MS-DOS SciADV

[FrauBrow]

Greetings, and well met everyone!

Some of you may have seen my stuff from twitter or other platforms but I thought this forum would be a great place to publicly discuss and answer some questions about my Science Adventure project I've been working on. In this thread I hope to cover how it started, what happened and where its going in the future

So what is it?

The software I'm currently developing is an interactive MS DOS based Science Adventure experience, housing references, easter eggs and interactive sections for all things SciADV! From Chaos;Head to Anonymous;Code I want to make something thats not only a love letter to the series but also to the hardware its being built on!
(its a gimmick lol)

What is it going to do?

I wont give a full list of features right now as I still dont really know everything but I can sum up a few!

The D-mail screen which some of you may have seen me post is actually more than meets the eye! Although I only previewed briefly before I had restarted development the D-Mail function is actually completely usable (although still unfinished). Inputting a message into the D-Mail terminal on the 5155 will send the input over serial and to a small raspberry pi hidden in the housing of the PC, which then sends that message to my phone! (there is alot of jank in between atm but the core Idea for D-Mails are there!)

The software also contains small easter eggs like secret passwords and special VN scenes! And much much more, but I have to leave some surprise hehe

Can anybody download and use it?

This is the elephant in the room. In the beginning, no. When I had first started making this project I really didnt think it would be anything more than a short little gimmick I could post online and share with the community, but I later realized that the project had started to grow far beyond that, which ultimately led me to scrap everything I had built and rebuilt it from the ground up! So yes! In the future this project will be accessible for anybody to download and run on DOS (emulated) or bare metal! And I hope that it will live up to some of the expectations I have set for the scope of the project

Unfortunately this isn't the super amazing and detailed write up I wanted to eventually make, but I hope it gives some more insight into what It's actually about and if it was still in the works (it 100000% is) I'd love to hear some opinions and answer some questions in this thread if there are any!

Godspeed
El Psy Kongroo!

[capstasher]

I wonder if there's any way to spoof the date on email or SMS (unsure which one you use). This would add a neat extra element to this. Also, any plans of eventually porting it to SX-Window? If I remember correctly you do own an X68000.
Either way, good job! Looking forward to the release of this!

[Maypews]

Woah I had no idea you'd set up an actual d-mail system, that's very cool! Well... minus the time travel functionality, I assume (unless? ). I've never fiddled around much with DOS stuff, but this almost makes me want to pick up an older PC. Do you have the 36 character limit in the d-mails? Also, do you plan to use this thread for future updates? If so I will sticky it, but no worries if not.

I wonder if there's any way to spoof the date on email or SMS (unsure which one you use).

Ooh, that's a really cool idea, I second this!

[dokyun]

Love it man, also welcome to the site; glad to see more weird hackers on here!

So yes! In the future this project will be accessible for anybody to download and run on DOS (emulated) or bare metal!

Hope you post the code soon, you got a repo anywhere? I'll definitely try this on my shitbox once it's out.

I wonder if there's any way to spoof the date on email or SMS (unsure which one you use).

Ooh, that's a really cool idea, I second this!

Spoofing email headers is actually really easy since mail servers rely on the client to supply them. (This is actually something I've thought of doing IRL since making a message appear to have been sent earlier than it was might have some practical uses: ever been late on a college assignment? And I think I have the skeleton of a "dmail" command somewhere in my emacs.) I'd imagine a hardened mail server would probably junk messages that say they come from 10 years in the future but I think they're normally pretty lenient backwards in time since delays between the time a message is created and when its sent are a real occurence (especially historically, but my old phone company would also take an hour to send a login code, so there's that). And if he's running a mail server on the raspi, which I'd figure he's doing, he can basically do whatever he wants with it. I'm not sure about SMS but I'd figure it's similarly spoofable.

[FrauBrow]

Woah I had no idea you'd set up an actual d-mail system, that's very cool! Well... minus the time travel functionality, I assume (unless? ). I've never fiddled around much with DOS stuff, but this almost makes me want to pick up an older PC. Do you have the 36 character limit in the d-mails? Also, do you plan to use this thread for future updates? If so I will sticky it, but no worries if not.

I wonder if there's any way to spoof the date on email or SMS (unsure which one you use).

Ooh, that's a really cool idea, I second this!

I am currently working on the 36 character limit! funnily enough with the restrictions in characters on the IBM has made making art for software quite difficult lol.

I was using sms and an app I was tinkering with making, but I'm switching to emails so spoofing might be possible!

and yeah I was just planning to update this thread when I make some more progress!

[FrauBrow]

Love it man, also welcome to the site; glad to see more weird hackers on here!

Thank you!! I hope to show off some more weird stuff I make on here lolol

Hope you post the code soon, you got a repo anywhere? I'll definitely try this on my shitbox once it's out.

I will setup a github soon, im not a super duper experienced programmer especially with Qbasic so itl be good to get peoples insight! I am just hurdling through exams atm so I havent had time to work or set anything up.

[Parzival]

Yoooo! It's the GOAT!

I didn't realize this is gonna be a SciADV fan experience! That's so sick. Not sure what all you plan to do, but I've always thought a kind of SciADV fandisk game that's almost like something like Uplink but more of a text adventure running on DOS and taking place back in the day would be super sick