Hey everyone,
Terminal Tavern is a telnet BBS I run with a heavy focus on conversation and door games - twenty four of them, and most are native to PhotonBBS which is a BBS like system that I have been maintaining since 2002. telnet terminaltavern.com ssh -p 2222 bbs@terminaltavern.com
(Create your account over telnet first - after that you can add your SSH key if you prefer.)
The heart of the system is real-time teleconference chat. It's the main hangout - everyone's in chat together, and you launch games from there. While you're hanging out, there are games you can play right in the chat channel: Trivia - Category-based with progressive hints and credit prizes Liar's Dice - Bluffing dice with credit wagers Bingo - Classic 5x5, auto-called numbers, credit stakes Hangman - Pick your own word or go random Bar Brawl - Challenge someone to a quick-draw duel for credits
Then there are the door games. Sixteen of these are native games written in Perl, plus PhotonMUD.
The big ones: PhotonMUD - Full multi-user dungeon. Procedurally generated worlds every campaign - towns, dungeons, castles, caves, rivers. D&D-style combat, multiple classes and races, magic system, PvP. Every playthrough is a different map. MechWars: Infinite Frontiers - Persistent 125x125 sector universe. 12 mech classes, AI drone combat, resource trading, planet colonization, fortress building, guild warfare. Spiritual successor to the 1991 original. The Crypt - Roguelike dungeon crawler. 50 procedurally generated floors with a weekly seed so everyone plays the same layout. Permadeath, four classes, mobile monster AI. Race to floor 50.
RPG and adventure: Red Dragon - Fantasy RPG with forest exploration, dragon hunts, and live PvP duels Atlantis - Underwater adventure with diving, sea creatures, co-op excavations, and artifacts Pirate's Quest - Caribbean trading, ship combat, and crew management Star Trader - Sector-hopping space trading with ship upgrades and PvP combat Star Trek - Galaxy exploration and Klingon combat Murder Motel - PvP assassination game. Navigate a map, assemble weapons, track your target, use the squeals system to trade intel or spread disinformation
Strategy and multiplayer: 1000 Miles - The French racing card game, 2-4 players in real-time with AI opponents Property Wars - Multiplayer property trading board game Sea Battle - Battleship with both AI opponents and live PvP Dice Shake - Multiplayer dice scoring Casino - Blackjack, poker, craps, slots, roulette
Sim and async: Drug Lord - 30-day campaign to build a street empire Big Catch - Fishing sim with 5 lakes, a tackle shop, tournaments, and head-to-head duels Food Fight - Async multiplayer food-throwing chaos with a spy system, loans, and lottery
Classic DOS doors: Legend of the Red Dragon - The classic Barren Realms Elite - Strategic empire building Usurper - Fantasy gangwars Operation Overkill II - Post-apocalyptic wasteland Darkness, Lunatix, Simpsons
All of this runs on PhotonBBS, which is the platform itself - open source, written in Perl, in development since 2002. It handles chat, user management, bulletins, door games, all of it. If you want to run your own: docker run -d --name photonbbs \ -p 23:23 \ --privileged \ -v photonbbs-data:/appdata \ ghcr.io/fewtarius/photonbbs:latest
That's the whole setup.
A few companion projects that came out of this: dosdoor - Stripped-down DOS emulator forked from dosemu, purpose-built for BBS door games. No sound, no graphics, no networking - just enough to run doors. Works on x86_64 Linux and macOS including Apple Silicon. img2ans - Converts images to ANSI art using the IBM VGA character set. Full block, half-block, and shade glyphs with the 16-color palette. Floyd-Steinberg dithering, iCE colors, SAUCE metadata. PhotonTERM - BBS terminal client for macOS, Linux, and Windows. SDL2 rendering, full ANSI/VT100/VT220 emulation, CP437 support, SSH and Telnet, ZModem transfers, dialing directory. Usurper - Maintaining a fork of the open-source Usurper door game.
Everything is open source: github.com/fewtarius submitted by /u/Chemical-Breath-7693 [link] [comments]