's possible to have an active local
community on a single BBS today, but it probably requires a
fair bit of attention from the sysop to keep things moving.
For most of us, the wider network of BBSs *is* the
community, and the closest thing to the per-BBS community of
days gone by that we're likely to find.
Message areas need the "salt" to keep readers interested and hopefully trigger a reply. Either the sysop is the best person to do that, or someone else as a designated "contributor" - but not just automated robotic posts.
I am still beginning to explore the plethora of othernets available via FTN/nntp/qwk. Among them there are some unique areas and many common ones. I've revitalized a Fidonet echo, FUTURE4FIDO, where I mentioned that one thing that could help unify and bring BBSes closer would be a database that summarizes which BBSes carry which echos.
Right now, there is little to no way to even get a sense of which echos and which othernets are alive or dead. I found one way to do that though is to have a glance at the web presentations of some Synchronet boards. I summarize the strategy here:
http://kolico.ca/fidonet/echos/future4fido/
It is initially written with Fidonet in mind, but it's the same strategy for the other "Message Groups".
So, my BBS has some content of its own, nothing hugely
unique, and in a way is just another interface to this wider
world. I'm happy with that; it's 2020 after all.
BBSes have managed to sustain their existence quite well despite it being 2020, that's for sure.
--- SBBSecho 3.11-Linux
* Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (77:1/119)