Ah Skypix! I remember that. A couple local BBS' (Devil BBS, and Viking BBS) ran Skyline and it was just amazing. WAY better than RIP. I remember telling my PC friends about it and they kept saying, "Oh, so it's kinda like RIP" and I'd get so frustrated cause I could never get them to understand how much more advanced it was. You had to see it to believe it.
One of the Skyline BBS' I used didn't really do it justice. I think he must have just used the standard interface without any extras. It was no different than an ANSI BBS but with slightly better graphics. The other BBS though... man, that was amazing!!! The SysOp knew his stuff. Not only were there lots of really good looking online games, but there was also an online paint program, fully mouse driven.
Unfortunately, I seem to remember there being a BIG disadvantage to Skypix... it was limited to no higher than 4800 baud so very graphic intensive games or interfaces were slow to draw. But only the first time. Skypix terminals allow you to have a cache, much like web browsers, so once the graphics were transmitted to you the first time, they didn't need to be transferred to your computer again. I'm fairly sure some BBS' and games even allowed you to download the interface graphics upfront as an .lha (or possibly .arc) which would be faster than downloading them "on-the-fly". Unlike a web browser's cache though, I'm pretty sure you had to manually delete old graphic files.
Speaking of which, I should go through my old disks. I think I saved a few megabytes of Skypix graphics just for nostalgia's sake. If I find them I might upload them somewhere for fun. I think they were simple 4bit ILBMs.
Also, at least at the time Skyline BBS' came out here, most people had moved beyond 4800 and would rather use the faster 9600 or 14.4k BBS'.
Too bad though. Like most things Amiga related, Skypix had GREAT potential but never caught on. :cry:
-edit- Oh and I just remembered, it wasn't just colorful, mouse driven, still graphics. It also supported full animations. For example, the Devil BBS I mentioned above had the Loony Toons Tasmanian Devil spin across the screen when you logged in. :-D
