From Here To Eternity

Screen capture of the From Here To Eternity title screen

From Here To Eternity is a fantasy adventure door game for bulletin board systems created by musician Shooter Jennings in 2015.

Jennings has described FHTE as "a game that’s like Zork meets Legend of the Red Dragon" . Combat within the game uses a system very similar to LORD, while players navigate a world map by moving cardinal directions, as you would in Zork and other interactive fiction games.

Jennings has cited the book "Ready, Player One" and the "Imaginationland Episode I" episode of "South Park" as inspirations because of the way they mixed characters and story elements from various books and movies. He lists "The Goonies," "Back to the Future," "The Shining," "The Dark Tower," "The Lord of the Rings," "Never-ending Story," "Highlander", and the "Ultima" series as some of the pop-culture references in the game.

In FHTE, players compete to enter "The Coil." In order to do so, a player must collect all 20 artifacts scattered through the game world. There is only one of each artifact, so players may end up fighting each other to capture previously-discovered artifacts.

Screen capture of the intro to the Moria section of the BBS door game From Here to Eternity. ANSI art by Luciano Ayres / Enzo of Blocktronics.

The game features numerous ANSI art screens drawn by members of the art group Blocktronics.

Beyond its unique world, FHTE differs from typical BBS door games in a number of ways:

• It was created in 2015, nearly 20 years after the zenith of the BBSing scene.
• The game is not distributed as shareware or freeware for installation by sysops; instead, it is hosted on a single central server (bcrgames.com).
• The game's author, Shooter Jennings, was a celebrity when he wrote the game, famous for his work as a singer-songwriter.
• To stir up interest in his game, Jennings offered a cash prize (1 Bitcoin) to the first player to pass through The Coil.

Break Into Chat blog articles

• Shooter Jennings, creator of From Here To Eternity (interview)
• "From Here To Eternity" launches today

Related text files

• FHTE Quick-Start Guide by Zero Reader (Oct. 2016)

See also

• Freedom Train