After googling, I just realized that Maximus 3.0 eventually included RIPscrip support built-in, but I had lost interest in my BBS and moved on to hacking on Unix systems by then.
But I remember RIPscrip being a nice format. Thanks for providing me with many an afternoon spent tinkering with it.
I liked how they were turn based (each user got X turns per day) and one player played at a time, but you were playing in a multi-player world against other people who would take their turns for the day.
I always thought it'd be interesting to do something similar in modern day, where you could take turns offline in a game (eg. in a subway or something, without internet access) and when you had online access, those turns were submitted against other people in the game. I wonder if there is anything like that?
RIP graphics were progress and a great innovation.
Of course, these days you'd probably be able to just buy an extra day for 500 gold coins...
I was just a kid (teenager) so I didn't have the funds to run a BBS myself. But I remember the 60 minute limits, the long lists of local BBSes, the ANSI graphics, Maximus, RemoteAccess and others (I had played with a few in the hopes of starting a BBS, but that era was starting to end when I graduated in the early 2000s), Door games, RIP graphics (the very early days of vector art on VGA screens).
There were door games like Baron Realms Elite where BBS sysops would get together and play BBS against BBS (of course many people had player accounts of multiple BBSes but it was all part of the fun and the years of protection added a decent balance to the game).
Games from that era were so much better than this Free-To-Play with micro-transactions crap. I understand it earns mobile game companies a ton of money (from a tiny % of the population that spends $200 to $5000 on a single game), but the shareware model of first 10 levels free, next 30 levels for $x made for much better games. Plus it gave people something to exchange from board to board; the whole upload/download ratios (which kids from the torrent era should really learn about--because it existed then and for legal shareware on the majority of BBSs).
I remember once getting an amazing side scrolling shooter from Japan. It may have not been shareware, but it was impossible to tell. It had no readme and I couldn't read anything on the screen. :-P It was super fun though, and I remember thinking of all the hops it must have taken (those people who make long distance BBS calls, or maybe just someone who brought disks over on a holiday) to get to a BBS in my small town.
I also remember Doom coming out, and all the Sysops talking about how amazing a game it was. I think it was 3 disks though; took either three days (60 minutes time limits) or hopping to three different BBSes to get all the disks. Then it said I needed a 386 or higher (I had a 286). I took it to a friends house who had a 486. His mom was a super Christian. She watched us play a few levels and that didn't really end well.