• The Game Truth...

    From Dave to All on Sun Jul 24 12:58:57 2022

    I had grand plans for dumping in all kinds of BBS games, including MUDs and what not. But I can't.

    Going back 2 steps - I've been a FreeBSD user since the 1990s. For servers, I'll take it 99 times out of 100 over a Linux server if I can avoid it. Anyone who has been a long term user of it will likely understand. Particularly if they ever had to use back in the day where system resourcing was low and we had to resort to doing things like building and compiling custom kernels just so we could save a little RAM.
    This server runs FreeBSD and I'd like it to stay that way. The reality though is that this is one of only a couple of FreeBSD servers running this BBS software. According to the BBS list, there is actually only one other.

    FreeBSD is not Linux. They are different beasts. A lot of people who have used both extensively would even suggest that FreeBSD is far more UNIX than Linux. Something that works great on Linux simply may not work on FreeBSD.

    It turns out that FreeBSD quite some time ago lost a function called "doscmd" = an emulator that allowed DOS applications to run on FreeBSD. The documentation for this BBS software is unfortunately the product of decades of work, and isn't necessarily updated given that so few are actively using FreeBSD as a host.

    Linux builds have been recommended to use "dosemu" as an emulator. It too is actually quite old and not under active development. You can however at least, with some poking get it working.
    There are a heap of dependencies however that don't have FreeBSD packages either. I might be able to manually compile them - but this is simply the FreeBSD version of dependency hell.

    FreeBSD is a lean operating system. That's part of why I love it. It's always been good at supporting legacy stuff, but DOS applications are simply too far gone, and trying to make outdated emulators fit into it isn't something that I consider to be a fun project. If I was a serious gamer and wanted a mission, I probably would have a crack at it. But I'm not.
    The effort involved is mammoth for something that really is just reinventing the wheel just as flying cars become the norm. In the grand scheme of what I've achieved so far, the effort far exceeds any likely use anyone will ever have for the outcome.

    So there you have it. I can't bring in DOS games. If there is a Java script version of it though, it might have potential.