BBS Screen Creation Software

[rcamp48]

Since last night I have been working on a new program written in Atari Basic to create ATASCII BBS screens, both in 40 and 80 columns. It has been written for Forem and BBS EXPRESS, and will take your text screens , read them in and write them back out in inverse video, plus put in fancy borders around your inverse video text. It is fully automated , you just type in he name of the file you wish to covert and the program does it for you. By tonight I will have a working copy , ready for download. Russ

 

[Gavin1968]

That used to be the funnest part about being a SysOp was creating our cool screens for our visitors. I used to love doing them ATASCII was the best for them! I sure the days of BBSing. 

 

[+Nezgar]

I recall using really basic editors for ATASCII.... as simple as drawing out something in bob-term in half duplex with the modem powered down, so that it was basically a full-screen editor. When I had something I liked, I could capture the 'screen' to the capture buffer then save that to a file. This was a good first step for a 'static' screen.

 

It would also work if you enabled 'live' capture, then it would also capture all the cursor movements, control sequences to shift and delete lines too.

 

To edit them afterwards, you could load them into TextPro, and carefully insert or delete specific characters or control characters to make it 'just right'. This was especially useful when 'ripping' ATASCII animations that were captured from other BBS's to remove the pre/post text.

 

I also recall using a program that would generate ATASCII images from print-shop graphics... it served as a great starter to start plastering BBS text around if you didn't want to painstakingly make a static picture character by character.

 

Another program I've seen again recently was 'Lebreak 3' which was made for making ATASCII animations, and playing them back at simulated slower speeds from disk, which I tried out again a couple years ago:

 

 

Oh, and the last way, no special software required was to literally use DOS to copy E: to D:ATASCII.FIL. When done, press Control-3 to close the file. No undo function this way! EVERYthing was captured lol, editing would have to happen afterwards.

[JohnPolka]

I found the Action! editor pretty good at creating ATASCII screens too. I made some recently with the Action! editor and the keyboard mappings found in the book "Your Atari Computer" (since I no longer had them all memorized ? ). 

 

-JP

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by JohnPolka

[rcamp48]

Here is the Documentation:

 

Documentation for BBS Screen Creator Version 1.01A

 

I have written a new utility that takes your 40 and 80 column text screens and reads
them in, and writes them back out as back out as ATASCII files. Note that you have to start out with 40 or 80 column text files, my program will not convert between the two.

Running the program is easy, you just have to the basic program , master.bas.

 

The better your source text file, the better the outputted destination file will be.

When you run the program, you will get two screens, one asking if you want to se it for Forem or BBS Express (Pro), on side one of the disk, there are are all of the Atari ST screens, and on side two, you will have all of the Atari 8 Bit screens. The difference between th two is that the Atari ST screens are 80 column, and all text, and the Atari 8 bit screens are all 40 columns, and text as well.

 

My program has a built in directory lister of all of the files on each side, there is a basic program with the screens on each side.

All you have to do is at the prompt, type the filename with oput the drive part, and without the extender, and it will automatically read in each byte of the file , add 128 to the byte read and write the result back out to a new file, in hw case of Forem , the input 40 col text files have an extender of .GR1, and write out the same file in inverse video with an extender of .GR2, the input 80 col text files have an extender of .TXT and do the same as the 40 col files, except in 80 cols. It then writes out a Forem file with an extender of .GR3

 

AS for BBS EXPRESS and BBS EXPRESS PRO, and Ratsoft, I have no idea what extenders they use for the 40 and 80 col text files, I could look and incorporate them into the software. If there are any other Atari BBS programs out there that use different extenders, then please get back to me and help me develope this program for all BBS software that is used out there. I may use Spartados instead of DOS 2.5, then I could use subdirectories on the floppies , thus eliminating the use of separate disks for each BBS type being used out there, as DOS 2.5 as a limitation of 50 files on the root directory. Dont know if it can use subdirectories, if not I will use SpartaDos.

 

Program written by Russ Campbell
 

[moonlight_mile]

Hate to bump an old thread but was this ever released?

[rcamp48]

12 hours ago, moonlight_mile said:

Hate to bump an old thread but was this ever released?

It was released but I have to work on it, maybe by the end of the week I will have it ready, its also available on Github under rcamp5656

That's where all my releases go, but have had no time to work on it lately. (Story of my life eh?).

 

Russ

 

[rcamp48]

I will have to find that old version, its an earlier version that was never released, I don't even know if I can find it, but I can reproduce it on the newer versions.

 

I have started a screen function for ATASCII in the newest version, its not yet working but the code is in there , it will not display on a PC, I will have to wait until I get my SIO2SD adapter then I can test it all on my Atari 800 xl

 

Here is the zip file that has the changes , it needs work, but I have to get sleep..................

 

BBS-Screen-Menu-Creator-for-All-BBSs-Version-25-Alpha-Release-master.zip

[DavidMil]

Wasn't there a software package made to create BBS's?  I think it was called, "BBS Construction Set"?

 

DavidMil

[moonlight_mile]

Thanks. I saw your post of fb this morning and going to play Around with it later today.

[moonlight_mile]

I was playing around with your files.

I am know your haven’t been working on it but i am trying to get my head around it.

Is there a way of taking my own bbs files and running it through your app? Or is it just the demo files that you can save with all the ansi and throw in a text editor and edit the text part to suit your needs?

Thanks. Sorry it this is a dumb question.

[doctor_x]

16 hours ago, DavidMil said:

Wasn't there a software package made to create BBS's?  I think it was called, "BBS Construction Set"?

 

DavidMil

BBS construction set, by Michtron - was an actually BBS program. It may have come with a screen editor - but I do not recall that it did.

 

I always used a tool called “Atascii Animator” which I have yet to see mentioned and I cannot find the binary for it either… Odd, because I know a lot people were using it back in the day!

[+bf2k+]

Actually Antic software...

 

[rcamp48]

I actually have a working BBS screen maker for ATASCII, I will post a link to it, but also have a video that shows it in action...

 

Here is the link for the BBS Screenmaker, it supports ANSI, Wildcat, PC Board, Synchronet, and ATASCII, using inverse video.

 

A Working Copy of The BBS Screen Creator With ATASCII Support

 

All it needs is cosmetic changes ,that's about it..  Russ

 

[rcamp48]

19 hours ago, moonlight_mile said:

I was playing around with your files.

I am know your haven’t been working on it but i am trying to get my head around it.

Is there a way of taking my own bbs files and running it through your app? Or is it just the demo files that you can save with all the ansi and throw in a text editor and edit the text part to suit your needs?

Thanks. Sorry it this is a dumb question.

No question is a dumb question, ya you can put your own screens in , there are several characters that the program uses to make lines , corners , etc, I will be doing a full writeup in documentation for the program later today. Also I have added ATASCII support into the program, what you will see on the screen on the PC is not that same as what you get on the Atari though, due to character sets being different. I may put in translation software in the PC end of things.

 

On the Atari end you are limited to 38 Character lines including the corners, lines , etc, I may do Ice colors later on if I can figure out how to do them.

Russ

 

[moonlight_mile]

Thanks a lot. I watched the video. Nice demo. It really looks like a great tool for the non-atascii limited sysops!  
 

look forward to the docs!

 

great work. 

[rcamp48]

There is a new video out, it really shows off the program, I am going to put it on YouTube now.

Russ