Welcome all to the first issue of Door World Magazine.  I have been
waiting for something like this to come along for ages!

        When RoAnn approached me on the subject of writing a door for her
magazine, I was hooked!  I'm sure those great users of Terra-Firma are
not quite as thrilled because of the time writing the Door World magazine 
door has taken away from my previously promised upgrade.  To all of you I 
have to say, please be patient as I believe this magazine is worth the extra
wait.  I can also guarantee that the wait for the political/War menu for  
Terra-Firma is worth it.  I could never have foreseen all the ramifications
of change that would take place in coding the War between the different
areas of the Terra-Firma universe.  I have been working diligently on the 
upgrade and it should be ready some time this month.

        Another great part of working on the Door for the magazine was
the fact that I had a chance to see all the articles before any of you!  It  
also means I get to cheat a little.  Reading Dustin's article about screen 
graphics got me reminiscing about the old days and what it was about door 
games that so interested me that I just had to write one!

        It was never the graphics.  Yeah, I remember saying 'WOW' the first
time I saw a color Ansi screen come pouring into my monitor.  But at the
time most commercial games on the market were not much better.  Commercial
products soon out paced the BBS door world as far as graphics were
concerned but for some reason they didn't do it for me.  Why did I keep
coming back to playing games on-line.  It was the other players!  

        I clearly remember one winter quite a few years ago when my circle 
of BBS friends all decided to play a game of killer Tradewars.  This was 
before any of the great Ansi screens were made for Tradewars.  It was 
strictly a text game at that time. I used to stay up at night so I could be 
the first player to log on after midnight and get a jump on those guys.  The 
scores went back and forth and we really got into the team thing.  Every time 
I remember that particular game it is with a big smile on my face.

        I guess that's why I decided to concentrate more on the player
aspects of Terra-Firma then the graphics.  I put a lot of effort into
making a REAL time universe into Terra.  I wanted to be able to destroy
my buddies while they were on-line with me.  I wanted to send that nasty
'how did that feel' message and get their immediate reply.  It's a lot of
fun to know that while you are playing Terra others are lurking out there
somewhere.  I think this can also attribute to the popularity of muds
on the internet. They have nothing in the way of graphics.  Real people in 
real time.  Great looking graphics and music definitely have their place in 
gaming, but for me it's never knowing what that other player is going to do 
that keeps me coming back. Simply put, for me it's the difference in reading
a great novel and watching one on television.  They both have their merits
but my imagination always comes out the winner.

        I hope that readers out there will write in to Door World and share
with all of us on this subject.  After all, it's just like playing a door
game.  Participation and sharing will make this magazine fly!  

        
        I want to share a funny story about Terra-Firma and then I will get
onto another subject.  I had a user a short while ago in the FiDoNet echoes 
tell me that he didn't like Terra-Firma because I use the grid system to
map out my universe and asked why I couldn't have written a real universe 
for my game like TradeWars. I got a big chuckle from this.  Thinking that if
the real universe was like the TradeWar universe during the moon race
in the 60's, we might have had to get to the moon by way of Pluto.  As 
Earth's sector might not have connected with the Moons sector!  

        It has always been something of a puzzle to me that when I ask for 
user suggestions to Terra-Firma, 90 percent of the time, users want me to add 
something to Terra that is already in Tradewars.  Tradewars has always been 
the biggest bane to Terra because players get used to the interface and the 
options that they first encountered in Tradewars.  Terra-Firma, being so 
different, requires a learning curve that many younger players won't take the 
time to learn. The player interface is different and the strategies are 
different. 

        I have had to go way out of my way to do things like make the player 
docs available as a download from within the game.  To make it easy as 
possible to learn the game.  User time allowed on a BBS has always been 
a problem for door authors.  I guess it's a difficult balance between giving 
users enough time to play and freeing up the board for someone else to use.

        I mentioned in a previous paragraph that reader feedback would be        
great.  RoAnn mentioned to me that she plans on sending any reader feed back        
to the appropriate authors or SysOps so they can comment on them for the
next issue.  So, this being a public forum and all, it would seem like an
opportune time to ask those questions or make those comments that you would
like to hear back from the authors on.  If you are looking for tips on
game play or have some tips for game play, this is the place to make it
known.

        Before I end this thing I wanted to start a little controversy on
BBS's. I have been looking for the perfect BBS for 6 years!  I have tried
every BBS I could get my hands on.  I have run them from Lan's, I've
tried running them from Windows, Desk View and now I'm using OS/2.  I can't
seem to find a BBS that operates just the way I want it to.  Maybe I'm
picky but there always seems to be something just not right.  The first
BBS I ever used was of course Fido.  I then found this neat little BBS
called the FORCE, which I really loved.  It wouldn't do FiDoNet Echo mail
but that was OK with me because I really like EchoDor by Robert McCullough.
Alas, the little company made a lot of promises, for which I paid $100.00
for but they went out of business.  
        
        If I wrote out the list of all the BBS's I've tried it would just 
about cover them all.  I even wrote my own BBS called HomeBrew which I used 
here on the ConSorTium for about a year. But I ended up not liking it either!

        Now I know that the perfect BBS is out there somewhere and I just
haven't tried it yet.  My requirements are minimal.  It doesn't need to
do EchoMail as I have EchoDor.  I would like it to be small in size and
have a very easy to use, intuitive download area because all I run now is
a support BBS for my doors and now Door World Magazine.  It needs to be
able to do a large user database quickly as I need to keep registered
sysops updated on my BBS and the database just seems to grow and grow! The
last thing I need is for the LOG on questions not to be hard coded as I
like to ask my own and keep things short and simple.  Any one have a
suggestion?  This should be fun......

See you next month!

Dave Wendling



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