: Reading this about putting various text adventures online on a bbs intrigued
: me. What are some of the technicalities of it? With linux can you just pipe
: the standard I/O to the com port or something?
Under Linux the user is running programs as if from the local terminal.
It's nothing at all like DOS where you have to mess around with
re-routing the I/O. TADS, ZIP, etc. run just fine as if you were sitting
right here.
One of the large systems in Seattle(Eskimo North) used to have Infocom
games online for users to play. They are running on Suns now, but at the
time they had some sort of Unix hybrid(I forget exactly what).
: I was thinking of what it would take to do something like this on a local
: area DOS bbs. Actually running an interpreter wouldn't be difficult via a
: shell called "doorway", however there are some complications.
: I would have to hack ZIP or ITF so it would accept a savegame filename on
: the commandline and only use that name (ie, the user's number), else they
: might overwrite each other's games, or even various system files. And Script
: files would want to be disabled.
You could make it so that the user can enter a filename, but not any
directory change characters, and save that in a directory designated for
that user(read an enviornmental variable, door dropfile, etc to get the
user's name).
: Unfortunately i'm not very handy C, and in fact have yet to get ZIP
: (unmodified) to compile with my crusty and dusty Turbo C 2.0. But it's
: something to monkey with, and I might find some help somewhere eventually.
: (this could be considered a subtle hint to all readers <-:
The best way to learn how to program is to have a project. Buy some 'c'
books and dive right in.
: My other idea (again, in ignorance!) was figuring out how to read the
: various save games and finding the "Score" from them and sorting those into
: a bulletin. Writing the program to extract the and create the bulletin is
: not a problem for me... finding where the score is in the save game might be
: a little more tricky.
Hmm, not a bad idea. You should be ablke to hack zip to write the score
out to a file, return it as an errorlevel, etc. Read the documents with
onform on the zmachine file formats, etc. Maybe that'll point you in the
right direction.
: Anyhow these are my thoughts and noodlings if anyone cares to read (too late
: now, it's read!) or comment.
Brian
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