Monster Media 1994 #1/monster.zip/monster/WILDCAT/TDOOR49.ZIP/TIMEDOOR.HIS

Text File | 1994-03-30 | 24KB | 586 lines

                        ┌────────────────────────────┐
                        │ Time Door's Update History │
                        └────────────────────────────┘

4.90 03/30/94

<<< Warning to Users of Previous Versions >>>

This version requires an upgrade using the SETUP.EXE program. See
UPGRADE.DOC for details. This upgrade MUST be done before TIMEDOOR.EXE,
POSTER or QOTD is run. This version requires Poster 2.9 or above and QOTD
1.9 or above.

Prize function Overhaul:

Prizes of extra time, kilobytes and downloads can now be given. You are no
longer restricted to TIME only prizes.  This involved an overhaul of the
prize functions that requires an upgrade using SETUP.EXE's UPGRADE data
files option. This upgrade MUST be done before running new versions of
POSTER and QOTD and you must upgrade POSTER and QOTD if you are using
older versions.

You can now specify the file to send when you give a prize. You will
be asked for the 8 character file name to send to the user when they
receive their prize when you use the SYSOP Menu's User editor option.
Time Door will add the .BBS/.SCR/.RIP extensions.

Time Door will now accept RIP and SCR screens for the prize screens.
The prize screen file names are specified by the sysop when they give
the prize and are QOTD1 through QOTD10 for QOTD winners and POSTER1 through
POSTER10 for Poster winners. The number after POSTER and QOTD is the place
the user is in. For example, QOTD1.BBS/SCR/RIP is sent to the first place
winner in QOTD. Time Door no longer gives current statistics (such as
time left) after a prize screen is shown. This is up to you to add the proper
@ codes.

The user specified screens sent now follow some sort of pattern. If the
user is a RIP user, Time Door will look for .RIP, .SCR, and .BBS files
in that order.  If the user is an ANSI user, Time Door will look for
.SCR and .BBS files in that order. If the user is an ASCII user, the program
will only look for .BBS files.

A user could see the trivia question, wait for the door to time-out and then
go back into Time Door and get the same question. This has been fixed with
a 60 second time limit on answering the question.

A complicated bug that would not record byte withdrawals if NO user in
Time Door had a download balance has been fixed.

The opening RIP screen has been changed.

In the SysOp list users option, the door only sorted on the last name to
save time and reduce memory requirements. This would cause problems
with common last names (ie Smith). The sort is now done on the last name
and the first initial.

Two @ codes have been added they are ...

@KBYTE@ Kilobytes the user has left to download for day.
@DWNLD@ The # of downloads the user has left to download for day.

Both of the above are only available on the prize screens and in the
Byte Bank menu.

The door has now been made a little friendlier to multinode systems. Rare
situations could cause an error #70 and that has been fixed.

4.52 10/04/1993

The list users option would not list users in alphabetical order. This has
been fixed.

New User Overrides: You can now close specific gambling games on a user by
user basis using user overrides in the user editor of the sysop menu. You
can close each of the 4 games to a single user and the user will not be
offered the option at all.

The ADD QUESTIONS to the Trivia Database will not be offered to those that
do not have access to the Trivia Challenge Game.

If a user decides to deposit all their time, they will be warned before the
deposit is made and given a chance to back out.

If you have the maximum download or byte balance set to zero in the profile
description, the user will not be given the option to deposit the item that
has the 0 maximum balance.

All DOCS have been updated with both CJBBS numbers. We finally have added
a second node making it easier to get support. The numbers are now...

813-696-2444 or 813-696-7246

4.51

A RIP version of the bulletin has been added. Its basically the old bulletin
with a RIP frame.

RIP has been added where it didn't previously exist making Time Door even
more easy to use without touching the keyboard. The TIMEDOOR.RIP file has
been updated and should be copied from the TDOOR4x.zip. For clarification,
TIMEDOOR.RIP is not a standard RIP file and is only used by Time Door and
should not be edited in Ripaint.

Better error handling and reporting in a couple places where common errors
occur.

4.50B 02/24/1993

A bug messed up the statistics bulletin. This has been fixed. Sorry for the
problem.

4.50 07/22/1993

Rip graphics have been added througout the door. This is not an update where
a frame was added - COMPLETE RIP GRAPHICS HAVE BEEN ADDED. Every attempt has
been made to allow your users to use Time Door using their mouse with rare
trips to the keyboard. Unfortunately, rip graphics cannot be displayed locally.
While in RIP graphics mode, all RIP commands will be filtered out on the local
screen. Where necessary, cues will be shown on the screen to show where you
are at.

The manual incorrectly identified the opening screen as MAIN.BBS or MAIN.SCR.
The opening screen is actually OPEN.BBS, OPEN.SCR or OPEN.RIP. The manual
also incorrectly identified the the command line switch that would take the
user directly to the time bank menu. The switch was actually /TIME not /BANK
as identified in the manual.

The command prompt for each menu is only displayed if the screen is aborted
by the spacebar. This should keep the command prompt from messing up your
homemade menus if you make them.

You can now close the door for 5 different periods of time instead of the
one offered before. This can be done under setup.exe's DOOR CLOSED TIME
option.

4.12 04/26/1993

ATTENTION: You can now register online at Crown Jewel BBS [phone]
with your MasterCard, Visa or American Express. Support this and future
upgrades by registering today! When you register online, you are given
your TIMEDOOR.ID immediately so you can take advantage of the registered
options immediately!


This version is basically a quick Fix for those beta testing Wildcat! 3.9.
However, several things have been fixed or changed so it doesn't hurt
to upgrade.

Time Door would sometimes get confused when the node home directory was
put on the command line so something like TIMEDOOR C:\WC30\ /FOSSIL
would not work.

The RIP graphics option would cause Time Door to go into ASCII mode. For
now, Time Door will go into ANSI modem when a RIP user enters. I hope to
start beta testing a RIP version of Time Door over the next couple weeks.

The Graphics [M]ode command is gone. The non-graphics menus are going to
be taken out to make way for RIP support. Supporting 4 sets of menus is
just too much for a door.

A @SUB@ command has been added to the user created screens for the transfer
screen. This allows you to add a line like "Transfer Time To: @SUB@". See
the SYSOP.DOC for more details.

If a user deposited all their time, Time Door would sometimes kick the user
out before the time was added to their account. This has been fixed.

NOTE: For some reason, Time Door will exit with all types of error 5's and
have Time Limit Expired Problems if you run Time Door under Desqview with
the USE MATH-COPROCESSOR option set to NO if you have a math coprocessor.
I'm looking into getting this fixed but in the mean time, check your
Desqview settings.

4.11 02/10/1993

I accidently compiled 4.1 with an older module that had some of the bugs
that 4.1 was supposed to fix. These bugs were the single name user bug and
the clear screen problem if a user set at a prompt too long. This version
fixes those bugs. I apologize for this mistake.

The ALT-R (registered version only) has been added as a user override. This
allows you to to rig the game for a user all the time. Look under the
user overrides for this option. Please use this feature sparingly. Users
will quit using a door where they lose all the time.


4.10 01/20/1993

This version adds support for a fossil driver which will allow Time Door
to work on IM systems using Technique's Digifossil program available on
either MSI's BBS or on Crown Jewel BBS. To run Time Door using the fossil
driver, type

TIMEDOOR REMOTE /FOSSIL

Of course, if you are not running with a fossil don't include this
command line.

** Special Thanks to Chip North and Tim Rider for their exceptional help
   in getting the fossil support worked out.

This version also (finnally) adds the ability to use your own screens.
You can create your own opening screen and your own menus. Here is are
the sketchy details.

The opening screen can be

OPEN.BBS for non-color and
OPEN.SCR for color....

The menu screen prefixes are as follows ...

Main menu - MAIN
Gamble Menu - GAMB
Time Bank Menu - TIME
Transfer Menu - TRAN
Byte Bank Menu - BYTE

The color screen is the prefix + .SCR
The ASCII screen is the prefix + .BBS

For example, MAIN.BBS or MAIN.SCR.

You can create screens for every security level by inserting the menu number
(set in MakeWild) between the prefix and the extension. For example, on
our system the SysOp menu level is 1000. If I wanted to create special screens
for the Sysops, they would be called, MAIN1000.BBS, MAIN1000.SCR, GAMB1000.BBS,
ETC ... The program first looks for the screens with the menu level and if
they are not available, it looks for the the plain menu screens w/o the
menu number. If none of these are available, Time Door will use its own
menus. For example, a user coming into Time Door with color would cause Time
Door to look for the following

MAIN1000.SCR ---> MAIN.SCR ---> Use Internal Menu

The following @ codes are available (more will be added later)

@TIME@ Time Left
@TBAL@ Time Bank Balance
@BBAL@ Byte bank BYTE balance
@DBAL@ Download bank DOWNLOAD balance

You can't use any other @ codes. Also, you must use ANSI codes not @ color
codes.  You should also not put any clear screen codes in your menus.
I hope to refine this a bit more but it will give you the power to make
Time Door look any way you wish.

Changes to SETUP.EXE ...

None

Bugs Fixed ...

A rather nasty bug that would delete all users with single names if you
listed them alphabetically in the SysOp menu.

The screen would clear if a user spent too much time at a prompt. This
has been fixed.

On some systems, a data mismatch error would occur when Time Door would
attempt to write Byte Bank Deposits.

The door would not close properly if the door was closed from before midnight
to after midnight.

If a user bet all his/her time in Face Race, Time Door could kick the user out
before the race had even begun.

4.03 10/19/92

Fixes the error 5 bug that would occur on some unregistered systems
given the right situations.

4.02 09/28/92

Fixes the problem with Time Door not closing during the times set.

Setup program no longer will exit with an error 111.

(Note: if you were using version 4.01, it would not display the byte
menu. That is fixed in this release. 4.01 was not meant for wide release.)

4.00 08/31/92

** Features/Changes **

All .EXE files are compiled with Basic PDS 7.1 and no longer require
BRUN45.EXE. This means that the .EXE files are larger but I felt it
was more important to get rid of the runtime librarys.

A forth gambling game called "Face Race" has been added. Face Race requires
that the remote user have Ansi capability.

The TDSYSOP.EXE menu program has been dropped in favor of having all the
SysOp menus inside TIMEDOOR.EXE. Make sure you delete the TDSYSOP.EXE program
from your Time Door directory.

Specific gambling games can be turned on or off under the GAMBLING SETTINGS
in SETUP.EXE. If you don't like a particular game, you can turn it off
without having to turn off the whole gambling menu.

All gambling options now have letters instead of numbers. (ie you choose
[T] for Trivia Challenge instead of [1].

The Scratch-N-Win ticket is not redrawn for each ticket for ANSI callers. This
should speed up play.

Ansi codes are used to a greater extent to try to make the cursor move quicker
in places. This is not noticeable at 9600 baud but may be at 2400 and below.

The SysOp menu now used the same hot key and space bar aborts that the rest
of Time Door uses. The space bar will now abort menus, users lists, etc...

The option of viewing any user's next trivia question has been added to the
user editor. The registered version even shows you the answer to the
trivia editor. The registered version even shows you the answer to the question.
You can also select which question a person should get next.

The list all users option in the sysop menu now lists kilobytes and download
balances. The user lists can also be alhabetized if you want.

The statistics option in the Sysop Menu has been cleaned up with better
grouping and colors.

Time Door now keeps track of how well each user is doing in the gambling
portion. This information can be listed by using option #3 under the List
Users option on the SysOp menu.

Users can now see how well they are doing in the gambling portion compared
to other users using the gambling statistics option under the gambling
menu. (option B)

The addtime and lowertime keys have been changed to F7 (add five minutes) and
F8 (raise time). REMEMBER, any time changes you make will apply in Wildcat!
also. F6 is now chat instead of F7.

The stastics bulletin has now been changed and includes all the byte bank
statistics along with the total time gambled and total time won. I also
think it looks 100 times better.

The communications routines have been changed to QBSERIAL 2.25 to support
IRQ's 1-15.

The [H]elp file has been cleaned up and is now available in the SysOp menu.

** Bugs fixed **

Several spacing problems were fixed. A typical one was "You have10 minutes
left."

When adding a user, the added user would sometimes be given the same byte
or download totals of the SysOp.

The drop to dos would not work if the NUM LOCK was on.

If maintenance were run, it would reset the various bank totals. This would
cause negative totals for the bank balances.

The byte bank entries in the TIMEDOOR.LOG were wrong.

The door would sometimes have trouble reading the WCBASEID variable. This
has been fixed.

** Registered Options added **

These options have been added to the registered versions of 4.00.

ALT-R rig option. When a user is in the door, you can press ALT-R to rig
the gambling games. This is really a mean option but a SysOps life needs
some fun. Here is what ALT-R does to each game...

Scratch-N-Win: The user will not win more than five minutes (remember 5
               minute winners are a wash).
  Time Raffle: The user will not win the pot.
    Face Race: The face picked by the user will behave normally for the first
               part of the race and then the picked face will be put at a
               disadvantage. NOTE: the picked face may win even when the game
               is rigged but its highly unlikely.
Trivia Challenge: There is no effect as the user could become incredibly
                  confused if an answer they know is right is suddenly reported
                  as wrong.

When the rigging is in effect, a blinking R will appear in the lower right
hand corner. To turn it off, press ALT-R again.

New command line quick entry options have been added. These options allow you
to set Time Door to directly go to the Time Bank, Byte Bank, Gamble Menu or
Transfer menu. The options are ..

/BYTE takes the user to the byte bank
/GAMBLE takes the user to the gambling menu
/TIME takes the user to the Time Bank menu
/TRANSFER takes you to the transfer menu

For example,

TIMEDOOR REMOTE /BYTE would read the DOOR.SYS and the USERINFO.DAT and take
the remote caller directly to the byte menu. This is good if you want to run
the byte bank as a DOS hook from the files menu or whatever use you may have.
NOTE: This option overrides the YES/NO settings in the security profile.


3.16 04/02/92

If the [G]oodbye menu was turned off, the Help option would not appear on
the main menu. This has been fixed.

Several changes were made in SETUP so SETUP could catch common sysop mistakes
when setting up the door. An error that would corrupt the TDMASTER.DAT when
the door first started has also been fixed (finally!).

The {C}hange your time left sysop option has been moved to Time Door from
TDSYSOP.EXE. When S is selected for the sysop menu, the sysop will have a
choice of either changing your time left or going to the sysop menu.  All
the time checking code has been stripped from TDSYSOP.EXE (along with the
command line) in the SysOp menu.

You can now edit the user's stored bytes and kilobytes in the user editor.
All options that could not be changed have been removed from the editor to
make the User editor less confusing.

******************************************************************************
NOTE: Crown Jewel BBS, the support BBS to Time Door, can now be reached at
      [phone]. The registration address has also been changed. These
      changes are reflected throughout the program and various document files.
      Registrations sent to the old address will not be delayed in any way.
******************************************************************************

3.15 02/26/92

Recompiled Time Door with QBSER version 2.1. This version adds support
for non-standard COM portsand fixes a sleeping node problem in multinode
environments like Desqview.  Several other minor changes were made with
the COMM routines. Please report any problems immediately.

If you have WCBASEID set, you must also have WCIRQID set. See TIMEDOOR.DOC
for more information about setting your environment variables.

I disabled the Loan feature that would loan 2 minutes to users who had run
out of time.  If I receive enough requests to keep the feature, I will
re-enable the feature possible as a SysOp configurable option.  It has
been brought to my attention that some users would use this option to
cheat the Time Raffle.

I also have written a small utility for Time Door called Time-Bulletin. This
program will create a bulletin listing all Time Door users with their balances
in alphabetical order. You can get this file at Crown Jewel BBS as
T-BULL10.ZIP.  Time-Bulletin is a free utility.

3.12 01/26/92

The [G]oodbye function would be available in the byte bank even when it
was turned off. This has been fixed.

The user's banked downloads and kilobytes are shown on the byte/download
screen.

This version fixes any bugs or concerns that have been brought to my
attention as of the release date.

3.11 01/13/92

Fixes bug with Byte Bank that would give new users the same byte and download
balance as the last user in the database.

3.1 01/04/92

This version adds the thing most asked for from Time Door - a Byte/Download
bank! Special thanks go to all those registered users who helped beta
test this version.

New features in the (REGISTERED) version include:

A Byte Bank that allows your users to store bytes and downloads for later
use.  Regulation of the Byte Bank is done on a profile basis allowing the
same control offered by the Time Bank.

A complete overhaul of the Prize function has been done.  Prizes were
limited to one of each type. Now time prizes are not limited as to
the maximum number per user.  Prizes can also now be deleted in the TDSYSOP
user editor.

A birthday gift option has been added. The birthday gift allows you to give
a gift of time to a user on  their birthday. When a user enters Time Door on
their birthday they will be given the extra time and wished a happy birthday.
You can set this option under the gambling section.  Remember to put a line
in your BIRTHDAY.BBS/SCR so your users will know to go into Time Door for their
gift.

Features added to both unregistered and registered version:

More versatile editing routines have been added to SETUP's profile editing
screen. You can now copy or delete security profiles in SETUP.

ANNOUNCEMENT!

Contest support for Poster has been added. Poster keeps track of your message
activity and awards your top posters with special time prizes. Poster also
creates three different bulletins designed to encourage your users to
post messages.  Look for POSTER10.ZIP on the BBS where you downloaded Time
Door or call Crown Jewel BBS at [phone].

Errors fixed...

Fixed the problem that would cause Time Door to offer the Gambling menu even
if it was turned off.

Fixed a problem that would cause the total Time Bank balance to be wrong.
Use the STATISTICS option in TDSYSOP to make sure that your totals are set
correctly. The STATISTICS option resets any totals that it finds to be wrong.

The time keeping routines have been completely redone. Earlier versions of
Time Door would have problems when the Time Left would get larger than 1000
minutes. That problem is fixed.

Fixed several minor visual errors in the transfer section.

Several other minor bug fixes and changes have been made.

3.01 10/01/91

Minor release. Conversion from BTIME was messed up. If you used BTIME
conversion, you must reset all overrides by using the Clear Overrides
option on the sysop menu (TDSYSOP).

Two new listing options have been added to the List users option in TDSYSOP.
They are

4) List users with overrides. This option lists all users who have overrides.
5) List users with prizes. This option lists users with Time Prizes and the
amount of those prizes. Remember, you can give prizes if you are not registered
but those prizes will only be awarded on registered systems.

Fixed a bug that would tell users that they had the wrong answer in Trivia
Challenge even when they had got the question right. The time would be awarded
correctly no matter what the user was told.  This made some sysops think that
users were getting time for incorrect answers and some users think that
they were incorrectly being penalized for correct answers. This one was a
tough bug to find...


Coming Soon!!

Poster (tentatively named) - The Top Ten Message Posting companion to Time Door.


3.00 07/30/91

This is the first release of Time Door for Wildcat! 3.0. Hopefully all the
bugs have been found in the beta test period but expect to see a Time Door
3.01 in the very near future.

New in this release...

o Support for Wildcat! 3.0. This version DOES NOT support Wildcat! 2.X.
o SETUP program completely rewritten with better help and mouse support.
o New security profiles that allow you to set limits for each Wildcat
  security profile if you wish.
o User overrides that give you the ability to set some limits on a user by
  user basis. This is great for rewarding good users or punishing bad.
  Both the security profiles and user overrides make Time Door 3.0 even
  better for pay systems where you want to entice users to register!
o Command line options have changed in order to allow for a single batch
  file for multinode systems (if a single node home directory is used).
o A STRUCTURE CHANGE HAS BEEN MADE IN THE TIME.DAT FILE. A CONVERSION TO
  THE TIME DOOR 3.0 FORMAT IS REQUIRED. PLEASE SEE THE FILE, UPGRADE.DOC FOR
  MORE INFORAMTION ON UPGRADING TO TIME DOOR 3.0.

Registered User Changes:
o The trivia editor has been rewritten to add mouse support and to change
  window routines. 2.X versions of the triva editor should not be used. The
  original versions of the trivia editor can still be used BUT you won't be
  able to add user supplied questions without the 3.0 version of the trivia
  editor. To get this file, call Crown Jewel BBS at 813-676-7549.
o Users can now add trivia questions to your database. The trivia editor is
  required to merge these questions.

1.5 06/23/90

First Really Stable Release.

1.0 June 6, 1990

First public release.