-[ BOARD MASTER v2.0 Player Instructions ]- HISTORY: Board Master has evolved from a simplistic, single node game to a very complicated, but easy to play, Inter-BBS, multi-node game. If your sysop is involved in an Inter-BBS league, you will get the chance to play against other people from all over, making the game more difficult and challenging, but also more fun. SCENARIO: You are the Sysop of your own Bulletin Board System. You will be responsible for maintaining your system, performing upgrades, buying new equipment and verifying new users. OBJECTIVE: To be the first to earn 100,000 points. This is accomplished by having the best of everything and attracting the largest number of users. There is no quick way to win. There are no shortcuts. The best strategy is to shop smart and only take risks when necessary. Every night, sometime around midnight, when your sysop performs all the other maintenance on his/her board, they will be running the Board Master maint. program which calculates how many points and users should be added or deducted from your board... if any. This doesn't mean that you can sit on your laurels and expect to earn mega points or draw the biggest number of users. Quite the contrary. Running and maintaining a BBS is sometimes a difficult task especially when your trying to run a payboard... You will soon learn Board Master is no different. Have fun with the game, and don't get too frustrated if it seems a little tough at first. It gets much easier as you go along. - MENU'S - MAIN MENU This is the primary menu from which other vital menu's can be accessed. Like 'Work on board','Read mail','Computer store", etc... The main menu also shows the user activities of 4 of your nodes. STATS This screen will show you how your bbs is made up. What components you have, how many users, points, etc... LIST This lists all the other sysops that are competing against you and that are in the current game. WORK Allows you to perform several different maintenance tasks on your board, from making new menu's to verifying new users. *Each of these items can only be accomplished once per day. STORE The computer store has a big list of items that are regulary used on BBS systems and sold to BBS operators like yourself. Anything from CPU upgrades to modems to doors can be bought here. - Your BBS has certain limitations depending on many various aspects. For this reason you will not beable to buy anything you want at anytime. - One unique thing about this computer store is that trade ins for certain items are automatic. ie. Some items have a trade in value, for those items, you will recieve 1/2 the original cost of purchase when you buy something new, automatically. READ This allows you to read and reply to the mail your users have sent you. Reading and replying to your mail is among the many things any good sysop does on a regular basis. Reading your mail is good, but replying to your mail is even better (hint). NEWS Allows you to view the news file which contains the activities of all players during the course of the day. MAILBOX Allows you to read & write messages from/to other players in the game. When entering the mailbox, it will scan for new private mail, and any public mail that hasn't been purged. Any private mail addressed to you will automatically be deleted after you read it, public mail will be purged nightly. If you wish to send private mail, you must know the player # of the person you are sending it to. This is easily found by doing a LIST from the main menu. The mailbox supports up to 3 lines. Press ENTER after each line. ALLEY The back alley is where you have the option of buying used equipment at a substantial lower price... But beware, the guy you'll be buying from is notorious for stealing, and there is a chance you will get caught when doing business with him. If you get caught buying from this guy, substantial losses could occur. You could end up loosing everything you have, so take caution. Because of how this guy gets his equipment, he will not have every item normally found in the computer store. HACK (Registered feature only) Allows you to log into another sysop's board and crash their system. The amount of points that can be made from this are astounding, but the penalty for getting caught is even bigger. VIRUS The virus shop has both virii and virus scanners for sale. If you choose to buy a virus, you must upload it before you do anything else. You must have a scanner if you want to perform a virus scan. PAY BBS (Registered feature only) The payboard feature allows you to set your system up for either a pay or free board. - Having a payboard has the potential to earn you extra money each day, but if you charge too much or you have too few features, you could loose users. - Having a free board is the safest, but obviously your cash flow will be substantially less, and you'll have to settle for whatever donations the users decide to give you. ADVERTISE (Registered feature only) Advertising your BBS will greatly enhance the number of new users you attract. Of course like most everything else, the more money you spend, the greater the impact. Be careful not to spend too much too soon though, since you could easily run out of money. Advertising costs are deducted each night and are based on a monthly scale. - NOTES - Message nets, SLIP, 56k, or T1 fees will be deducted from your account each night, but the amount deducted is equal to 1/30th of the monthly cost. If you buy a SLIP line, 1 of your dial up lines will be deducted to use as your SLIP line. If you run out of money, it will automatically be deactivated. When buying modems, you will be asked how many. This refers to the number of nodes you want to add. The price of the modem includes the cost of setting up an additional phone line. When buying a CPU, if you have a LAN based system you will be asked if you want it to replace your server. Your server is the main computer in a LAN environment. If you do, answer yes. If your wanting to buy it as a workstation (extra node), then answer no. New users and Users are viewed differently in Board Master. New Users are users that have joined your board but still require verification. You will only gain a small percentage of points for new users. Once you verify the new users, they will be added to your user database, and more points are given for each of them. Goodluck on your journey to the top!