Demonic Newsletter – 9/2022 Edition

Transcribed from an old school ANSI version of this newletter available here, or here in PNG format if you’re still old school, but also lazy.

From the desk of Sir Jackson Phlashalot:

Man, I haven’t written one of these since around this time of year back in 1998. That’s almost 24 years ago. I mean, it’s been something like 16 years since Demonic had any sort of official release, for that matter. That’s… kind of fucking mind blowing, to be honest. The truth is that, despite Demonic slowly burning out and fading away, I’ve personally never stayed too far away from the scene. Zer0net and my BBS, Distortion are still up, I draw the occasional ANSI and ASCII (shoutouts to Blocktronics and Impure, respectively) and I even put out a new, completely recoded and redesigned version of my door game Darkness back in 2020. The same was true for a lot of old Demonic members and especially our extended circle of scene friends. Many embraced the rise of telnet and broadband back in the early 2000s and put their BBSes back online, though most of those have disappeared by now. Who can blame them, though? What kind of a loser is still fucking with BBS shit in 2022? Most of us have careers and families or, hell, at least some goddamn contemporary hobbies. Well, I’ll let you in on a couple of juicy-ass secrets:

1. “Retrocomputing” has seriously blown up in the last 5 to 10 years and has contributed to keeping some new blood trickling into the scene. That, and a lot of the same old dudes who were pumping life into the scene around the time Demonic died are still around. Digital Man is still cranking out Synchronet releases and g00r00 is still working hard on Mystic BBS, for instance.
2. This shit is still fun!

Back to the subject of writing NFO files though. You know, I strongly suspect that between my love of old school ASCII and the extremely tenuous grasp of the English language I had as a teenager, most of you guys probably assumed I was from some tiny European nation, modding, drawing, and coding from the first IBM compatible PC ever to make its way to my impoverished village, you know, after finally upgrading from some obscure microcomputer that no American had ever heard of, of course. Man, the grammar and spelling mistakes that used to be in my old updates and articles. *cringe* I mean, I’m not promising perfection here (obviously, heh) but, at least I got better at something in the last 24 years.

Oh yeah. I was supposed to be talking about Demonic. Yeah, Demonic! So, Demonic died? Why? Well, simply put, I was too damn busy. I started Demonic when I was a senior in high school and most of our glory days were between then and the few years I spent in college. I still can’t fathom how I was going to school full time, working part time, and had a pretty active social life, dating, going to shows multiple nights a week, and that sort of thing, and still deeply involved with the BBS scene. As soon as I graduated and got into the workforce though? Oof! Reality sucks. It wasn’t just me either, as most of us were around the same age and going through similar transitions in our lives. When I announced a shift from mod packs to individual releases in our seventh and last pack, it was definitely in earnest, and we continued to put out some pretty cool stuff. That said, the releases got less and less frequent, as did participation in our IRC channel and any sense of group cohesion with that, and next thing you know, it was really only the rare oddball member who was still hacking away in isolation that wanted to release and, even then, with the group on life support, their releases barely got any promotion or distribution support. An undignified end…

Modding groups came and went, though very few have made anything resembling a notable dent since then, and these days only Phenom Productions and a handful of unaffiliated modders and coders remain to carry the torch. I’d been asked many times in those intervening years to release something for someone under Demonic, or to revive the group wholesale, but knowing my own time constraints and limited attention span to which I could focus on any one of many hobbies, I resisted. Why is now the right time? The truth really isn’t all that dramatic. I’ve been releasing the occasional thing here and there, with plans to release plenty more, and I’ve got other friends who are ready to do the same as part of a group, so, Demonic is back, baby!

Now, allow me just one more paragraph to talk a bit about what Demonic of 2022 is, and what it isn’t. It is still focused on putting out cool and interesting mods, code, and tutorials with good art, source code, and maybe a little bit of that edgy, sinister flavor that was so compelling to us when we were 14. We’re also focused on stuff that’s actually… you know, fairly useful. There’s a lot of weird, progressive vanity projects floating around these days, and this ain’t that! I mean, who knows, but we’ll try to keep our superior technical skills and planet sized egos in check. With that in mind, we’re dedicated to BBSing first and foremost, so don’t expect us to devote a lot of time to interacting with social media. I mean, we’ll hopefully put up a new web page sooner or later, but beyond that, GET OFF OF OUR COLLECTIVE LAWNS, YOU LITTLE SHITS!

Memberberries

One of those aforementioned unaffiliated modders is xqtr, hailing from Greece. I mean, what would Demonic be without some non-Americans around to class us up? In addition to the utter nostalgia trip that is Null emag, xqtr has been putting out some absolutely diabolical stuff (mostly for Mystic) for years now, and plans to continue releasing the same sort of stuff (and perhaps updates to some of the exact same stuff) with Demonic. Oh, and you need to check out his insane BBS, Another Droid.

esc is a name you might remember from back in the day. He’s one of the few Demonic members who is still involved in the scene, with his (awesome) BBS Monterey going up and down more than a… Okay, I’m not a fucking teenager anymore, am I? Anyway, esc shifted away from Iniquity into the tantalizing world of Daydream BBS years back, taking on updates and stewardship of the project, but continues to dabble in all sorts of stuff. One thing he doesn’t do anymore is draw ASCII, but I’m mentioning that here so you all can join me in peer pressuring him get back in the saddle.

0-Day Releases

It would be utterly lame of me to announce something and then have nothing to show for it, so we’re pulling an Apple on your asses and actually have a small handful of new releases available to preorder… err, download TODAY!

• DEM-LM10.ZIP – xqtr brings us a lightbar matrix for Mystic. I know, I know, you’re thinking “great, a lightbar matrix… where have I heard that one before?” but remember when I said xqtr puts out diabolical shit? This is completely coded in MPL and has all kinds of extra functionality. Even if you don’t want to spice up your matrix, you can bask in the glory of xqtr’s MPL mastery and maybe learn a thing or two.
• ESC-BB10.ZIP – esc brings us a door for Daydream that adds a simple prompt to proceed through before loading the rest of BBS, handy for dropping those bots and script kiddies. Includes source, but of course.
• ESC-MSBK.ZIP – Another esc release, a collection of scripts for Mystic/Linux to make daily, weekly, and monthly backups of your BBS. Not recommended for those who have yet to lose their entire setup to a disk failure or a virus or whatever, as you’re practically required to have your own version of that classic anecdote to call yourself a real SysOp.
• ESC-RLGN.ZIP – rlogin-launcher v0.666. An rlogin client for GameSrv. Includes Linux, Windows, and MacOS binaries, by esc! Crushing the previous record for Demonic’s largest release, at least when it comes to file size. Hey esc, it’s not the size that counts, man.
• JP!TCEG2.ZIP – TCEGraff/2 by jack phlash. Oh look everyone, JP thinks he’s too special to use a dash in his filename like everyone else. Oh, and did I mention this is a fucking oneliners door. A oneliners door, in 2022? Some men are born leaders rather than doers, I guess. Anyway, this is a script for my earlier REFDoor v1.2 release intended to be more of a REF script example than anything, but hey, it’s colorful and I like the art, so fuck off.

Contact us! We’re lonely. 🙁

We are accepting new members! so if you think you’re ruggedly handsome enough to join our ranks, get in touch and tell us why and we’ll let you know if we think you’d be a good fit. Be warned, we’re only interested in members who actually intend on releasing or otherwise contributing. No one cares about “scene cred” by affiliation in 2022, okay?

I’d love to hear from any old Demonic members too, so even if you have no interest in ever touching a telnet terminal or an ANSI editor again, please drop me a line and say hello.

Email is still a thing in 2022, right? You can email me at jp at demonic.net and I promise I’ll at least glance at it before procrastinating on typing up a reply then forgetting about it entirely. Of course, that’s only if your message makes it through my ridiculous array of anti-spam scanners. I mean, it probably won’t, but I’ll check my spam folder from time to time too.

And of course, we run bulletin boards!

• Another Droid (andr01d.zapto.org:9999) run by xqtr will make you question if man can simply go too far in pushing the limits of BBS modding. I won’t answer that for you, you need to call and decide for yourself.
• Distortion (d1st.org) run by jack phlash is a far more traditional art scene style board, and that’s only partially because I’ve been too lazy to make any significant updates to it since the 1990s.
• Monterey (1-900-213-374U) run by esc isn’t actually too elite for you, rather it’s undergoing re-construction right now. Take my word for it that it’s pretty fucking cool, and I’m not just saying that because half of the art on it is by me.

Technologists as we are, you don’t actually need to connect to our boards to talk to us via a board. Instead, you can post in 0N-DPUB (or whatever the board you’re calling named it) on the Zer0net echomail network. You heard me right, echomail! The future is now! Or was then. Or something.

Oh, and we still have http://www.demonic.net up too, but it’s pretty damn barren pending a redesign. You can also visit my only slightly less barren blog at https://jackphla.sh where I intend to post a bunch of stuff about Demonic… *cough* one day.

Regardless, I intend to put out one of these little newsletters every now and then to update anyone who cares on member changes and new releases, all without actually having to talk to any of us weirdos. See you then?

Greets and treats.

This is the part where I’d normally shout out some groups, maybe talk shit about some others, that kind of thing. There’s really only one group left though, so big ups to our friends at Phenom Productions. You can check them out at https://www.phenomprod.com or wherever fine mods are distributed.

Obviously I need to personally shout out esc and xqtr for collaborating with me on this effort. We’ve been plotting this in secret for quite some time and have a lot of interesting ideas for the group going forward. Exciting.

Next, those still plugging away at BBS software in the year of our lord 2022. I already mentioned Rob and James, but I also want to shout out things like Ispyhumanfly’s new Iniquity 3.0 project, NuSkooler’s Enigma 1/2, and Mercyful Fate’s Oblivion2 XRM, and the absolute shitload of older softs still being updated or at least hacked to pieces. Things like Daydream, Renegade, and WWIV, to name just a few examples. ❤

Finally, as always, I’m pouring one out for my dear departed friend and Demonic hall of famer Micah McCrary, AKA m1cah of kracked.com. RIP, brother.

EOF!?
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1. Demonic Header by Filth, first released in Demonic #1 – 01/97 (1997)