Fidonews is published weekly by SEAboard, Fido 107/7. You
are encouraged to submit articles for publication in
Fidonews. Article submission standards are contained in the
file FIDONEWS.DOC, available from Fido 107/7.
Disclaimer or don't-blame-us:
The contents of the articles contained here are not our
responsibility, nor do we necessarily agree with them;
everything here is subject to debate. We publish EVERYTHING
received.
The Dog Barks in Washington
We may be getting some power soon. I'm hearing rumors that
a "FidoPAC" is in its first stages of birth.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with politics (as I
pretty much am myself), a PAC is a Political Action
Committee. I gather that they lobby for specific issues,
make campaign contributions, and so forth.
With this in mind, a FidoPAC sounds like a pretty good idea.
It's sure as taxes (literally) that the guys in Washigton
are going to be passing laws which affect us. It's only
common sense that we should try to provide our input into
that lawmaking process.
There's a small catch, though. Anything like this takes
both manpower and money; mainly money. Now don't scream,
we're not talking hugh amounts. True, an effective PAC
needs a fair sized war chest, but divided out among us all
it shouldn't be that much.
And no, this is not an appeal for money. I just want to get
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:01:53 Page 2
you used to the idea. Whenever things start moving on this
I'm sure you'll hear about it. So start thinking about it
now, and be ready to unlimber your checkbook when the time
comes.
The real question, of course, is how effective anything like
this can be. I think it can be pretty powerful; especially
if backed up by a strong show of support from the user
community. This, too, may get easier.
We are all of us so used to keying in our messages on boards
or on the net that it becomes a real nuisance to have to
actually print something out and put a stamp on it. But I'm
also told that a Senator may soon be setting up a Fido of
his own. This means you could express your support merely
by entering a message as usual. In fact, if we ever do get
any politicos on the net I'd suggest that all sysops donate
phone charges by setting the message cost to zero.
I know I'm horrible about writing letters, but pretty good
about sending netmail. I'm sure many or most of you are the
same way. I'd so much like to get a congresscritter on the
net that I'd donate a copy of our mail system to them if
they'd promise to use it.
So things may start happening soon. Someone somewhere found
an organizer for this sort of thing, which is what we need
the most right now. Just be ready to do your part once the
ball starts rolling.
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:01:54 Page 3
============================================================
NEWS
============================================================
From: David Horowitz (Fido 107/2)
More on software piracy...
Yes, yet another person has decided to put there two cents
into this issue. Now before you Control-C, lets just set a
few facts straight...
Software piracy is STEALING! Yes, a crime. Now as far as I
know no one has gone to jail yet, but it is no less a crime
than walking out of your office with a typewriter.
If you walked into your local department store with the
intent of purchasing a TV. Color, 25", stereo, and cable
ready. You ask the salesman "how much?". Common question,
right? He says, "Eleven Hundred Forty Nine Fifty". You
say, "Are you crazy?". We all know that a state of the art
TV is expensive, but we don't steal it because we can't
afford it, now do we?
Now, a little more on why software costs what it does...
Let's take a look at what it might cost to develop a
program. Since Lotus is the hot issue on price, and they
probably have spent more than most, we will use it. Now I
do not know exactly what things cost, but I hope these are
fair estimates.
Initial Idea. The cost is time. Now time can not be
measured in dollars per say, but what about the fact that
while you are thinking about it you are not earning any-
thing. Now I know that the inventor of Lotus 123 got the
idea in college. He wrote a marketing paper on it. Got a
"B" on it too, why? He professor said that the paper was
good but would not sell. And that the author did not do
enough marketing research. Now that's a laugh.
Development. How long? For a program like lotus I would
have to say one year at a minimum. Now here come the
megabucks...
A staff of programmers. Making $30,000+ a year. So, to be
fair lets say 6 programmers. That's $180,000. Now you
can't just let 6 programmers do what they want, you need
managers. Systems Analysts, or what ever you want to call
them. They earn more. So, two at $45,000. Another
$90,000.
Ok now you have spent $270,000. You need to test the
product, and then debug it. You need to hire testers. Now
Lotus 123 was thought to be used by financial experts. They
would have to test it. They earn on the order of $25,000 -
$30,000 a year. So, two for two months, that's $9,000.
Now, they are sure to find bugs. Another three months of
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:01:56 Page 4
work easy. Buy now you might have put some of the man power
on another project, so 2 programmers, and one manager for
two months... $17,500.
Now lets just total up to see what it might cost to develop
Lotus 123. Now remember at this point the inventor has no
guarantee that the product will ever sell, and in fact only
received a 'B' on his paper, because a supposed marketing
expert said it would not ever sell... $296,500.
Nearly Three hundred thousand dollars! And not one penny in
return. A substantial risk, I don't think there can be any
argument here.
Now as already stated, your investment is just beginning.
You have to market your product. Now I can not even begin
to imagine how much money went to promote 123. I remember
prime time TV adds. They cost a bundle! So, lets pick a
number that no one would argue over. Another $500,000.
Remember full page magazine adds cost too. And Lotus went
on an advertizing blitz for a while.
Ok, So, Lotus Development spent nearly one millon dollars to
develop this program. They put a price of $500.00 on it,
how many copies did they have to sell to break even. 2,000
copies. Now I think you might even agree that my estimates
on development are quite fair, and I did not include
packaging!
True Lotus sold more than 2,000 copies, but could you
guarantee this, would YOU put up the millon dollars? I
think the profits they are making are very fair, it is the
American Dream!
(excerpted from: The Generic Adventure Game System (tm)
manual, Copyright 1985 by Mark J. Welch; used with
permission.)
----------------------------------
A Short History of Adventure Games
----------------------------------
by Mark J. Welch (125 Bay St., #5, San Francisco, CA 94133)
415-982-4591 (voice)
415-391-9148 (data: WelchNet, Fido 10/459)
You probably realize that there is a whole class or
genre of computer games called "adventure games." The genre,
of course, was itself based on role-playing games,
particularly Dungeons and Dragons, a game developed in 1974
by Gary Gygax, who formed TSR.
The grandfather of all adventure games was called
simply "ADVENTURE," and took place in "Collossal Cave." It
was written by Will Crowther and Don Woods on a DEC PDP-10
in FORTRAN. To win the game, one had to capture a bird,
dispose of a nasty snake, avoid a dwarf's pointy knives, and
figure out what toll a troll wanted to cross a bridge, among
many other hazards; the rewards were many but usually had to
be sacrificed in order to obtain some other goal.
The game was quite successful -- partly because it was
virtually the only game available and partly because it was
free -- and was quickly copied onto many large timesharing
systems at universities and companies. Many hours were
spent translating the game so it could run on many
mainframes and microcomputers. Other programmers wrote
extensions into the game, adding new rooms, hazards, and
treasures. There are now two popular versions: very few
people ever solve the entire original 350- or 375-point
Adventure, although a few have even conquered the 550-point
extended version.
While some programmers were satisfied by solving,
translating, or adding to the original Adventure, others saw
an opportunity for new games, on microcomputers as well as
mainframes. Some -- like Scott Adams at Adventure
International -- chose to add graphics to their adventures.
Some had very limited vocabularies and tight, simple
grammers like the original adventure: you could "EAT BIRD"
or "ATTACK TROLL," nothing more complex. Other programmers
sought more natural language and more powerful and complex
features: Infocom's Zork trilogy -- a variant on the
original Adventure -- and that company's many follow-up text
adventures (they, and others, accurately call their works
"interactive fiction") use a complex vocabulary and permit
very long and complex sentences.
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:02:00 Page 6
On the earliest microcomputers -- like the S-100
machines, the TRS-80 Model I and the Apple II -- adventure
games were the first programs to be made available because
they used only text and were written in standard languages,
usually BASIC, and were thus easiest to translate.
Several efforts have been made to write "adventure game
generators," programs which would ask for input detailing
the arrangement of an adventure and then generate a BASIC
program for the scenario. Unfortunately, these generators
too often were not complex enough to generate powerful
adventures, or were too complex to use for someone who
didn't want to learn a programming language in the first
place.
--------------
Enter G.A.G.S.
--------------
The Generic Adventure Game System* was written in an
effort to make writing an adventure game as simple as
possible, while still permitting a great deal of
flexibility. It *cannot* be used to write an adventure game
with as many complex features as Infocom's. To do so would
require developing a complete adventure game programming
language, as Infocom has done, and would require adventure-
game writers to learn a very complex set of rules.
[Note: developing ANY playable, enjoyable adventure
game takes time. You need to set up a map, and then type in
the valid movements from room to room and the full text
descriptions for each room, noun, and creature. While using
G.A.G.S. is far less complex than writing an adventure game
from scratch in Pascal or any other language, it will still
take you many hours to write a game using G.A.G.S.]
There are two clear advantages to the Generic Adventure
Game System (G.A.G.S.). First, G.A.G.S. uses a standard-
format ASCII text file for its data, and the adventure game
can be modified simply by editing the data file with any
text editor. Debugging the game involves playing it: as
problems are discovered, the text file can be edited and the
game re-played. Once a basic game is developed, it can be
extended by adding new rooms or special features (much the
same way Adventure was enhanced).
Second, G.A.G.S. is infinitely expandable because the
complete Turbo Pascal* source code is available. If you
decide that another verb should be available, you can add
it. If you think the parser is too simple, you can try to
patch it -- or completely re-write it. By modifying the
source code, you can add new features to the game which
aren't available in the basic system. (Of course, modifying
the source code could lead to week-long debugging sessions
while you try to figure out why this particular procedure is
infinitely recursive or why the disk is reformatted whenever
you try to move east.) The GAGS manual explains how the
source code was written and why, and suggests a number of
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:02:02 Page 7
modifications that can be made.
-------------------
How to Get G.A.G.S.
-------------------
The Generic Adventure Game System (G.A.G.S.) is
currently in beta-test. Version 1.0 will be available on
September 1, 1985, and will be distributed as "Shareware"
(or "User-Supported Software"). Users may freely copy and
share the program, but are asked to become registered users
by sending $15 to the author, thus encouraging the author to
release updates and new software as Shareware -- as well as
obtaining limited techincal telephone support.
Copies of G.A.G.S. will be sent to many users' groups
and computer bulletin-board systems. The complete G.A.G.S.
disk will also be available for $10 from the author.
(California residents must add appropriate sales tax.) The
complete source code to G.A.G.S. will be available to
registered users for $25.
G.A.G.S. requires a 8088- or 8086-based computer, MS-
DOS 2.1 and 256K bytes of memory. It is available from the
author only on 5-1/4-inch disks.
---------------
Further Reading
---------------
Several books are available on writing your own adventure
game:
Tim Hartnell, "Creating Adventure Games on Your Home
Computer" (in Microsoft BASIC), Ballantine/Random House,
1984.
Richard C. Vile, Jr., "Programming your own Adventure Games
in (UCSD) Pascal," TAB Books, 1984.
Frank DaCosta, "Writing BASIC Adventure Programs for the
TRS-80" (Model I/III/IV), TAB Books, 1982.
Another adventure-game generator program is available for
free. Pete Levy has posted a copy of the "Levy Adventure
Development System" (LADS) on the Games SIG on CompuServe
(GO GAM-310). It's written in BASIC for the TRS-80 Model I
and III.
----------------
* "Generic Adventure Game System" and "G.A.G.S." are
trademarks of Mark J. Welch. "Turbo Pascal" is a
trademark of Borland International. "MS-DOS" is a
trademark of Microsoft.
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:02:04 Page 8
Mark J. Welch, 125 Bay St., #5, San Francisco, CA 94133
415-982-4591 (voice)
415-391-9148 (data: WelchNet, Fido 10/459)
This is an update to an article published in the
FIDONEWS about a month ago. In that article I stated that
I was working on a Fido clone, and was starting with the
message area. Well, the message area is now complete, and
can be used from the console just like Fido in test mode.
The current version is now called ROVERMSG instead of ROVER.
This is because the full emulation system is going to be
called ROVER, but I could see no reason why I should not
continue to have the message base be a standalone program.
Anyway, for those of you who have been using ROVER, the
current version is 1.6 (August 8, 1985), please call my
board and download the latest version. Thanks to all
of you who have helped in the debugging process.
Now on to more specifics. ROVERMSG now is a more
or less full emulation of the Fido message system. The
only differences have to do with parsing of input at
certain points. Since the ROVERMSG parser is very small
and simple, it cannot do some of the things that Fido does.
The differences are minimal, and probably will not be
noticed by 99% of its users. The good news is that I have
added some functionality where it was needed most. I allow
command line arguments to be set in an environment variable
so that a long command line does not have to be typed each
time the program is run. I also allow the user to use his
favorite editor to edit messages, rather than the simple
Fido line editor (although that also exists in ROVERMSG).
Basically, at this point ROVERMSG is finished and I am
working on the rest of ROVER.
Work on the rest of ROVER is also proceeding
smoothly. Currently all of the menus can be reached, but
most of the options do nothing yet. Also, there is no
support for using the COM ports. I am very interested in
hearing from people that have public domain code for all
of the different file transfer protocols for the file area.
If anyone could send me the code for XMODEM, YMODEM, MODEM7,
KERMIT, TELINK, etc. I would really appreciate it. Please,
if you FidoNet it to me, try to make the name of the file
something original (I would hate to have one person's
XMODEM.C get overwritten by another). I am particularly
interested in code that is written in C, but I will take
ASM or PASCAL also.
Finally, anyone interested in beta-testing the
full-blown ROVER from the console (use it like in test mode
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:02:06 Page 10
and see if it does what you expect), please contact me. The
beta-testers for ROVERMSG have done a GREAT job, and if any
of you would like to continue testing ROVER, just let me
know.
Sam was your average 15 year old American
teenager, except for one thing, he had a
computer and a nack to get into things he
wasn't supposed to get into. He would charge
his peers to get into the schools computer and
change grades. $10 for a D, $15 for a C, $20
for a B, $25 for an A and $100 a shot for
credit changes. He did have on policy though,
he would not look at someones grades unless he
was paid for it and said they wanted it
changed.
One day sam went to far! He dropped the credir
rating of his english teacher because she
flunked him on purpose becasue he wasn't one
of her favorites. After he did this he swithed
his grade and went to bed. The next morning
he heard the front door bell.
"OPEN UP it's the FBI" came a demanding voice.
"oh well" sighed sam "they got me"
He opend the door to find his best friend
standing in the doorway.
"Whatcha trying to do?" yelled Sam "give me a
heartatack!?!"
"nahhhh" replied Bob "Just came over to tell
you that my mom said out English 1 teacher was
in the store and couldn't buy a dress because
her credit ratings had been slashed" bob
continued
"hmmmmm wonder who could have done that?" Sam
replied stupidly
"When are you gonna give this crap up?!?"
asked Bob
"In time" sighed Sam "in time"
"I just hope the she doesn't put 1 and 1
together and get Sam Sulivan!" stated Bob
"She won't! she has no more brains that a
donkey!"said Sam hotly
"Maybe, but I wouldn't be to sure." Bob said
solemly
Sure enough that afternoon the password to the
banks computer didn't work and the five
O'clock news a small blurb about the fact that
the banks computer had been broken into. Sam
wolfed down his dinner and ran to Bob's house
and asked what he sould do.
"Welllllll" said Bob " lay off for awhile,
let things blow over." Sam did this for about
two weeks but ended up getting back into it.
A student at his school heard about his
service and paid him $50 to change two grades
from B's to A's. Well as you can guess Sam
was caught. At 18 the only thing he does
with his computer is his homework and
programing. He does no more hacking. He
wishes that he would have never started but
now it is to late. Now in his spare time he
tries to explain to young hackers what their
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:02:09 Page 12
doing might be fun, but it is dangerous and
there are high risks.
This story isn't true but it has probably
happened a hundred times all ready. If you
know of someone doing this please stop them
now, and explain to them what they are doing
to to the future of telecommunicating.
Mike Ringer 437/117
soon to be the sysop of
Ollie's board
300/1200
Those of you who actually read the nodelist distribu-
tions may have noticed that the phone number for the Wash-
A-RUG FIDO (109/483) was recently changed to (703) 359-6549.
The reasons behind the change may cause you to think twice
before chosing an alternative long distance service.
The both phone lines are provided by Hadron Inc. (they
pay for my computer habits). The original line went through
the office PBX system (no big deal) and was working fine.
At least that is what I thought, until I saw the first phone
bill.
Our PBX make use of a computerized call routing scheme.
In theory, it will select the lowest cost carrier for all
long distance calls. It also seems that the service used
for all calls west of the Mississippi is SBS. Again it
would appear to be no big deal. FIDO bundles up the mes-
sages to save time and money, and the routing optimization
further reduces the costs. Right? Well, that was what I
thought. Seems that "Murphy" (never forget him!) was out to
prove otherwise. For a few nights last month, FIDO 109/483
was unable to connect to FIDO 100/22 to deliver a file. No
big deal, FIDONET tries to connect 20 times and then gives
up till the next night. All told, total of 40 attempts over
2 night, with only one connect that lasted 45 seconds. No
big deal. WRONG! Seems that SBS is unable to differentiate
a call that completes from a call that does not connect.
That means 40 calls at $0.30 each! If you extend that over
a month or so, you can see that the nonconnecting calls can
wind up being more expensive than the one that get through.
So, I got another phone line for Wash-A-RUG. It is an
external AT&T long-line, with no call optimization to muddy
the waters. As a side benefit, the new line has consider-
ably less noise on it. The old number still answers,
although the amount of noise introduced by the call forward-
ing is horrendous.
The moral to the story? Check out your alternative long
distance services carefully. And NEVER forget that Murphy
is out there, lurking in the shadows, just waiting to prove
"If anything can go wrong, it will"
SYSOP - 109/483 (Wash-A-RUG)
- 109/74 (The Bear's Den)
For those of you that use [*shudder*] Wordstar on your
PCs, here are a few suggestions having to do with editing
and printing Fido-format documents (those following the
standard format of Fidonews and the various manuals).
This comes as a result of my trials and tribulations
experienced in downloading and printing the entire to-date
library of Fidonews and the Fido manual... and my attempts
to gather them into an easily handled format - loose leaf
binders.
I don't know how the format that Fidonews (and manuals)
use was arrived at, but I assume that it was in order to be
able to quickly use the DOS "TYPE" command to scan or print.
Indeed, this works out rather well, except for two
things that can't be done easily : format the page so that
the punch holes don't chew up words, and print using printer
control commands like doublestrike, LQ mode, etc.
The following was arrived at using Wordstar vers. 3.3
and an Epson FX-80 printer. It allows me to print documents
on continuous feed paper and leave room on the left for
punch holes.
Start Wordstar and call in the document to edit it.
Make sure your cursor is at the beginning of file, usually
on the "F" in the word Fidonews on page one (if that's what
you're working with). Now put in any print-control commands
you might want.
Next set your margins. I use left= column 5 , right=
column 85. It's important to maintain the 80 column
difference between the two... you might want to set each one
proportionally higher or lower depending on how much room
you want to leave on the left... I would think, though that
with the left at more than 10 you'd start to lose text off
the right side of the page.
Now just do a ^QQB to start continuous paragraph
reformatting, and hit the number 1 after it starts to speed
it up. When it gets to the end of the file, hit the space
bar to stop, and save it with ^KD... you can even be doing
all this while you're printing the last one - but don't set
the reformat speed faster than 5 or so, or the printer slows
down.
- Larry DiGioia 13/384
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:02:13 Page 15
============================================================
FOR SALE
============================================================
CopyX is now available
CopyX.com is a comprehensive, user friendly Fido maintenance
utility featuring pop-up windows, designed to reduce the
amount of time required to maintain files.bbs
The COPY function employed within the program allow files to
be moved from one disk. or subdirectory to another with
overwrite protection. This is nothing special about this,
but what makes CopyX.com special is that it allow you to
enter the file description and after the file is copied it
appends files.bbs with the file name and description. Then
prompts you to delete to original. For example to copy a
file from your upload area to your sysop area you would:
1-enter file name >copyxdmo.com
2-give the file path >b:\bbs\sysop
3-describe f >Demo of CopyX the ultimate sysop utility
4-delete original >y
That's it, the file is now in the sysop area, the files.bbs
listing has been updated, and the original has been removed.
Time required 30 - 45 sec. Not bad ah ?
When using the file compare function, CopyX will read
through files.bbs and compare it to the directory listing if
it finds any `missing' files it prompts you to remove the
line from files.bbs (y/n) . If files are found in the
directory that are not in files.bbs you can add them by
pressing a single key, then entering the description. Other
options are skipping the file or deleting it from the
directory.
To round out the package a separate function allow you to
scroll through files.bbs a line at a time, deleting files
(and description) or adding/changing there description as
you go.
Additional supporting functions include displaying the
directory, listing files.bbs (or any other text file) and
changing drives.
CopyX is currently being distributed in two versions. The
first CopyXdmo is a demonstration version in which users are
encouraged to distribute freely to their friends and other
bbs operators. I hope that it will be available on all the
major fido BBSs. The demo version is identical to the real
version except that it will not save data to files.bbs.
This program can save you hours of work. If you value your
time at more then $ .50 per hour, you need this program. To
order send $25.00 to the address listed below.
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:02:15 Page 16
Send Fidonet mail to 19/439 or US Mail
Robert Graham 1004 Cooper SQ Circle #267; Arlington Tx 76013
FIDONEWS -- 12 Aug 85 00:02:15 Page 17
============================================================
NOTICES
============================================================
It is with great sorrow that we must announce the death of
Andrew Fluegelman.
We have almost no details at this time, except for
confirmation of his death, apparently by suicide. We had
hoped to get someone closer to the scene to provide some
details, and we tried to find someone who knew him to write
a proper obituary, but as yet we have failed.
We never knew Mr. Fluegelman, or even very much about him.
We do know that he has exerted a profound influence on the
personal computer marketplace. He is probably best known as
the author of PC-Talk, which is probably the single most
popular communications program for the IBM-PC.
But he is also the first person to distribute a major
program using the freeware concept. In fact, the very term
"Freeware" is a trademark of The Headlands Press, the
company he founded.
Personal computer users everywhere owe a debt of gratitude
to Andrew Fluegelman, and he will be sorely missed.
