IMAGINATION/The Sierra Network

[Tawmis]

So how many here used ImagiNatioN or TSN (The Sierra Network)? I figured I'd start a thread to see who has. There's also the Inn Revival Project which works pretty good. (No one hardly uses it sadly).

[Collector]

Perhaps after the board has grown some we might try a get together on Inn Revival.

[Tawmis]

That would be fun because the games work and everything.

[JasefWisener]

I would probably be in for it.

[Collector]

We would need to find a supported game that we all had.

[Tawmis]

Um, no. Actually it has all the games from ImagiNatioN. None need to be downloaded I don't think. Like I know Ysberius works. I believe the others do as well. There's some still not working 100% (like Larry Land, I think?)

[JasefWisener]

I took a look at the site and it looks pretty easy to set up.

[Tawmis]

I took a look at the site and it looks pretty easy to set up.

It's very easy to use. It just requires a small change to the DOSBox config file (so it doesn't look for a real modem - actually connects to the private server).

[Andy Roark]

Oh, i'm so totally in on this.

I knew someone was working on it - didn't realize it was done.

[DeadPoolX]

I was one of the first members on The Sierra Network in 1991, which later became The ImagiNation Network after AT&T bought it from Sierra. I stayed there until it was bought out by AOL and subsequently shut down. I believe that was around 1995.

I think Maia and I tried INN Revival. It's not bad, although I must admit that TSN/INN appeared far more impressive in the early 90s. The Revival also tends to run slow, but then again, maybe TSN/INN did too. I might have been more accepting of that, considering 386 and 486 computers with 24.4 (or 56K if you were lucky) baud modems were used.

The best part of TSN/INN were the extra "lands." There was MedievaLand (yes, it had one "L"), Larry Land (which was changed to Casino Land when AT&T took the network over) and Sierra Land, which oddly enough, kept the same title. In every area, you could choose what your text colors were. Some jerks (like my brother) decided to use a white background with yellow text.

Each one of those areas had a distinct feel and graphical style. Sierra Land turned your avatars into children and built in a more whimsical manner. The best part of this area was getting to play Red Baron online in 2 vs 2 matches. Groups called "squadrons" were formed and there used to be tournaments on a regular basis. My brother was in the "Lafayette Escadrille," which was shortened to "LE" when attached to someone else's name. The weirdest squadron was the "Naked Crisco Twisters." No, I am not making that up. Their avatars were also naked, too.

Larry Land had cartoony adult avatars, which made sense since that place was designed for adults. In reality, most of people there were teens pretending to be older. This area had gambling (which wasn't very fun since it used virtual money) and chat rooms where people could give items to one another, such as flowers, jewelry and even kisses (all of which appeared on someone's avatar).

MedievaLand was created to be a multiplayer RPG. The avatar selection was pretty low (and included some odd choices, such as a pig's noise or a bird's beak). The first RPG there was called The Shadow of Yserbius followed up by The Fates of Twinion a bit later. There was supposed to be a third quest, but it never ended up happening.

The "general area" was a map that changed its look depending on the season. If it was winter, the map would have snow everywhere and if it was summer, the place would be bright and sunny with vegetation. From the map, you had a number of choices. You could go into the Clubhouse, which allowed to see chat with other people in a variety of ways. You could simply select their name bar (normally yellow and black, but turned red when selected) and talk privately or go into a room. By far, the most populated room was the "Red Dragon Inn" or RDI.

In the Clubhouse, Sierra Land and Larry Land you could also challenge others to games. The Clubhouse offered general games, such as chess, checkers, hearts, and so on. Sierra Land had 3D tic-tac-toe, boogers (awesome game!), golf, paintball and of course, Red Baron. As explained before, Larry Land had the typical assortment of casino gambling games.

From the map, you could also see if someone was online by using the phone booth, go to the school house (which wasn't operational until much later in the network's life), the hint section for all Sierra games and the post office, which housed e-mail.

I should note that e-mail could only be sent within TSN/INN and that early on, you needed to buy (with real money) virtual stamps in order to send mail; you could always receive mail. In addition, someone's e-mail was not denoted by their screen name. TSN/INN used a mailbox number (mine was 23160) which could be posted on your avatar's information screen. This allowed people to have any name they wished. That sounds nice, but that also led to people impersonating others and since these impostors could write in someone else's mailbox number, there would be virtually no way to tell who was who.

Building your avatar was simple, but sometimes the choices were as well. Maia complained that the female hairstyles were stuck in the 80s. You could choose your nose, eye color, hair style and color, eyebrow type, smile, facial hair for men and jewelry for women, and finally clothing style and color. Once your avatar was made, you could choose your hobbies and/or interests (the limit was four) and then indicate how "good" you were in the Clubhouse games. Making an avatar in the other lands were basically the same, with some variation (as explained earlier).

Probably the one thing I truly hated about TSN/INN was the pricing. This was back in the "pay-per-hour" era. Depending on the plan you wanted (some were as much as $99 per month), you would be allotted a number of hours. If you went over that number, you were charged $2.99 per hour. The connection stability of TSN/INN wasn't the greatest, either. I remember Red Baron freezing up sometimes and getting dumped back into DOS.

The image I uploaded is a tag I've used before, which was created with TSN/INN.

INN.gif (6.36 KiB) Viewed 10572 times

[Tawmis]

The Inn Revival Runs slow because if you look - you modify the DOSBox Config file - and change one of the modem settings from Nil - to an actual modem speed. So whether you're on a DSL, Cable, T1 line - it doesn't matter. It's using a modem speed (I can't remember off hand what it is) - so that it can connect to the Revival's server, which of course, isn't some massive server. Probably someone's box in their garage.

All the lands are there. All the avatars are there. The mailbox doesn't work. The boards don't work. And neither does the directory. But other than that, it's about 90% complete.

Like you, I was in on TSN/INN from the start. Even did Beta Testing on it. (In one of the pictures of what we have - I have a picture of the box, the mousepad, and all that, that they sent to Beta Testers).