I have been pouring over the php files for a few hours now and I think I have forgotten more in the same time than what I have learned lol...

I am desiring to make my forums not require email address be entered in the registration form. Is it in the bb_func_regusr?

Yes, you could modify bb_func_regusr.php, and respectively, templates/user_dataform.html, but... this field is tied up also with many other scripts, so you need to search in files by 'user_email' and remove/modify all codes correspondingly, which will make your script almost not available for easy upgrades.

According to me for forum and other online application registration we couldn't keep the email as an optional one. It is not possible to do.Confirmation can be done through this. Last time I registered on a custom essay writing service for an essay paper. They sent confirmation to my email address first. So it should be required.