Ultrasoft BBS Door Registrations

Ultrasoft BBS doors were written by Steve Hansen and a long while back Ultrasoft BBS door registrations were being given away for free to folks. Unfortunately Steve Hansen passed away in 2014 and as far as I know registrations are no longer being passed out.

You can still find some of the information about this directly on their site and reddit, and a few other locations:
https://ultrasoft.fortunecity.ws/
https://www.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/eukgmp/ultrasoft_door_registration/

During that time period of free registrations, we exchanged emails about different subjects, but ultimately received the keys for the doors. Here is the email:

UltraSoft-Online [email protected]

Attachments Dec 21, 2010, 5:34 PM

to me

Heya Jeff…

Okay, attached please find your Zip package (renamed Piz) including all the .sys files
(those are your keys to go in each game directory), and several utilities too. (Zips)
Including a Player Editor (.exe) for TRBoxing, among a few others. The Player editor also
goes in the TRBoxing Dir, or whatever it may be called. Hopefully some useful items you’ll
like. Our DoorGraf online utility in particular, was very well received BTW. I think you’ll
like it. It generates nice graphs. Docs should be in each package.

Thanks again for all your help, cooperation, and for your donation.

This close to Christmas there probably isn’t a viable reason to install the
Holiday Door, but it you want that anyway, I’ll attempt to locate it for you. Wasn’t
really a big deal though. Just an animated Merry Christmas wish for your members
with sime ANSI music. I think that only distributed to a few folks. It was one of our
last doors, as BonusWare.

I forget if I answered your question about Chess, but not completing development
on that was really painful, because it was coming along so well. And I personally
think it was one of our prettiest and most functional doors, considering the limitations
of the ANSI/ASCII character set. There were several others too, ‘Animated Bowling’
and ‘Commando Chopper Raid’ for instance, which we really would have liked to have
had on the market because they were kind of ground-breaking technology. But alas.
When the axe fell, and registrations stopped, it fell hard and fast, and we had to punt.

I think we were one of the last groups to leave the DoorGame market, but when it
doesn’t buy groceries anymore, if that’s what you do for a living, ya have to look elsewhere.
And you can only program so much in a day, before going cross-eyed. Ha!

Please let me know you have any troubles with any of this.
And Very Happy Holidaze to ya!!

-Steve
UltraSoft

PS: Oh and yes, I know Doug pretty well actually. In fact he runs all of our games, and
has helped promote us for some time now, as we have his site too. There are some
complications with the way our games are programmed though. We used all of our own
internal proprietary libraries, written only by us for the sake of animation, sound effects et
al, and a non-standard compiler. So we were quite a ways outside the norms for most
Door-producers. The likelihood there would be much interest in anyone purchasing our
code is actually pretty small. It would have to be someone who programs in PowerBasic3.X,
which includes an inline assembler, hard-coding and, full .exe compilation, with several extras
within the compiler, to make that worthwhile for anyone. But we’d still be interested if
someone wanted to perpetuate that market. Naturally the Libs would all sell too, along with
the source-code, and possibly even the compiler itself. All of which amounts to a TON of stuff.
There’s little revenue to be made from it anymore though. So unlike us, it would almost have
to just be a hobby of sorts.

Hopefully we will eventually get the code to everything and keep this part of our history alive and well. Until then, I’m going to release my registration stuff for the Ultrasoft doors as Steve I hope would want so folks can continue using his doors. I will also run them on my BBS.

The list of doors registered in the archive:

1. Ultimate Acey Deucy
2. AHRA Pro Drags
3. Top Rank Boxing
4. Saratoga Raceway
5. Indy Speedway
6. Animated Backgammon
7. Ultimate Slots

There are also other additions in the archive:

1. SV.EXE (or SVIEW.EXE) and the ARTWORK Archive
   • This file contains several ANSI and ASCII Screens that may be useful or beneficial to you in promoting the initial use of your new UltraSoft DoorGame(s) on your BBS.
2. DOORGRAF: A Utility for tracking DOOR Activity and creating BULLETINS and/or NEWS FILES for display to Callers.
   • DoorGraf is a Bonus Utility for Sysops, from UltraSoft, as part of another way for us to show our appreciation for you becomeing our Customer. It’s purpose is to create colorful NewFile screens and Bulletins, for display to callers, indicating the activity level of any DOOR activity on the BBS, that you may program it for.
3. DSADIA
   • This package contains TWO useful BBS SYSOP utility programs from UltraSoft, to enhance your Sysopping time and effort. FreeWare!!
   • DSA.EXE is designed for DOOR.SYS Sysops and DIA.EXE is designed for DORINFOx.DEF Sysops.
     • Each allows the Sysop to enter DOORS on their
     • BBS System, while in the BBS as SYSOP, without
     • exiting to sign back in using their Real Name
     • Sysop Utility:changes Sysop Name to run DOORS
     • Uploaded by author Steve Hansen: UltraSoft, HI
4. SCRNTOOL
   • ScrnTool is a TSR or (Terminate Stay Resident) program, for many
   • purposes, not the least of which is a designer aid for Sysops and
   • for anyone who makes ANSI/ASCII display screens frequently.
5. Player Editor (as mentioned in the email above)
   • TRBoxing player editor