Warp Six V4.0 New Feature List

Changes last made on: TUES April 5, 2022

Contents

  1. General
  2. Forums
  3. E-mail
  4. Door games
  5. Sysop and Co-sysop related
  6. Sysop Utilities


General

  1. [BUG FIX] Paul found an issue with the Super Serial Card drivers (The GS drivers are not affected). For some reason this driver (since 3.0) no longer likes clock cards. It will crash when trying to send or receive files. I'm sure Jim could have figured this out and fixed it right up, but Paul and I are complete noobs at assembly programming. We managed to figure out that if the driver for the clock is disabled then the transfers work. We installed a "patch" of sorts which just turns the clock driver off right before a transfer starts, and turn it back on as soon as the transfer completes. We will continue to investigate and hopefully we can fix it properly soon.
  2. Emulation detection at logon now detects whether the caller is using ProTerm Special or ANSI, and if neither of these then it falls back to standard ASCII. Throughout the BBS these values are used to display various elements with emulation characters and (with ANSI) colors.
  3. ANSI has now been more fully supported. In version 3.0 you could not use extended ANSI characters, and there was no OFFICIAL support for ANSI at all. In version 4.0 extended characters are supported almost fully. It is also possible to send ANSI directly from basic. More details are in the DOCS.
  4. Better support for emulated menus now. We've added a standard routine to check the emulation flag and send the appropriate file when the user requests a menu. The routine tries to send the emulated file but if it doesn't exist then it falls back to ASCII. This allows the sysop to add emulated menus as they find time and no program changes are needed to have them take effect. They just start working, provided you follow the naming convention. menuname for ASCII, menuname.A for ANSI, and menuname.P for ProTERM Special Emulation. This is not used in Sysop and Co-sysop areas.

Forums

  1. W6.MESSAGE has been split into FORUMS and MAIL to make room for new features. W6.MESSAGE no longer exists.
  2. With the splitting of W6.Message, we renamed User.Pref.M to User.Pref.F since it is forum preferences and nothing to do with mail.
  3. User can now edit an existing message they left in a forum, not just during original composition. Additionally, any user with level 8 or above can edit ANY message in the forums.
  4. There is now a quote feature in forum messages. Press " (quote) to see a screen where you can select part or all of the message to be quoted in your response.
  5. New commands in the MESSAGE EDITOR command line
    1. Z will display number of lines used/free
    2. A will abort the current message and exit the editor
    3. N will erase the editor and start over

E-mail

  1. A new command in Email lists all messages, their subject, and sender. The user can then select which message to read in any order. New emails are marked in the list.
  2. At logon the system will show how many mail are waiting as always, but will also show how many are new.
  3. The user can now enter a subject in emails sent, and any replies will be prefaced with RE: (original subject)
  4. There is now a quote feature in email. Press " (quote) to see a screen where you can select part or all of the message to be quoted in your response.
  5. Email can now be forwarded to another user.
  6. New commands in the MESSAGE EDITOR command line
    1. Z will display number of lines used/free
    2. A will abort the current message and exit the editor
    3. N will erase the editor and start over
  7. Email can now be forwarded to another user.

Door games

  1. [BUG FIX] Patched bug where if a door game crashed, variables were not restored before being saved in the logoff process and COULD trash BBS data if system variables were reused by the game.
  2. Created a PTSE version of BlackJack to give a little more emulated content.
  3. Created a PTSE version of Hangman.
  4. Door games have been added to a game pack that can be downloaded and installed. Available now are: Acey-Ducey, Bagels, Blackjack, Craps, Checkers, Hangman, NukeWar, Number Guess, Roulette, Slots, Space Ship of Death, Taipan and TriviaMaster. Some of the games have emulation! Coming soon... U-boat, Oregon Trail, Eamon, Wordle, and Lemonade Stand.

Sysop and Co-sysop related

  1. [BUG FIX] Fixed a bug which caused a crash with "file not found" when deleting any of several different system logs a second time.
  2. The "waiting for call..." screen on the sysop's monitor has been completely overhauled. It's a full screen of info about the system now.
  3. A new local command (OA-SA-L / OA-Option-L) added that when executed at the "waiting for call..." screen displays a menu for 1) Local Logon, 2) Exit to Basic, or 3) Return to idle screen.
  4. The sort routine which alphabetizes the user list has been sped up again!
  5. The nightly jobs have been overhauled. Instead of needing to write them into LOGON, you now simply edit a text file.
  6. Modem settings are now in a text file. During development we were running on 3 different systems. It was a pain trying to keep up with new files and having to reset things for each system. Now the updated LOGON file can be used on any system and it reads the modem settings from a file.
  7. The system will now beep or click (based on user selectable normal hours) when user logs on.

Sysop Utilities

  1. ADD.A.FORUM has been replaced with FORUM.UTIL where the sysop can add, remove, or edit any forum parameter. The order of forums can also be changed.
  2. There is now a "Tracker" log displaying how many times each main menu item has been accessed. The SYSOP can view the tracker from the main menu. Nice to see how much different features are being used, or not used.
  3. A new command in SYSOP UTILITIES. 'G)o to BASIC.SYSTEM. Normally when you quit, you're taken clear back to FINDER. It's not convenient if you're debugging and just want to do a quick edit. You can now go directly to BASIC.SYSTEM, do your edit, and then either exit with a 'BYE' or restart the system with '-STARTUP'. 'G)o' unloads the modem drivers so you're fine to run other programs if you choose, which is why you run STARTUP and not LOGON...
  4. In the COPY utility in the sysop utilities, you can now select files from a list displayed on screen. No more typing in filenames of all the files you want to unlock or copy. Mark the file(s) in the list, or unmark them, and then proceed with the command.
  5. There is now a "Tracker" log displaying how many times each main menu item has been accessed. The SYSOP can view the tracker from the main menu. Nice to see how much different features are being used, or not used.

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