Citadel+

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Citadel+

Typical Citadel BBS screen
Original author(s) Brent Bottles (aka resident)
Richard Finegold (aka Richard Goldfinder)
Don Kimberlin (aka err head)
Elisabeth Perrin (aka Livia)
Matthew Pfleger (aka The Gremlin)
Developer(s) Anticlimactic Teleservices, Ltd.
Initial release October 1994 (1994-10)
Stable release /065y2k / October 1999; 25 years ago (1999-10)
Preview release /Win32/066pα73 / May 2009; 15 years ago (2009-05)
Written in Borland C++
Operating system MS-DOS
Win32 (/066)
Platform IBM PC
Child of Gremlin's Citadel
Related ACit, Citadel (by Gremlin), dars, Squiggle, Titanic

Citadel+ is really nothing more than a renamed Gremlin's Citadel. The name Gremlin's Citadel was mostly as a joke, given when Matt Pfleger did not expect it to become such a success. While at least Matt and Brent wanted to rename it simply "Citadel", others objected that it was too generic, and also a bit conceited to claim to be the One True Citadel. Thus, the + was added to make it a bit different. Of course, we later learned that there was already a Citadel Plus. Oh well. Life will always be confusing.

Citadel+ grew to be the most widely used variant of Citadel before the development team lost interest and went different ways. The unfinished version 66 was intended to bridge the gap between dial-up systems and the Internet: it runs on Win32 (such as Windows 95 and 98 and NT) and supports multiple simultaneous users connected through either modems or Telnet. However, it is not complete. It is missing some features, and is only somewhat stable. Brent and Matt still tinker with 66 at times, and might even finish it eventually.

As of 2010 Brent has long lost interest, but occasionally thinks about picking it up again if he weren't working full time. He is supposedly in possession of an incomplete port of /066, but it is unknown which alpha he started this from.

Occasionally Jason Simpson (aka waxed) tinkers with the Citadel+ code base, and seems to be in possession of the most current, and still used Citadel+/Win32/066 code. There is an svn currently available at http://zombiechow.com/citplus.

Recent development haven't actually been on the Citadel+ code base, but on a bot called Jab which interacts with the BBS, and a slick webchat page which has url linking and thumbnailing features, as well as a few CSS themes to choose from. Webchat logs you on to the BBS via net6969, which never worked all that well for networking (hey, it was in alpha!) but seems to work well for this!

Slumberland BBS (Beacon Hill, Seattle, WA, USA) is still up and active, and is currently believed to be the only active Citadel+ still around, it is also the only known place where Jab, waxed's webchat and andy's WJE webchat add-on are in use.

As note to anyone editing this page: you may note from the original page, there are more files to be added here. Additionally I should question the date, or the description of the documentation files. As /065 came out in 1995 or late 1994 sometime, the files are unlikely to be the preliminary docs if they came from 1999. Personally, Jesse bets the date is wrong.

Documentation Size Date
Version 65 preliminary documentation (Text) 200,462 bytes September, 1999
Version 65 preliminary documentation (Word 6.0) 261,205 bytes September, 1999
Version 65 preliminary documentation (WordPerfect 5.1) 233,531 bytes September, 1999