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version 1.5
Copyright (c) 2023 Elwynor Technologies
The year is 2089. Humans have merged with machines to become the ultimate power of the known universe: ANDROIDS!
The Androids stay in fighting trim by playing a game in which "prizes" of different values appear at random at various locations within an enclosed playing area. The object of the game is to accumulate as many points as possible, both by beating your opponents to the prizes, and by "ramming" your opponents to take their points away. You may become invisible at any time to avoid pursuit or to ambush your opponents. Special high-voltage obstacles litter the playfield, and the border is made of duodenum alloy... points are deducted for colliding with any of these. "Top-Three" listings include Total Points and Points Per Hour.
Androids! was the first real-time multi-player ANSI-graphics game developed for use with The Major BBS.
Each player is represented by a letter (or sometimes a question mark) that moves around under that player's control, picking up "prizes" (represented by digits, question marks, or diamonds), and trying to "ram" the letters representing the other players.
Running over a prize adds that prize's value to your score, and makes the prize disappear. Similarly, when you ram into another player, points are subtracted from that player's score and added to yours (assuming the other player has any points to give you), and the other player is sometimes teleported to a random new location. Each time you collide with a wall or any of the obstacles in the playfield, you lose points.
If your system-type is "IBM PC or compatible", then "IBM extended character set graphics" are used to display the playfield. Otherwise, simple @-signs are used, although they may appear in different colors if your system has color-display capability.
Upon entering the game, you're given this prompt:
Enter 'P' to play, 'T' for Top-Three, 'D' for details, or 'X' to exit:
If 'P' is selected, then the screen clears and the playfield is drawn. If your cursor-movement keys generate ANSI output, you can use them to move around. This works under standard PC comm programs such as ProComm and Telix. Otherwise, use the diamond-shaped set of keys I, J, K, and M: I means "move up", J is "move left", K is "move right", and M is "move down". Press the space bar to become invisible. Press ENTER at any time to interrupt play.
Top-Three listings are maintained in two categories: total points, and points-per-hour. This is because total points achieved can be arbitrarily high, if a user is willing to stay on long enough. So in a sense, a top rating in points-per-hour is a better indicator of game skill, whereas total points measures perseverance.
Simply unzip the archive to your Major BBS server directory, add it to your menu, configure the MSG file to your liking, and start The Major BBS! It's that easy!
Androids has one message file. Within it, in LEVEL4 you can configure the points impact of various activities as well as maximum concurrent players.
There are many text blocks to customize in LEVEL6
The Major BBS when running under DOS included a hook into the 18hz realtime interrupt. This allowed the BBS and GSBL to stack functions that would be called every time this timer cycled. Whereas the "realtime kick" routine could be as often as once per second, this realtime hook ran about 55 times per second - much faster, and enabled realtime activities. Of course, games came quickly. The GALACTICOMM Flash Protocol was one implementation. Access was through the teleconference and required users to have custom game programs on their machine to play. But the BBS itself could also offer realtime multiuser services. Androids was written in 1989 by Tim Stryker to demonstrate this capability. Other ISVs wrote games that used it afterward, although it was never super popular.
The UNIX and NT versions of The Major BBS and Worldgroup never implemented a realtime timer. It was re-added in Beta R30 of The Major BBS V10 by Rick Hadsall, so Androids was ported and resurrected.
Androids was acquired by Elwynor Technologies in 2005 along with the rest of the Galacticomm intellectual property. It was ported to The Major BBS v10 in May 2023.
This project is licensed under the AGPL v3. Additional terms apply to contributions and derivative projects. Please see the LICENSE file for more details.
We welcome contributions from the community. By contributing, you agree to the terms outlined in the CONTRIBUTING file.
If you create an entirely new project based on this work, it must be licensed under the AGPL v3, assign all right, title, and interest, including all copyrights, in and to your fork to Rick Hadsall and Elwynor Technologies, and you must include the additional terms from the LICENSE file in your project's LICENSE file.
This is a Major BBS v10 module. To compile for Major BBS v10, import this project folder in the isv/ subtree of Visual Studio 2022, right click the project name and choose build! When ready to build for "release", ensure you are building for release. Note that this could build but will not play on Worldgroup 3.2 due to the lack of support for the realtime handler.
The DIST folder includes all of the items that should be packaged up in a ELWAND.ZIP. When unzipped in a Major BBS V10 installation folder, it "installs" the module.