11/24/24: NE BBS - fsxNet integration!

I've done a ton of work on the BBS in order to get it working with fsxNet. fsxNet is a FTN (Fido Technology Network) that gives you a number of shared echomail areas (basically message boards) as well as netmail (BBS to BBS email). Programming all the changes needed from scratch to do this was a large undertaking but it's mostly done now. A big shout out to Deon from Clearing Houz for all the help. Clearing Houz is also my hub that NE BBS connects to to send/receive fsxNet messages.

Being an FTN, it relies on sending and receiving packets to and from the hub over a protocol called 'binkd'. Creating an processing the packets is all on the BBS to handle. Handling message boards with basically file upload/downloads was definitely a different route than something more modern but so far it's worked pretty well.

Being that I had already integrated the local NE BBS message board with the NE Bulletinboard site, I went the route of also including the FSX boards there as well. In hindsight, I think I may have rather used a local postgresql DB on the BBS server for all that and skipped the web view, but hindsight is 20/20... Anyway, if you want to see these areas, and have a NE Bulletinboard web account, the full listing is in this forum post. ...or you can just log into the BBS itself.

-Erik

10/21/24: NE BBS listings and some other stuff...

The NE BBS is now listed on the 'go-to' BBS listing source on the web, the Telnet BBS Guide. It's also now listed on other BBS resource sites: IPTIA and 8-Bit Boyz. Pretty cool! It seems like there's a bot crawler that searches out active BBSs and automatically adds them when it finds them for IPTIA and the Telnet BBS Guide.

In other news, there have been a few releases of the NE Bulletinboard web site (it's on v0.126 now). Mostly just bug fixes and reporting. One of the big things that was fixed was the performance issue. Page loads should be much much quicker now. I found a plugin for Perl sites called SlapBird APM that helped track down extra unneeded queries that were running as well as ones that were poorly formed and taking much longer than they should have. (Related forum post)

NE BBS changes have been slowly being worked on as well with hopefully a new release coming soon.

Other than that, I've been digging more into an Atari 8-bit programming language called Action! I played around with it a bit earlier in the year but have been running through more and more code examples and tutorials. I'm hoping to write something in it to release here but I haven't decided what that would be yet. There are a few new links added to the links page that contain good information regarding the language.

-Erik

08/30/24: NE BulletinBoard v0.122 Released

I made a new release for the NE BulletinBoard website. This release fixes: Honestly, I wasn't really planning on making this whole release but I went to fix one small bug and I sort of avalanched into doing a bunch so I figured I'd release it.

-Erik

08/23/24: COBOL Guestbook Demo Site Back Online

After probably two years of downtime, I finally got around to getting the COBOL GuestBook webapp back onilne. It's running on a separate server now instead of in a VM running on my laptop eating up a ton of resources.

Anyway, link is here: http://eriksguestbook.servehttp.com:9574/

-Erik

08/17/24: NE BBS version v0.67 released!

A pretty decently important update to the NE BBS. This one more focused on improving the ATASCII (Atari 8bit) support performance. The BBS is now usable all the way down to 300bps (tried on real hardware) though watching the text print faster than I can type sort of stinks... I'd recomment at least 9600bps but honestly, they're all pretty usable at this point.

I also added some improvements to ANSI client support as well so that things look a bit better.

The big feature in this release (besides the wild ATASCII display improvement) is that when viewing the message board, it will jump to your last read message in a thread. If a new message is posted since last time you viewed a thread, it will jump you to the first new unread message. I've tried it out locally with large message chains and it works great.

I also added fTelnet web clients to the new NE BBS section of the website as well as the related top level forum post. So even if you don't have a terminal client on your computer that can connect on your PC, you can still try the BBS out via the web!

v0.67 Release Related Forum Post: Here
BBS Connection: nebbs.servehttp.com:9223

-Erik

07/29/24: NE BBS version v0.66 released!

This is a pretty huge update to the BBS. There's a bunch of new features and a lot of the navigation has been tweaked a bit to make it a bit more user friendly. Here's a short list of what was updated:

New Features/Areas:
The Atari 8 bit support is probably the biggest one. You can now log in using BobTerm (or whatever you want though I've only tested really on BobTerm) and a Fujinet to the BBS. Every area is (minus the ANSI archive) is accessible and formatted to be viewed correctly in ATASCII.

Next on the list for v0.67 is file upload/download. I've already written the code that can handle the actual upload and download over XMODEM. I've also tested that it's working in both SyncTerm (modern ANSI) and BobTerm (Atari 8bit). I'm currently working on setting up the area where you can actually use this new feature. I've decided to go an odd route here and make it a command line interface... at least to start. I'll probably eventually give an option for a graphics menu based UI as well off the main menu.

Anyway, check it out! Or at least check out the screen shots I added to the post linked below if you want to see what things look like.

Link to NE BBS project forum post: Here
BBS Connection: nebbs.servehttp.com:9223

-Erik

04/15/24: NE BBS is online!

NE BBS is online and accepting connections. There's not really much to do there yet except view some old ANSI artwork, send simple mail between users, leave a message on 'the wall', and post to the message board. Both regular telnet and 'raw' telnet should work without issues. For best results, use a telnet client like 'SyncTerm' or 'NetRunner' to connect. I think the built in Windows telnet will view ANSI artwork correctly out of the box as well (It did for the most part in Windows XP.. I didn't spin up a newer VM than that to check though). I know the one packaged with Linux does not (though it is usable).

I'm also working on adding Atari 8-bit computer support. That's sort of its own can of worms as Atari uses ATASCII instead of ANSI. Not only does it have a smaller (and different) set of text characters, ATASCII also has its own control commands for cursor movement, new lines, and such that differ from regular VT100 terminals as well. Anyway, progress on that is going surprisingly well so far!

Link to NE BBS project forum post: Here
BBS Connection: nebbs.servehttp.com:9223

-Erik

03/02/24: Happy 25th Birthday NE!

A quarter century! That's crazy! Not really a huge year release wise but a lot of things worked on. I think most of everything this year was Perl based except for the new QB game I started at the end of December. Anyway, here's the list:

NE Releases since 02/20/23:
New NE Projects since 02/20/23:
Here's a link to the related forum post: Link
-Erik

01/31/24: Happy Belated Holidays and New Year!

The missing stuff is back now (where possible). I had some issues regarding the NE DiscApp site and unfortunately, it is currently offline and will remain offline for good. There was a lot of work put into that site over the years so its sad to see it go. The good news is that I completely re-wrote the forum (again) from scratch so that's back online. I was able to save all the existing forum conversations so no data in that sense was lost. The new forum looks a bit nicer as the whole UI is new and without any (my own) style constrants like the old site had. It's powered using Mojolicious and Perl so a decent departure from the old one that was Spring Boot and Java. Anyway, I'll have to update the web projects section to include the new site.

In other news, I started working on a side scrolling ASCII QBasic game. I started a week before New Years and intended it to be a New Years themed game but I missed that dead line. Its still in the works and should hopefully be done some time in Feb. Haven't updated any web site pages with it yet but you can read the latest info on it from the related forum post.

-Erik

10/27/23: Hmm... reworking some things

Sorry for the missing parts, I'm currently re-working some things on the site.

-Erik

08/04/23: Oh boy. I'm way overdue in updating the site.

I finally got around to adding all the Perl projects/things I've been working on for the past x amount of months to the site. You can find them now under the Project's sections 'Web' and 'Perl'. There's a good amount of DiscApp related things added there as well. It's late at night so I'm not going to go into all the things now. Please check out the 'Perl' and 'Web' projects sections if you're interested in seeing what I've been working on lately.

-Erik

04/11/23: Perl SDL Graphics Demo

A long time ago, back in 2006, I was working on an RPG game written in C++ and using the SDL graphics library. You can find all the info related to that version here. Unsurprising, it never got very far and I only managed to create a very basic graphics demo application.

Recently, I stumbled upon the Perl SDL module on CPAN and decided to give it a try using the old C++ graphics demo as something to try and recreate with it.

Thankfully, the Perl SDL module is pretty nice to use and putting together the demo didn't take much time at all. I even added some small enhancements to it. The full write up and video comparing the two versions side by side can be found here.

-Erik

03/13/23: NE DiscApp 4.2.0 Released

A few updates for the NE DiscApp site. First of all, the whole main site received a complete overhaul of the look and feel. I also went through all of the different use cases on the main site (creating an account, creating an app, changing password, etc) and hopefully made them a bit more intuitive and user friendly where needed. There were also some bug fixes here and there.

Most of the changes in this release has the Perl NE DiscApp site to thank. While working on that side project I noticed a few things I overlooked with the Java site. I also used the main site styling from the Perl site on the production Java site. Full run down of changes are in the change log post.

-Erik

02/20/23: Happy 24nd Birthday NE!

Wow. This site has been around now for 24 years. That's crazy. I never thought some random Geocities page I made back when I was 13 would still be around after all this time. Cheers to another year come and gone.

It's been sort of a light year in the way of releases. NE DiscApp had some cool changes this past year. DiscussionApps can now be configured to use BBCode. I've also opened up testing to a new image attachment feature. Most of the second half of the year has been Perl related. At work, I use Perl quite a bit but never really carried it into my hobby world. I had a large Perl project at work this year and for some reason that got me on the Perl kick outside of work as well. The latest DiscApp Perl version is completely unnecessary and pointless but I decided to do it out of curiosity. The original site was written in Perl so I was interested in trying to do the same. The link below is fully functional but as of the time of this update, it's very slow rendering DiscussionApps. I think it's a factor of my recursive thread generation code being slow and the database being hosted on one side of the world while the web is hosted on the other. I'm currently working on a way to speed it up a little bit but I don't expect much to come of it.

NE Releases since 02/20/22:
New NE Projects since 02/20/22:
-Erik

12/24/22: Santa's Delivery Rush Released!

The Qbasic project Santa's Delivery Rush is finally done! It's available to download from either the Qbasic Projects page or from the Qbasic Files page. I'm glad to see this game finally released. Hopefully someone finds it fun to actually play.
HAPPY
HOLIDAYS!

-Erik

11/08/22: NE DiscApp notifier migration and Qbasic Halloween Game

NE DiscApp notification service migration to the main code base has been completed as well as deployed to production. (Link to Change Log post). So far, it seems to be working perfectly without any resource issues due to the extra load on the server.

In other news, Around 10/10, I started a Qbasic Halloween game that I was trying to get done by Halloween. I had basically the whole game done to a point that it was good enough for a demo of some sort but I didn't have any levels except for the test ones I created. It's a shame I missed the deadline (just like Santa's Delivery Rush) but the extra time has been good to expand some ideas, tweak some issues and create actual levels for the game. I'm hoping to wrap up coding of everything in the next week so I can spend the later part of November polishing up the final bits of Santa's Christmas Rush so it's ready for this December. ( Link to related forum post on the new Halloween game)

-Erik

10/05/22: Lots of Perl and some NEDiscApp host changes

Well, I'm still working, albeit slowly, on the Perl version of RPG_net. I still don't have a good name for it yet, though I have now added a Map Maker which makes world creation a bit easier. One snag I've ran into is how I want to handle the battles so that they won't get out of sync with the clients. I was originally thinking of maybe keeping it action/RPG style where you don't enter a battle mode but I also feel like maybe a turned based battle would be a nice twist. Example: When you're in battle and another player sees you in a fight with an enemy on the main world map, they would be able to join the battle as it was happening by running into it. That would also perhaps make the code easier to have more complex battles as well. We'll see though...

In other news, Heroku (my host for NEDiscApp) is shutting down all its free services on 11/28/22. This means the Perl test website (Archive Link) in the previous update and the NEDiscApp notifier will go offline. The test app doesn't really matter, but the Notifier will need to be migrated into the main website codebase before then. I'm hoping to have that done by 11/1 so there would be ample time to test if things for some reason go sideways with the extra overhead of having the notification service packed into the already large main codebase.

That said, I also found a replacement for Heroku's free service called Koyeb. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles but it does let you spin up docker containers for free. I'm currently using it to test the server for the Perl RPG_net project. So far, it's been great. The only catch is that they don't offer databases (yet).

And finally (yeah, this is a huge post...), I stumbled across the full NE re-write Puckdropper wrote in Perl back in 2006. I have it running on a VM and it's now currently online just for historical sake. No guarantees how long it will be accessible though. Being that it uses cgi-bin and such, I've decided to self host it. Related forum post and Direct link to site.

Also, with the Perl website being loaded up on the VM, I redeployed the COBOL powered GuestBook website: Link.

-Erik

08/19/22: Atari 400, Perl, and NE DiscApp release

A decent amount of updates this past month. Puckdropper gifted me his Atari 400 computer and accessories. I've been messing with it for the past two week working on getting it back up and running. After chip swaps, cleaning, new RAM upgrade, it's almost there. The journey with that can all be read in the related forum post.

At work, I've been having to write a lot of Perl lately. I used to use Perl quite a bit back in the mid-late 2000s but for some reason I sort of lost contact with it over the years except for a random script here and there. Well, I decided to dive back into it full on head first and have been working on some "test" projects. I created a test web app on my host that can generate a QR code from a string or post a message like a simple Guest book. (Link: http://perl-test.herokuapp.com/ (Archive Link))

The other Perl thing I've been working on is a bit more complex. It's yet another remake of the C++ project "rpg_net". Which first popped into existance back in 2006, then reborn in 2018, then also spawned the unfinished offline Java version of Zombie Attack and the Atari 2600 demake Zombie Crisis. I think I either need to finish one of these versons or come up with a new idea for a game. haha. Anyway, this one has a client application and a server applcation. Currently clients can connect to the server and load up to the same ASCII style map where they can run around. No project page yet, so here's the GitHub link.

Finally, NeDiscApp version 3.7.0 and 3.7.1 have been released. Some good changes in these releases. Details in Change log posts.

-Erik

07/11/22: NEDiscApp 3.4 -> 3.6 Released & NE File Utility Update

I guess I didn't make any updates here when v3.4 and v3.5 were released. Now v3.6 is also released! The latest release fixes what I believe to be the last HTML rendering differences from the original site besides the new enhancements I've added over time. Also in 3.5, I finally fixed the sub thread formatting and behavior so that the replies are in the correct order and that it doesn't display the whole thread tree if reading on a sub branch. Full rundown of changes are on the Change log.

In other news, I started messing with the idea of adding mouse support to my QB project NE File Utility. So far, the mouse can be used to open of the file menus and also clicking away from an opened menu will close it. The way the code is laid out, adding mouse support in a sane manner will be a bit tricky in spots. Hopefully it doesn't become too much of a headache before I have to get back to finishing Santa's Christmas Rush.

-Erik

06/01/22: NEDiscApp 3.3.2 Released

This is a small release that I had originally planned to have released about a month ago but was delayed due to hosting issues. No real feature changes in this release. It's basically just updating to Java 17 LTS. Release notes

-Erik

04/29/22: COBORDLE Released

I'm a little late with update as the game has been released for a little bit now. I was inspired by Graham's QB Wordle clone so I decided to make my own written in COBOL. I finally added it to the COBOL Files Section with links to the GitHub repo, screen shot and video, a download link and a link to the forum post. It might be worth checking out even if you don't plan on downloading and building a copy for yourself.

I've also been going through and updating / adding to to my COBOL Example programs repo on GitHub. I've been adding more comments describing how each example works as well as a quick ReadMe rundown for each program. Hopefully doing so will make the repo more useful to people besides myself.

-Erik

04/11/22: NE DiscApp 3.x versions Released

More versions of NE DiscApp I didn't originally plan on releasing are now released. I got on a roll with new features and just kept going. The latest release is now all the way up to 3.3.0 and there's still a few more changes I want to make before I call that "done" for a bit.

Link: Change Log for more info.

I other news, Mike Hawk from Mike Hawk's QB Page has released a fantastic version of Columns for QB4.5. You can download a copy from the Pete's QB Forum post or from his website.

-Erik

03/09/22: NE DiscApp 3.0.1 Released

I didn't plan on having another release so soon but I put together another quick bug fix release with some small/quick to fix issues I found after testing the 3.0.0 release. Rundown of the fixes I did can be found in the link below.

Link: Change Log post.

-Erik

03/07/22: NE DiscApp 3.0.0 Released

This update should be the release of Santa's Delivery Rush but I felt like I needed a small break from that project. Now that I've put together this release of NE DiscApp, I'll head back to SDR to finish it up.

NE DiscApp 3.0.0 has some much needed bug fixes as well as a few new features. The site overall should be much more mobile/tablet friendly. I also added the ability for admins to quick edit user permissions from the thread edit page (this was a feature in the original DiscApp that had not yet been implemented yet). Finally, threads that continue past the configured depth where the link "x more comments" is shown, now highlights for new messages posted in the threads under that link. Previously, this would not be highlighted at all which would make it hard to tell if any new messages were posted in those deeply nested conversations unless you manually went and checked for a reply.

Full run down of the changes can be found in the Change Log post.

Also, not NE related but there are so few QB releases these days that I feel like it's worth mentioning. Graham from Graham's World Wide Web Server has created and released a version of the game Wordle written in QB called "WorDOSle". It's really good. The download can be found at his website. There's also a thread at Pete's QB Forum.

-Erik

02/20/22: Happy 23nd Birthday NE!

I can't believe another year has gone by! It feels like this past year flew by at light speed. Most releases where in the early part of the year. Once summer started to come around I found myself invested in new larger projects that are still ongoing. There are unfinished releases of these projects available but I figured it would make more sense to separate them into their own list as there is no official release for them yet.

As you can see COBOL and QBasic were the languages of choice... even mixing a bit together with COBOL BASIC Interpreter! :)

NE Releases since 02/20/21:
New NE Projects since 02/20/21:
-Erik

02/15/22: Yep, still working on SDR. QB Projects Page Updated

Slowly still making progress on Santa's Delivery Rush. Now that it's well past Christmas I figured I could take some time to add some more "fit and finish" before the final release. There's now bonus stages and such as well as the original level line up. I'm down to only needing to make about two or three more levels before that's all completed. I also finally gave it its own spot on the Qbasic Projects Page.

-Erik

01/21/22: Santa's Delivery Rush still in the works. Links page updated.

I'm still chugging away (slowly) on the final version of Santa's Delivery Rush. It's currently down to thinking up levels to create. I currently have about half of the levels done. That probably makes it sound like the rest could take a long time to finish, but it shouldn't be so bad seeing that all the actual programming is now completed.

In other news, I updated the links page with some new links as well as reorganized them based on category. Each category is now in alphabetical order too.

-Erik

01/07/22: Happy New Year! More demos of Santa's Delivery Rush Released.

I made a bunch of changes over the past week or so on the code for Santa's Delivery Rush. There's been a ton of bug fixes, collision detection changes as well as the controls have been completely re-done (for the better). Latest demos are easiest to get from the replies of the forum thread linked below for now. I also put a link for the latest demo released today. I'm thinking this might be the last demo before the full game is released... We'll see though.

Link to download: Santa's Delivery Rush Demo v0.28
Forum Post: Forum Release Post with Screen Shots

To run the demo, load XMAS2021.BAS and run that from the directory you extract all the data files to.

-Erik


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