QB Express

Issue #13  ~  August 19, 2005

"A magazine by the QB community, for the QB community!"

In This Issue



From The Editor's Desk

Written by Pete

Here we are again: Lucky issue #13!

After last month's gigantic one year anniversary hoopla, I thought that QB Express #13 would really be scratching the bottom of the barrel for submissions. But when all is said and done, I think we scratched together a pretty solid issue, especially on the Tutorials front. We've got ten great tutorials coming at you this month, as well as the news and another dozen or so articles/editorials to enjoy.

A few things you might notice about this issue:

1) I opted to change the default font from "Palatino Linotype" to Arial. If you guys don't like the font change, let me know and I'll change it back or come up with a new font altogether. (Headings are still in the old font, since it looks more dignified for that type of thing.)

2) Internet Explorer display problems have been solved. Now code boxes have indenting, and I've double-checked to make sure that rogue <center> tags don't destroy the layout for half the zine.

3) Now there is an "Official QB Express Article Requests" thread. More on that in the Letters to the Editor section.

4) There is a hidden "Blue's Clue" somewhere in the issue. The first person to redeem it will win a fabulous prize!

Anyhow, I'm a very busy man, and I'm sure you're all itching to get to the issue, so I'll end this letter right here. Enjoy Issue #13, and be sure to submit stuff for next month's issue!


Submit To QB Express

You all know the drill. This magazine can't exist without people SUBMITTING articles, editorials, tutorials, reviews, news and feedback. This is not just a solo effort by me... it's a group effort by people throughout the QB community. If you have anything to submit, or have time to write something, DO IT!

If you want to write about something, but can't think of a topic, or need inspiration, check out the "Official QB Express Article Requests" thread! There have been quite a few articles requested -- and even if none of them strikes your fancy, we can help you come up with something that you would like to write about. If you're interested in getting your own monthly column or just want to write an article or two, by all means, do it! Anything that is submitted will be included!

I also want feedback and letters to the editor regarding this magazine. I want suggestions and critiques. What do you like? What don't you like? What could be done better? Let me know!

All submissions and feedback can be sent to pberg1@gmail.com. You can also PM me on the Pete's QB Site or QBasic News message forums. If QB Express is going to continue to be so good, YOU need to contribute!

-Pete



Letters

Letter From MystikShadows

Hi Pete,

What a way to close the first year of my favorite magazine :-). Absolutely great issue no two ways about that. And you deserve a candle for doing that interview with Nek in my book. Like I always say, there's only one place to get the truth about somebody, you gotta ask the person itself. Lachie said it best QB Express would just be a list of not always related contents if it wasn't for the big editing job you do, your part is what makes QB Express what it is, our submissions are just there to fill in the blanks and keep the reader reading :-). It's a team effort and when the team really unites into a combined effort, well that's when QB Express really shines :-). The good thing about this is the team is getting used to each of it's member.

It's Almost like we could be creating a real team. Hmmm take that as a suggestion. As you know contents and editing are becoming more and more of a chore and rightfully so if we want to continuously give the right contents. I believe maybe a group of 3 or 4 people tops should be in place to help you out. Not researchers or reviewers and such I think that kind if article is getting to be quite self sufficient. But I'm talking about 3 or 4 people that are there just to make sense of all the contents being submitted (not refusing or deciding not to publish something that's submitted) because QB Express is about publishing what's being submitted but basically making it fit together. As an example, say I wrote my 2nd part to me database design series (euh I did already) someone of those 3 to 4 people) might want to boost someone else or myself to write an interconnected topic like perhaps report generation or something like "how to really get the information you need versus the information you want" and at east try some effort to see if such an article could be written for the same issue :-) you see? Same thing for games or any other article project. this way if those 3 or 4 people would have been there they might have made more sense of all the QBasicNews shutdown news and comments just by thinking about something you might have overlooked or something :-). Just to help out a bit :-). I'd volunteer if this suggestion makes it through. :-).

Oh and of course the letters to the editors are partly there for that but what do you think about adding a "What I'd like to see in QB Express" section? Lately I see alot of letters asking to see something and I think if such a section was there people would use it :-).

As for the contents of the magazine, everything in there is to be commended.

The awards were given to their rightful owners (and I'm proud to be the contributor that gives you the least trouble ;-) goes with being the number 1 fan and contributor ;-). I think you have enough to do on your part of the magazine that I don't want you to worry about the little details like formatting the articles you receive :-). At least from me ;-). I really enjoyed Na_th_an's 6th part of his series in there along with his 2nd chapter to his Scrolling paralax series. It's no wonder Quest for Opa Opa is so good :-) look at all the knowledge that went into it :-). I agree with Lachie's evaluation of issue 11 ;-) so I'm not gonna repeat any of it here. Na_th_an's IF tutorial was very informative no two ways about it I learned all of my IF knowledge from him alone :-) Thanks Na_th_an you got a fan ;-) and now you got me into paralax scrolling platforms ;-). Rel's series on 3D is what covered the other side of gaming :-). And Matt2jones with his music series (you got a fan too matt) I just like the way he explains his music concepts, makes me understand quickly and consisely. Can't want for the next part of that. Nek's Interview very much speaks for itself. I'm glad it was there, I'm glad you wanted to make that interview to give the other side of the story and I'm glad Nek accepted to share it with us. I think this time ratttrapmax6's horse humor outdid itself again. This one was well developped (and I could read it all clearly, thank you ratt ;-)).

I most definitaly have to commend Dumbledore's Effort in his wx-c usage in FreeBasic. As you know FreeBasic is multi platform (DOS/Windows/Linux etc) and as such I fully encourage all tutors about multi platform support GUI engines and others. This really helps FreeBasic stay what it is as far as multiplatform goes and I think Dumbledore has a knack to bring the C Encrypted code that can be found in wx-c to a very clear FreeBasic transcription. he's gifted in that area and really enjoyed and most definitaly learned from his 2 part (so far) series on the subject :-). Not everyone can make people understand this kind of thing easily so I hold a candle up for Dumbledore because he's doing an awesome job and making things clear in such a complicated infasructure that is wx-c. Good going :-). And let's not forget Moneo's Useful QBasic/QuickBasic Algorithms contribution. We need more of those algorithms, they sure are an important part of any programming language. So to Moneo, Thanks for thise algorithms and I for one hope to see plenty more in the very near future.

All this serves only one purpose for this number one fan and that's to anticipate what will be present in the next issue. that's the one thing I can say is QB Express definitaly has everything that's needed to just keep us coming back for more :-). I look at the main section with the links to all the contents and every time I find myself saying "Yes, can't wait to read that." more than once in each issue :-). Can't wait to see what lucky number 13 is gonna bring us :-).

Like I said, there's plenty of boring subjects still left to write about. It's a dirty but somebody's gotta do it ;-). and if I can make that boring side interesting enough to be read by people that wouldn't normally read boring stuff well hey, mission accomplished. they might be boring but they are important for all types of development projects, games included :-). So fear not, there's plenty more coming up from yours truely :-).

Until next issue, I know you'll hear from me ;-). (now how bad is that that I can say that upfront like this? LOL).

MystikShadows
Stephane Richard

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I like your idea about getting people to write "interconnected" / related articles. I'll keep that in mind when people ask me to help them think of a topic. I tried to do something along those lines when I had several requests for GUI-related articles, and in the past few months we've seen a lot of great GUI-related content. And that was with only minor prodding on my part. With a more concentrated effort, we could see some pretty awesome "themed" issues of QB Express in the future!

Also, your idea about a "What I'd like to see in QB Express" section was great too. So great, in fact, that I implemented it a few days after you sent me this letter: The Official QB Express Article Requests Thread. It's been a great success so far. If anyone wants to suggest an article to be written for QB Express, or to find a topic to write about, this is the place to go. I highly suggest you check it out, whether you're on the requesting or request-fulfilling end.

As for your *other* suggestion...I'm not so hot about it. I would be very hesitant to institute the 3-4 person panel to help me put together the magazine each month, because I have a feeling it would just make things harder to manage. It would surely make everything a lot *more* complicated than it is now. It would mean that three or four people would be responding to emails and telling people different things, and I'd also have to work out some sort of system where the content for each issue is shared and gathered together online for everyone to see. Plus, I always run the chance of recruiting a deadbeat, which as I've experienced in the past with this kind of thing, happens quite frequently. (You know the saying: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. :-) ) Anyhow, I don't think QB Express is big enough at the moment to warrant more than one editor / contact person.

What I'd really like are news reporters and regular monthly columnists. For example, if there were a "Blast From The Past" editor or a "Competitions" editor, who always wrote the same column every month, I would be ecstatic. Some people have begun to do this type of thing -- Lachie Dazdarian with his "Searching For The Unknown", anarky with "Where Are They Now?" article, and all the people who have written tutorial series (like yourself, Na_th_an, and many others). More of those would be great. :)

And then there's the single most time consuming section of QB Express, the News Briefs. I often spend more time on that one section than all the rest of my sections combined. The way people could help me the most is to help me out with that section. Lachie says it's "the backbone" of QB Express, and I agree...but I really hate doing it. :-) So if anyone out there wants to write completed news briefs and send them in, that would be extremely helpful. What Jacob Palm is doing with the GUI news is great.

Anyhow, Thanks for the letter and all the great feedback!

-Pete

Letter From Joseph Burke

Hey Pete,

Just wanted to congratulate you on your 12th issue of qbexpress. By a number of measures, you have done a seriously good job over the past year, especially with regards to encouraging participation, and gathering news. I imagine that it must be difficult to get people to consistently contribute to such a project, so you deserve special congratulations for this.

Well done,
Joseph

P.S.
Thanks for mentioning that my article got a big reaction. Virtually no one in the qbasic community completely understood it, but it is nice to know it had an impact.

Thanks a lot for the kind words. Putting together an issue of QB Express every month is quite a drain, and takes a lot of time, but I think it's well worth it. My goal is to keep on doing QB Express until people stop writing. As long as fresh line of submissions keep coming in the door each month, I'll keep on pumping out issues!

-Pete

Have a letter for the editor? Send all your rants, raves, ideas, comments and questions to pberg1@gmail.com.


Express Poll

Every issue, QB Express holds a poll to see what QBers are thinking. The poll is located on the front page of Pete's QBasic Site, so that's where you go to vote. Make sure your voice is heard!

What browser are you using right now?

BrowserVotesPercentGraph
Internet Explorer3036%
FireFox3947%
Netscape22.4%
Opera33.6%
Safari22.4%
Other78.4%
76 Total Votes

After last issue was released, the debate over QB Express's browser compatibility issues came up again. Most people complained about the FireFox bug that displays random gray boxes over areas of the issue with code boxes, and others complained about some Internet Explorer display errors, like the lack of indented code, and the browser's propensity to center everything if one CENTER tag is left open somewhere at the beginning of the issue.

As a FireFox user, this discussion made me realize that I had been ignoring the needs of nearly half of my readers by not fixing the IE display errors (which turned out to be a very easy fix). I may not be able to fix the gray boxes in FireFox, but I definitely can make sure that every other browser gets to see QB Express as it was intended. After these CSS updates, Internet Explorer displays QB Express the best of all of the browsers I have tested...that is, until the FF gray boxes bug is fixed.

And in case you're wondering -- The Mozilla Foundation knows about the gray boxes problem. Last month, I submitted an extensive bug report at BugZilla. You can check it out at: this address. Maybe if you sign up for a Bugzilla account and confirm that you can reproduce the bug on your system, it will make Mozilla take care of it even sooner!



News Briefs

News from all around the QB community, about the latest games, site updates, program releases and more!

Site News

QBXL Audio Edition 7

Last month, the venerable SJ Zero released the brand new QBXL Audio Edition 7, which covers such Qmunity topics as Z!re, The Griffon Legend, FB XBox Compiling, Spotted Cheetah, Qbasic.com....and then a whole lot of unrelated stuff about U.S. Politics (ie: Bush bashing). It has some funny moments and is definitely worth a listen. After all, at 8 minutes long, "there's probably something good in there somewhere."


ASCII World Releases FreeBasic Toolbox

In the past couple of months, ASCII World has created the basis of what is to become the most complete and useful FreeBasic collection of subroutines and other things to help make FreeBasic even easier than it is today. As such you can expect to find the following:

  • An exhaustive list of usefule subs and functions: Such things as string manipulation, date calculations, and Screen I/O routines to help the creation of flexible applications and games easier.
  • A set of Gaming Extensions: These are also a set of useful functions and subs but these are specialized in game creation projects. A full fledge scripting engine called (Scriptualysis) is being implemented, subs for centering of text, Credit Scrolling Subroutines, Easier and short ways to print text on screen, basic Data Input and so on are all part of the Gaming Extensions of the Toolbox.
  • A full fledge Text User Interface Application FrameWork: This library is still to be done but promises a full mouse and keyboard standard User Interface for applications and games. This will provide the basis to create applications using standard pulldown menu systems, standard dialogs, File editing, formatted input/output routines, screen windowing and buffering and the likes. All in the goal to provide a standard set of tools for a highly elaborate Text User Interface.

As you can imagine, a project of this size will need all the help it can get. So we hope we got your curiosity good enough to get you wanting to help out in this project. the FreeBasic Toolbox is hosted on sourceforge at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/fbtoolb ox/

Thank you all for your time and attention

-The ASCII World Development Team

(This News brief submitted by MystikShadows.)


FBTK Downloads Section Beefs Up

The FBTK guys have been busy adding to their Downloads section. Here's the news item, verbatim, because I'm lazy:

After a massive uploading spree, Paz and I have raised the download count of files her at fbtk to 183. Expect the number to keep rising as we try to add more files to the files database. Keep upload games, tuts, graphics demos and anything else you want so that we can keep growing. I don't know how we compare to other freebasic sites right now in files, but I'd have to say we're up there.

Also, two new categories added today, random qb stuff and magazines. Every issue of QB express has been posted in zip format and 4-7 QXBL audio editions have been hosted (no more complaining jocke).

Also in the compilers section, many copies of fbc have been upload as we now have .07 - .13 windows, .10 - .13 linux and .11 - .13 dos uploaded. If people have versions we haven't uploaded, we would be very grateful if you'd load those up so that we can have as many versions as possible. The same goes for FBIDE.

The FBTK Downloads section is here: http://fbtk.net/phpBB2/ezdloads.php


AAP Official Projects Squad Revamps

In celebration of the AAP Official Projects Squad's "just over one (1) year" anniversary, Adigun A. Polack has treated the site to some major updates. They include:

  • The Frantic Journey pages have finally updated with the current progress of the game in FB!
  • A whopping 19 FB demos have been added to the FreeBasic GFX Demo Central for a massive total of at least 71 of them!!
  • The deadline of the FreeBASIC Ultimate Demo Compo has now been extended ‘till September 30, 2005!
  • One new FB program of mine and my own tutorial about implementing Windows icons to FreeBASIC programs have also been added!

The website also boasts a brand new look. Go check it out: http://dhost.hopto.org/aapproj/


Project News

FreeBasic Compiler v0.14b Released

V1ctor has once again treated us to a new version of FB. The new version includes "improvements such as full debugging support, function overloading and pointer type-casting." I'd say more, but you all know what FreeBasic is, and probably already all have v0.14b. If not, get it at: FreeBasic.net


Mambazo Ports RPGine RPG Engine

Mambazo, a veteran of the Qmunity, has ported his QB / Future Library RPG engine to FreeBasic, for your role-playing pleasure. This full-featured engine includes "fully customizable graphics, maps, and the scripting allows for diverse plots." This is a practically complete RPG framework, just itching for someone to plug in the graphics and story. If you're interested in making an RPG, but don't want to spend your time re-inventing the wheel, I suggest you check out the RPGine engine. View the announcement thread, or just download the engine.


FieldView Updates

Z!re's ridiculously ambitious massively multiplayer online RPG (MMORPG), FieldView, has made some progress in the past month. Some new concept art has been posted on Plantasy Studios (the official site), and a new encryption/decryption algorithm challenge has been started. The FieldView crew is also looking for voice actors, a sound editor, a music composer and a pixel artist to help with the development. I don't know how much coding has gotten done for FieldView, but at least it's going somewhere.


Rattrapmax6 Makes Us Bounce!

Rattrapmax6 released a fun FB minigame called Bounce!, similar to many Flash games which are available all over the Internet. (Apparently this one is similar to a game at NeoPets, but Rattrapmax6 says: "mine has a lil diff rules, probaly better physics, and looks better.." Download Bounce! here: bounce.zip


Albuk's Quest Remake In The Works

CutterSlade, the maker of former Gaming Golds entry Albuk's Quest, plans on remaking the game in FB. Albuk's Quest was a fun platformer / side scroller, and we can expect the same from the upcoming FB version. To get us interested in the Albuk's Quest remake, CutterSlade has released a single-screen platform demo using Mario graphics (see the screenshot). You can download the demo at this address.


VonGodric Shows Off FBIde 0.5

Interested in a sneak peak at the newest version of VonGodric's popular FreeBasic IDE? Then look no further! He has posted a series of enticing screenshots at this post on the FreeBasic.net forums.

New features slated to be in FBIde 0.5 include:

  • Full debugging support
  • to enable/disbale the sub/function only view ( Yes to hide all other as in QB's IDE )
  • Add function/sub Tree view
  • Bookmarks
  • Full project support -project templates, settings, ...
  • Advanced global ( in all files, project, ... )search
  • Support for automatic upper/lower/mixed case for the keywords.
  • Write real FB syntax parser for scintilla ( so far I'v been using modified VB's parser )
  • Support for single instance of FBIde ( instead of opening new IDE for every file that is loaded outside of teh FBIde )
  • Documentation
  • Help support, costomisible Help menu
  • File history
  • Support and SDK for plug-ins, but that's a bit utopic right now... or not?

There's no doubt that the best FB IDE in town is gonna get even better with the new release! Check out the official site for more details, or to get previous versions.


Wizardry-Style Maze Game In The Works

Stevens522 posted this screenshot of a nifty Wizardry: Proving Grounds clone for FreeBasic. The engine is translated from an old Delphi source file, and therefore has a very authentic retro look.

Eventually, Stevens522 plans to add enemy encounters and develop this engine into a full-fledged game. There's no playable demo yet, but hopefully we'll see one soon.

I, for one, am excited. We haven't seen a Wizardry-style game in the QB scene since, well, Legend of Lith II. It's definitely due time for a fresh take on this genre.


Pong in 63 Lines

This month, someone in IRC challenged Xerol to do Pong in 50 lines and 10 minutes. It took him 63 lines and 22 minutes, but he got it finished! Check it out here or here.

But wait...there's more! Xerol's also making another Pong game. Here's the word from the man himself:

I'm working on a more fully-featured version in under 100 lines right now. (What other features does pong need? Not really anything crucial, but a Title Screen, some sort of score limit/victory condition, and a high score table might work. Considering I've got 37 lines left to work with, this could be a challenge!)

These "extreme efficiency" coding challenges are really interesting to me. I'd really like to see someone fulfill this IRC guy's challenge: Pong in 50 lines and ten minutes. I'm sure it can be done. If anyone ends up accomplishing this, be sure to send QB Express a copy! Until then, you can enjoy Xerol's 63 line / 22 minute version, and shortly, his enhanced 100-line version. :-)


S.H.E. Demonstration

Deleter and TheBlueKeyboard are working on a gory isometric shooter called S.H.E., and they recently posted a giant-sized 1024x768 screenshot of the game's latest build. If you're in the mood for seeing a lot of digital isometric blood and a menacing robot, check out this thread.


"Excape From Windows" World for Wetspot 2 Breaks Out

Angelo Mottola's perennial QB classic has just gotten new life, with Rattrapmax6's new "Worlds of Wetspot" creation, Excape From Windows. Rattrap's fan world, created with the level editor included with the original Wetspot 2 release (way back in 1998), features five levels with a Windows theme. The maps are made up of floppy disks and gray Windows-esque boxes, and are chock-full of Wetspot 2's memorable enemies.

What's most interesting about this release is just how timeless the the Wetspot 2 gameplay is. It's just as fun now as it was back in 1998. There's no wonder that Wetspot 2 is widely considered the greatest QB game ever made.

And as further testament to Wetspot's greatness, check out last month's Gallery. Adigun A. Polack is creating a FB port / "Remix" of the original Wetspot game, which I'm sure will be welcomed by the Qmunity when it's released. Now if only someone would do a Wetspot 2 port so we can play Rattrapmax6's new map in 32-bit FB goodness...


SonicX Version 10 Released, Next Version Will Be In FB

Every time I hear about a new update to SonicX, I'm amazed. Joseph Burke has been working on this QB Sonic for over seven years, since 1998, and he's still at it. In a community where most projects don't last for more than a month, that's an amazing accomplishment. The latest version of SonicX (build 10) is a huge improvement over all the past editions. Here's a look at some of the new features:

  • Has Sound. This includes sound fX and Background music. I had to hack ds4qb2 to pieces to get it to work at a resonable speed. Midi music is supplied via Nekrophidious's harmony slave port to qb.
  • Much faster engine with quicker loading times.
  • Customisable water layers. The colour can be adjusted to anything by a level designer.
  • Customisable moving objects.
  • Each object can have a basic script attached to it. So in the game, a ring has a script attached to it, and the script is run every time the ring is touched. This script can tell the game to delete the ring animation at that point and add 1 to the ring counter.
  • Contains enemies. As this is a preview, not all the enemies are finished. At least four different enemies have been fully created and scripted.
  • Has a much more stable Level editor and graphics editor.
  • Sonic can lose rings, and pick up lost rings.
  • Underwater physics are fully implemented. Sonic needs air bubbles to breathe, or will drown.
  • Collision detection is a bit smoother.
  • Players now have the choice of playing Sonic or Tails.
  • The level editor now sports a BASIC IDE for writing basic scripts in SonicX.

Joe also announced that version 10 will be the final QB version of SonicX. He has opted to port the entire project to FreeBasic before continuing development, so that a wider userbase can enjoy his game.

To get the latest version of SonicX, visit QBasic Central!


Costa GUI v0.8.0 Released

Jacob Palm has released a new version of Costa, his QB GUI. "It has many new features, including themes and multiuser support. No accessories are included (didn't wanna include half-finished tools), but it's still a fully functional GUI." You can download Costa here: http://www.jacobpalm.dk/archive/Costa080.zip


QB Object (GUI Library) Rebuild

Here's a press release Todd Seuss of Data Components posted at several places around the Qmunity this past week about his new GUI library:

Hi everyone!

I would like to announce that the library called "QB Object" has been released for development of programs and software requiring a nice GUI and ease of programming.

The library turns simplified code from the user into advanced graphics and controls. A program that might take an hour to develop a GUI for will take much less time with this GUI.

Instructions are included as well as examples and tutorials.

The original library written by AMP Software cost $50 and the demo only had the QLB for running and not compiling. However, the QB Object Rebuild by Data Components Software Development is FREE and has the library to compile your programs. Programs made with QB Object are virtually small and relatively fast.

Here is the URL to the library: http://kldp.net/frs/download.php/2666/qbobject.zip .

Have fun and please give me feedback at todd@datacomponents.moved.in .

Thanks,
Todd Suess


Wallace Software Inspires Us..

...with a new Inspiration demo, that is! Wallace posted the new beta version of his first person shooter engine on his website (Wallace Software) on August 10th. Now that the engine is being developed in FreeBasic, it has sped up significantly and now boasts many more features, like multiple guns, flashlights and the ability to turn lights on and off, and more. The engine is still missing proper collision detection and there were no enemies in the demo, but they should be coming soon. Wallace has posted some very interesting comments about Inspiration's enemy artificial intelligence code on his site, and he also contributed a great tutorial on the subject to QB Express this month. I'm really looking forward to the point when Inspiration is turned from an engine demo into a full-featured game!


Stratego Clone Build 30

Nemesis recently posted a demo version of his take on the classic board game Stratego. Programmed entirely in QB4.5, this game still lacks AI and lacks polish, but it was pretty fun, and held my attention. The controls are intuitive, and it's easy to get into. Of course, since the computer opponent lacks any sort of intelligence, it was an easy slaughter...but once some (any) AI routines are incorporated, this will be a great game!


Rokkuman Makes Cobra Way Awesomer!

Rokkuman has released a very preliminary demo of the FreeBasic version of his fighting game Cobra, which he began in QB over two years ago. The game is being completely remade from scratch, and will feature giant-sized hand-drawn fighter sprites. Here's a quote from Rokkuman on the new graphics:

As of now, the game currently has sprites with multiple height and width dimensions (with Koby's current stance sprite averaging at 113x152), completely scripted attacks, and movements, so that I can add little details like footsteps to walking animations, sound, stages made of images, and layered, fighter on fighter collision detection, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better keyhandling, a nicer character selectscreen, and animations that are pretty much unlimited in terms of length. Attacks and stuff currently haven't been made however, but it'll be awesome, trust me.

Also, the characters themselves are going to go under some redesigns, now that I have more than a 30x30 space to work with. The Koby in this demo looks pretty much the same way he did in Cobra, but his sprite will probably get worked over. His design will probably stay somewhat basic, and he won't be decked out in chains and stickers or something, just for the sake of him having them, but... look at him... yeesh.

In fact, here's a comparison, Koby from the old Cobra, and Koby from the new Cobra:

As you can see, Koby is nearly FIVE TIMES his original size, meaning this game will be FIVE TIMES as awesome, only it won't be five, it'll be more, like 750432hghg037250tg423t07327 or something.

The Cobra demo lacks attacks still, but if jumping around Street-Fighter-style is your thing, then I suggest you check it out. Dialup users beware: the demo weighs in at 11MB because of the music used in the demo. Click here to download the Cobra Demo.


Syn9's Latest Masterpiece: A Simple 3D RPG Style Engine

I tell you, everytime Syn9 codes anything, it's pure gold. His new 3D engine, which renders 3D graphics made in Blender (www.blender.org), produces absolutely beautiful results. It may be just a one-screen walkaround engine demo, but it really has that kind of professional polish that we so rarely see in QB/FB releases. Check out this screenshot (click to enlarge):


Hopefully Syn9 (1) develops this engine into a full game, and (2) writes a tutorial series for QB Express on how he does it. In either case, we would all be eternally grateful.

You can download the demo here: http://syn9.thingie.net/crap/gltest2/test2.rar

Competition News

Drawing AI Challenge Winner

Z!re's Drawing AI Challenge, where entrants were challenged to "Make an AI [program] that produces some sort of drawings/art.." just wrapped up, with some interesting results. There were about half a dozen entries, all using some type of randomized graphics technique to create some very beautiful and colorful artwork. In the end, though, Z!re declared the winner to be rdc, whose "RDCPainta" program generated this image (click to view it full size):


You can check out the forum thread for this compo here. Also, Z!re has started a new Encryption / Decryption challenge for her FieldView RPG, which has gotten quite a bit of attention. Check that compo out here.


Timezone Calculator Challenge

Moneo has been running a successful competition on the Pete's QB Site / QBasic News forums, which challenges coders to create a simple program that calculates world timezones and validates user input. You can find the official threads here: QBasic News / Pete's QB Site. This competition has become a valuable learning experience for entrants, because with each successive entry, Moneo points out important calculation or input validation flaws and pushed coders to improve their algorithms. Read through the threads -- you'll probably learn something!

Have QB / FB news to share? Send your news briefs to pberg1@gmail.com!


Gallery:
Lynn's Legacy

Written by Pete


A simple job for a simple mercenary... The task was easy, and the pay was better than any job she'd taken on in the past. Ten thousand gold, paid upon completion. And now, she was almost there-- the mainland was in sight.

An escort mission. Lynn Heltra could not even recall the last time she'd taken on one of these, but the pay was just too good. Although she sometimes wondered what exactly was contained in the small crate strapped to one of the Wyvern Rays in the tiny airborne caravan... then...

Chaos. Random sounds and noises mingled with otherworldly voices and strange messages-- Fire burning all around her as she falls from her Wyvern Ray, now consumed in flame from the explosion.

Whatever was in that crate must've gone off too soon...

So begins Lynn's Legacy, a stylish and quite ambitious FB action RPG in the works by Josiah Tobin and Cha0s. Started in QuickBasic, and in development for at least two years (check out the preview in QB On Acid #11 from January 2004), this game has come very far since its humble beginnings back in 2003. And believe me, it's going places.

I recently had the opportunity to try out the latest engine demo of Lynn's Legacy, and I was very impressed. Josiah's distinctive cartoonish graphics and witty writing style set this game apart from the conventional medieval-themed RPGs you see in the Qmunity, and Cha0s's smooth, polished engine makes gameplay intuitive and fun. Although the game is still in the early stages and much of the gameplay and story is still undeveloped, Lynn's Legacy has a lot of novel ideas and exciting innovations in store for the finished version. Read on, and I'm sure you'll become just as excited as I am for Lynn's Legacy!


Description/Features:

Josiah gave me some very interesting tidbits about this Zelda-esque action RPG's gameplay, which I shall now pass on to you:

"In Lynn's Legacy, you play the role of Lynn Heltra, a mercenary who was mysteriously blown out of the sky on an escort mission. Struggling to regain seemingly random fragments of her memory that have apparently gone missing since the accident, she is driven also by a strange, blind spectre who calls himself Moth."

"The game is spread across four main areas and eight full-length dungeons, their designs increasing in complexity as the game progresses. There are several different weapons, from a hastily-acquired green sapling to a massive and deadly gear-shaped ball 'n chain. Throughout the course of the game you also acquire useable items, just some of which are the Flare Powder (melts ice and destroys weak rocks), Bridge Box (lets you cross gaps and chasms), and Alchemic Regenerator."

"One unique feature of the game is the 'adrenaline meter', which rises each time you strike a foe but drops almost as fast. Getting it to the top in time is a challenge, but if pulled off, does double damage to the enemy."

In the demo that I tried, I got to explore two preliminary areas that Josiah has designed. The first was a forest / town area, which looks like it will be the first area of the game. Early on, I found the first weapon: a green sapling, which I used to dispense the many small green enemies inhabited the area. At one point there were seven or eight on the screen at one time and the engine ran without a hitch. As of right now, the enemies do not attack an just kind of mull about, minding their own business, waiting to be whipped to death. Hopefully they'll become a bit more threatening by the final release.


The forest area also has entrances blocked off by piles of red and blue blocks, which apparently must be destroyed by a fire / water counter-item. Lynn's Legacy seems like it will have a Zelda-like overworld where blocked entrances to new areas will tease you for much of the game, but you won't be able to access them until much later when you find the appropriate items to brake down the barriers. Judging just by the preliminary level design, I could tell that a lot of thought was put into creating interesting places to tuck away items and secret entrances that would maximize your ability to explore the environment.

The second area in the demo was a GIGANTIC desert, with lots of very cool temple-like buildings and maze-like rock ledges. The sheer size of this map really showed off the power of Cha0s's engine. The desert area was particularly interesting in that although it consists of just one "flat" tile map, there were three distinct 'levels' that you could explore. You could go on top of buildings, on the main ground level, and down to the lower-ground area, and the whole time it was perfectly obvious where you were standing, and where in relation to you all the other 'levels' of the ground were. This is quite a testament to Josiah's skill as a pixel artist, since a lot of tile sets simply don't convey heights in a believable manner.


Overall, Lynn's Legacy was one of the most impressive walk-around RPG demos I've had the privilege of playing. Now let's hope that it will be developed past an impressive engine demo...


Progress/Development

...Luckily, it sounds like Josiah and Cha0s are making great headway. Here's the word from Josiah:

Currently progress is fairly steady. The graphics, music, and manuscript/dialogue are all 100% complete, and maps are now the main focus. The 'new' engine is up and running for the most part, though of course there are many additions to be made.

The release date cannot be estimated... such a deadline would only make the final product seem rushed. (while we were trying to beat The Griffon Legend for a release date awhile ago, that obviously turned out to be impossible. However, we now have some nice competition, heh)

Although the release date is still up in the air, we're all hoping that it comes sooner than later. Judging by what I've seen so far, there's no doubt that Lynn's Legacy is gonna rock the FB scene when it arrives!

Have an upcoming game you'd like featured in The Gallery? Email me!


Why Do People Make GUI's?

Written by Jacob Palm

This is not really an article, it's just some of the active GUI programmers who shares their reasons to do GUI programming.

Brandon Cornell (Fun500 and Pheonix)

I make Fun500 for 2 reasons:

  1. The Main Reason: Enjoyment
  2. The Second Reason: I hope it becomes a PC cometitor someday LOL !!

Pheonix I make for the same reasons. Even though the progect is very slow!!


MystikShadows (ErgonOS)

The main reason why I'm making a GUI is because I for one am tired of the the way Windows, Linux KDE, you name them tend to make you work. I take it this way, if I am sitting at my computer, what do I want to do? do I want to open a word processor to write an article or do I want to write an article using a word processor. That's the main difference between ErgonOS and the likes of windows. There's many different ways to endup with a document in a word processor, and ErgonOS is my way to accomplish a task such as that one.

When windows first started, I wasn't too keen about it (yes I've dealt with windows 1.0 all the way to windows XP I use Windows because the industry still wants it and to be competitive in my career choice you have to code for the OS or GUI that's hot in demand :-) especially if you plan to sell your product in any way. But if I had no commercial reason to use windows, it wouldn't be on my hard drive. Linux is an alternative to this but when you look at X Windows, Gnome, KDE, Motif and lesstif (the free alternative to Motif) and the others, they all are based on the way windows work. So for me, I'm sticking to windows because it's still more popular than Linux and more software are made for it. I do plan to make a dual boot soon though ;-) with Linux just in case.

But as far as GUI is concerned, everything is application and icon based. And when you think about that concept, it's the best way to waste resources. Because all applications have to supply all parts of their applications. In my case, each type of document will load just the resources it needs in order to perform their tasks and nothing else. And since each document will work on a stack based resource handling, ridding the system of an application's resources will be as easy as ending a sub and killing it's local variables.

To me, this is a better way to work with your files. The GUI will supply the Global resources, like Hardware access, clipboard, printer drivers (yes I plan on making my own ;-). and the application will only need to supply what they need from those resources to do their job.

There, that's my vision and reason for making my own GUI :-)


ysft12

When I develop a GUI, I learn alot of new things. There are different programs and routines you have to make. Its also fun because you get to work with graphics and stuff.

I have created some GUIs in the past. GUI programming got me so interested, that it will probably hard to stop GUI programming.

To be really interested in GUI programming, all you have to do is start creating your own GUIs!


Steve (Linster OS)

If Windows made it with 1.01 and that was extremly simple, then i thought i could make something simlar to it but better. And that I always wanted to sell a desktop enviroment with my own branding just like Microgoof did.


Todd Suess (Millennium OS)

The reason why I work on M-OS is because I think it is a unique GUI from most. I noticed M-OS when I was in 6th Grade. I noticed QBF OS, also written by the previous author of M-OS. However, QBF OS had no code with it, and M-OS was open source. M-OS was similar in design to QBF OS but had a completely different interface. I liked M-OS since it looked a lot like Windows, and I was fascinated with its speed and compliance. A couple glitches appeared, but overall, it was unique and user friendly. In 7th Grade, I used it in a science fair to demonstrate how programming works. Some people saw it and thought it was Linux, but I told them that it was a friendly DOS GUI called Millennium OS. In 8th Grade, I noticed many GUI reviews websites were going offline, and that QBasic GUIs were starting to disappear from the web. I thought, "Why don't I work on my own GUI to contribute to the QBasic community?" I started work on M-OS in the beginning of March 2004 and finally launched a website on July 2004. I work on M-OS since it is a unique GUI, and the author is very fascinated by my work on his experimental GUI for QBasic. I know M-OS will never meet the competition of GUIs today or OSes, but I enjoy working on it since I learn new ideas and tricks when coding it. My goal is to make M-OS as user friendly and as advanced as QBasic's limits.


Jacob Palm (Costa)

Of course I'll also tell you my own reasons for making my GUI.

The reason I make my GUI is mostly for the fun of it, but there's more to it than that. I have an old laptop with MS-DOS 6, and I thought it could be an interresting idea to make a GUI myself. I started 4 years ago, and I'm not done yet (I doubt I'll ever be, there's always things to optimize, features to add and such). I also learn a lot about computers when I make my GUI.

I also make my own GUI because I'm tired of Windows, I've been running Windows since 1994 so a little change wouldn't hurt.

After I saw Linux some years ago I thought that maybe I could make a GUI, too. I searched for GUI's on the internet and trembled over http://mcchome.hypermart.net/ which, at the time, was the biggest GUI review site around. I looked at a lot of the GUI's, and decided to use QBasic for my GUI. So I started out right away. Suddenly HyperMart closed http://mcchome.hypermart.net/, and all the reviews disappeared. That's when I decided to make my own GUI review site, though it took me some years to get a site up and running.

Well, to sum it up: I make my GUI because I think it's fun, and because I need a GUI for some MS-DOS computer I have and don't want to run Windows or Linux.

Visit Jacob Palm's GUI Site: JacobPalm.dk


Rant: Reality In Games

Written by Deleter

Before I go any further, I wish for to know that this rant was inspired by the article by SJ Zero entitled "The Hidden World of Game Development". In this article, he explained that complication in games is unnecessary. Instead of making it the most complicated you can, he says to make it the simplest you can. Basically, it's not what's under the hood what counts, but how much fun it is in the end.

A lot of the complication in games comes from trying to make it more realistic For example physics engines and real time dynamic lighting calculations are extremely CPU intensive and difficult code wise. Sure you could compute the wishes of every NPC in your game real time and carry them out to be more realistic. You can have one hit kills all the time, since that is reality. Obviously, complete reality isn’t what people want in their games. After all, if you want reality, you can simply turn off the box, put on your coat and walk outside. Granted, you couldn’t be a criminal mastermind if you did, nor the commander of the Roman legionaries, nor the emperor of space. But if you want these things, chances are you aren’t looking for reality anyway.

If you do want 100% reality in doing something, you won’t find it in a game. Rather, you want a simulation. While simulations can be games, nothing in their definition mandates that they must be a game, nor does anything in a game’s definition demand that it has to be a simulation. Therefore, don’t confuse the two when you are programming. You don’t need 100% accurate physics, you don’t need intelligent NPC’s living realistic lives, and you definitely don’t need the headache of figuring it out when its only going to lead to the heartache of people not playing it since its not fun.

So, now it seems we ought to skip reality completely and replace her with her sister fantasy. Well, not quite. After all, a world where the player can’t die since he was never alive, where people float or exist only as abstract ideas, or the player finds himself in a non-existent void of extreme duplicity will only serve to give your player a headache. In light of this, we should evaluate the presence of reality in a game. What purpose does it serve, if too much is a bad thing, but not enough is equally bad?

The answer to this is that reality is, partially, the players hold on your game. Reality defines the player’s ability to grasp, understand, and interact with your world. The keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and joystick are all the physical components the player needs; reality is the game concept of these devices. Reality goes far beyond physics, lighting and the like. The idea of your player as a physical essence amongst other physical essences in a larger essence of being (as much as it makes your head hurt) is part of reality in its base form. The idea of actions and reactions is a component of reality.

Now before I get so abstract that I lose complete focus, how does this apply to games? Reality needs to be balanced with the rest of your game. While not enough reality in your game can lead to your player not being able to grasp the concepts behind your game, too much ruins the content of your game.

What does this mean? It means that you have to put enough reality in your game so that the player understands and feels your world. Use enough reality so that he can interact with the game and understand its reactions, without putting so much that the player gets preoccupied with the reality instead of playing the game.

If you have so inconvenienced yourself as have read my article on simulating ecosystems, please forget what was in that when working on your game. The idea behind it, while decent as far as simulating goes, would prove horrible for most games. For example, in a shooter, you don’t care that your enemy was taking object A to point B because of boss C who he is working for because of wife D who needs to support children E. The only thing your player sees is an enemy with an object, therefore all your game needs to have in place is—you guessed it—an enemy with an object. If you are trying to make a totally random and in-depth RPG, it might be advantageous to have some complicated AI system like that at work, but its entirely unnecessary and in most (99.9% of the time) circumstances, will detract from your game. Not only will the heavy equations and such in your game eat the FPS like crazy, but your player is likely to find himself in a complicated mire of logic that will only cause him to hit the X and never click on your exe again (nor the shortcut you placed conveniently on his desktop).

To sum it up, you need balance. That enemy I just killed didn’t need to have a life purpose, daily purpose, current task, list of friends, wife, children, home, and the like. But my gun did need to fire bullets, he did need to die, we both needed to exist, and he needed at least crude tactics so the player felt like he was in a real world. If your game play supports it, a complicated physics engine may indeed add to your game, but be mindful of how complicated it needs to be to serve whatever purpose you are putting it in there for. For the less obvious elements of reality that you are installing in your game, know why you are putting them in there, and that way you can implement them enough, without overdoing them. You don’t need to explain why there is a world, a player, and a goal, but at least a one-word answer as to why you need everything else might save you the trouble of implementing too much reality into your game (or not enough).

That pretty much sums it all up, thanks for reading. Hopefully next time I’ll find something a bit more original to rant about, instead of leaching off my peers. Hats off to SJ for his excellent article named above, without it, I probably would never have written this. I would also have used a very complicated, sophisticated, pretty realistic, and completely and utterly unnecessary AI module for my upcoming game, Sub Human Evolution, which at its latest version before I abandoned it had taken over 800 lines of code.

In this rant (if you are reading it off my homepage) I changed the colors to try and make it more readable (as opposed to bright green on black). Tell me what you think of this change, and tell me a better combiniation if this one still isn’t good enough. As always, send these comments and any others on my article to barbarian_roleplayer@yahoo.com Thanks again for reading!

Visit Deleter's site: Barbarian Roleplayer QB / FB Rants


My Life as a Programmer

Written by The Awakened

I have always been fascinated with computers. There is a certain magic, to me, of how an incomprehensible series of two different voltages passing across semiconducting material and through a vast sum of IC's and other tiny parts, can create such an expansive "world", where you're only limited by your creativity and willingness to learn. There's a feeling just from having the MSDOS screen stare back at you with a simple "C:\ >_", maybe it comes from watching movies like The Matrix, but it's just always been there. So naturally, it was easy for me to get into programming at a younger age.

My first foray into the wacky world of programming , was with HTML. After I had seen the Microsoft Frontpage and Homestead Sitebuilder (making sites about Dragonball Z and Pokemon, heh), I wanted to know how I could make web pages "by hand." Even though I wasn't very good at it and I couldn't remember half the tags, it definatly planted the seed for my later days as a programmer.

In the summer before I went into grade 7 (year 2000), I was at a family reunion, chatting with some relatives. Eventually, the subject of computers came up, and before long, one of them mentioned that they knew how to program. I was blown away. I asked what programming languages he used. He mentioned a few, but the one that stuck in my mind was QBasic. A few days after I got home from the reunion, I was sitting at my computer, and remembered "QBasic". I stuck that in the search engine, and the first site that came up was good old QBasic.com. After finding QBasic off my Windows CD, reading the first tutorial, doing some typing followed by a push of the wonderful F5 key, I had a black screen staring back at me, that read "Hello, World!... Press any key to continue." I was floored. I kept reading the confusing tutorials (sorry, but I just don't think Mallard's tutorials are all that great for a beginner, heh), and managed to get some basic skills, including moving a sprite across the screen (I couldn't figure out why two sprites wouldn't animate at the same time, heheh).

I went to the old QBasic.com pretty much every day after that, making guessing games with QB, going into the (mostly empty) chatroom, and downloading other people's programs, wondering "how in the world did they do that?!?" The funny thing is, I never thought to go searching for other QBasic sites, until one day, the thought hit me "there's gotta be hundreds of them!"

The first site I came across after the dead Qbasic.com site was, interestingly, Pete's QBasic Site. I enjoyed the tutorials, as well as the challenges! I still have an unfinished bank program in my old programming folder. And I recently used a couple of the challenges when I decided to get back into progging.

Thinking I knew what I was doing, I began programming a simulation game based on a group of people marooned on an island. The game didn't get very far, as I was using DATA statements for graphics in Screen 7, didn't know how to manipulate the palette, and generally didn't know what I was doing. I was using 9x9 graphics, heheh. And if you've ever seen Tsugumo's pixel tutorial, where he says "yes here I have a grass tile, change the color, there's water, change the colors, WHOO! WE GOT DIRT!" well, that is exactly what I did.

And what do you do when your giant simulation game doesn't work? You start an even bigger game. In this case, it was my epic RPG... Quest for the Sacred Realm... the typical "legend has it that, if you travel to The Sacred Realm, you can restore peace to the world... but let's not think about that, we have three random people in a sleepy town who are going on a completely different journey, but will end up entwined with The War of Time anyway" cheesy plot. There were a few good ideas, plotwise, and really, I could probably still salvage it if I ever decided to use the plot ideas, but for now, I'm just gonna stay away from it. Codewise, it was definatly the beginning of my structured code, even though it could have been a lot more efficient... the source file itself is bigger than my current game's engine, which does wayyyy more. Graphics wise, I finally got into standard VGA 13h mode, but I still didn't have a very good idea of good graphics. If only Tsu's tutorial had been up back then, heh.

As well, around this time, (probably about January 2001) I found Darkness Ethereal. I was pretty amazed at Mysterious Song, and The Secret of Cooey games. I also got into metal from DarkDread's recommendations of My Dying Bride and eventually In Flames. Some of the songs definatly take me back to those days. The DarkBoard marked the first forum I ever joined, and it was great to be able to communicate with other coders and ask questions and whatnot.

Eventually, I ditched "Quest for the Sacred Realm" and decided to stop coding for a while. I found another coder, named ironyFist, who wanted to do a project, and he needed an artist/musician/support programmer for a game, so I replied on the DarkBoard and we decided to do a game called "Darkness Ethereal: The RPG". Seriously. We were like 12 and 13 at the time, but we would finish it! (bzzz). I had Tsu's pixel tutorial at this point, the the graphics still kinda sucked, heh.

The funny thing was, even after we called it quits, I never saw a line of code from the guy. Oh well.

So by about October 2001, I was starting from scratch. I hung out on the DarkBoard some more, chatted on the DE chatroom, and I think this was around the time when the older RPGDX was up. That was cool. I remember Nek having a sweet tutorial on good plot design on that website, but I've never been able to find it since.

In the winter of 01/02, DarkDread was talking about doing an RPG competition. I was very interested in this, and I signed up immedietly. I decided to do a game (working title was Journey Home) where the main character was mysteriously transported away from his homeland up to a snowy world, and had to find his way back home. It didn't really go anywhere (I couldn't code a friggin map editor, heh), and I was stumped for a few months. Then I had an idea of a game where a group of soldiers were captured and thrown into the hellish prison known as "Subterra". The competition lasted like 8 months, so nobody really cared to finish anything and that was the end of the compo. However, the engine was okay, and I continued work on it for a bit, but naturally, the apathy kicked in and that was the end of working on it.

I continued hanging out on the RPGDX boards, but really, I didn't do a helluva lot. I had some plans for some smaller games, but I left the scene in late winter of 2003.

A few years passed by. Every so often, I'd peek into my old QB folder or go to the RPGDX boards and sigh.

But during spring of 2005, a chain of events sort of weaved together that ultimately brought me back to the scene. I was bored one night, so I grabbed a random book off the shelf; it was a book on C. I read through some of it. Some other nights, I would read through my old plans I had for Quest for the Sacred Realm, Journey Home, and Subterra. One time, I was jamming with my band, and the drummer said "hey, play that one riff, the Subterranean something" and I was like "oh yeah... the boss battle theme". One night, as I was mowing the lawn, I was thinking about coding and everything, and thought "ya know, I should do some MOD music, and rejoin the community. No code, no art, just music for now."

And then school was out and perhaps my mind needed something to keep it occupied. I downloaded the Python scripter (no idea why I did that), ditched it, and on July 3, 2005, I searched through my good old Subterra engine and commented all the code, trying to make sense of it all. I couldn't believe when I was done. I'd figured the code out. Which is what was stopping me in the first place from finishing it. You know how it goes. You leave some code for a while, come back to it, and you havn't written down how it works.

I wrote down everything I wanted to change and add to the engine, came up with a better plot, and read an immense amount of tutorials. 6 hours straight, reading nothing but x86 assembly up till 3:00 in the morning can get to you. But I soaked it up. I'm much smarter than when I first coded the engine. And now I'm determined to finish it. It seemed like a daunting task, but I've already changed my map editor and engine to support 2 layers... and I can't believe what a clean edit it was. An hour and a half tops, and that's at lazy speed.

Lately, I've been reading a lot about assembly, C++, and Java... but I have no plans of leaving the Qmunnity. Not so soon after rejoining!

So thanks if you've read this entire thing. I enjoyed reminising about the past, and I got to dig through a lot of my old folders.

Peace!

-The Awakened

You can contact The Awakened through this link.


Qbinux Update

Written by Seb McClouth

Welcome back, glad your interested in another Linux-clone fake OS. If you haven’t read my first article on Qbinux, I’d strongly advice to do this so you have a little idea what it is. You can find it here: http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/express/Issue11/index.html#projects

First, let me fill ya in a bit on some secrets

Some people might have read it on the forum. The computer I use to program Qbinux is with, is a museum piece. It’s an old IBM Thinkpad 755c (laptop), with an Intel 486 DX4 (a.k.a. Overdrive) processor, 20 mb ram and a 800 MB harddrive. The harddrive let me surprised because it was supposed to only have 340 MB. Anyways, when I got it, it was running windows 95.

I upgraded it to Windows 98.

When I introduced Internet to my own place, I bought a crosslink cable, and tried to hook it up to the internet. Which failed, made me update to win98SE. And after messing with my network I finally got the connection between my laptop and windows working. And I so I had internet on my laptop.

After about a year I decided to remove windows, since I never used the internet on it any more. And then Dos came around the corner, and QB4.5 following it’s trial.

This setup gave me the opportunity to continue develop Qbinux.

Why this platform? It’s that I don’t have a 386 with 16 MB, because that would be the best thing. Linux was developed as an 386-platform OS. That’s why I figured that my old laptop would serve as the best develop-station. And also because I can place it on my lap, while I watch TV.

One other thing. My first UI (UserInteface) was a copy of Windows 3.1. No big deal. Yeah, I know. I completely coded it ASCII. It didn’t work with a mouse and was one of my first programs.


Why a second article on this topic?

Several reasons:

  1. people wanted me to write another article
  2. it is always good to stay tuned
  3. I felt like it
  4. That about sums it up

Where are we now?

We currently have Qbinux core version 0.0.5. It will be released right after publication of this article. You can request a demo of it at Balai_Goyan@yahoo.com.

I’m working on the Novix implentation. Actually it’s in implenting Linux in Novix. For that reason I kept the core name of Novix. Within a few months I will have Novix and Qbinux working side by side. Currently it will only be some nam/text changes in Novix.

Besides that, I’m developing a setup program which allows users to install qbinux on their pc. The setup program is based upon the Red Hat install program, because it is in ASCII-coding and an easy to use GUI.

The demo will contain the setup, and demo version of Qbash.


What does the qbinux-core at present time?


What has happened between this and my first article?

The core has been rewritten several times, and was updated with new function. A few days ago I finally got the lay-out how I wanted it.

Several people have contributed really helpful source and information.

A few people I’d like to thank through here:


Newest addition to Qbinux


End (for now)

I know, I know, it’s a long article and Qbinux still needs work. There’s a lot of remarks in Qbinux which state ‘For future release, and I try to work on them.

Till next time.

If you have any suggestions or comments, mail me at Balai_Goyan@yahoo.com

Grtz
Seb
Read more about Qbinux in this forum thread.


Pointless Points:
STOP THE MADNESS!!!

Written by Nathan1993

Thats right, I am back and kicking with some more pointless points, only that have a fight with myself at the end for stealing a title that I didn't realize until I sent this email, so if you could include this little text that I'm typing here to your description at the beginning of the article, that would kick ass, but show the whole thing... or something will happen to you ;-)

-Nathan1993


Well, that got your attention, ehh? So, you want the madness to stop too, then read this. I just want to cover some things that are ohh too common in the Qmunity, and need to stop. Of these include websites, programs, and just stupidity… and hate me for this or love me for it, I do not care. Just remember: I can block any of your email addresses, and I know how to hack.

Anyway, my first point is that trying to make some new websites is kinda pointless now. Its good that you wanna help, but can’t you do it in some other way? Instead of creating that website with 1 or 2 tricks that noone knows, instead submit it to some big sites (www.qbasicnews.com, www.petesqbsite.com, www.freebasic.com just to name a few) instead of making people search for it. Face it, its gonna die!

Its all fine and dandy, but instead of making that site make that kick-ass tutorial on how to hack QB games and how to do some other crap like that. Even if you are never going to use it, it is nice to be able to say “I know how to program on the XBOX!!!!1111shift-oneoneone!1!!1 1m l1k3 s0000 1337!!!” Im kidding, but still, its cool to say “Screw you, hippies!” in an x-box lan party then start playing some game people have never heard of and you know the god-mode cheat.

Another point is that you need to stop making programs only to abandon them in 1 week. Instead of saying “someone help me on this program” say “Hey, I am making an RPG engine that is going pretty well, but I stink at graphics! Can someone please help?” Odds are, if you show them a good plan, good engine, enthusiasm and some determination, they will help.

Stop asking us for every little problem you have! Like Seb McClouth, you can tell he has a lot of problems programming, but he also tries hard, is completely baffled, or searches beforehand to try to find out his problems. Other people just post a program and are basically like “Fix this!” without telling us the problem, and being a bitch about it. It needs to stop.

Another thing is to stop with the misleading titles, Nathan1993! You say “Pointless Points” when really your points do have a point! To some, this is quality stuff, while to others, this just makes them hate you! That’s not pointless, it rules! I’d rather see a title “Some good points” than a completely meaningless clever title, even if it is the second time you used this title! And just because your ex-girlfriend likes that title doesn’t change anything you dirty bastard!

Contact Nathan1993 through this link.


My QuickBasic Debuts

Written by Stéphane Richard (Mystikshadows)

WHEN IT ALL BEGAN:

In 1975, I went to the library, I was 7 at the time and I wanted to go get some comic books to read. The main book ile was blocked by other kids probably wanting to go get some comics too so I contoured that ile to get to where the comic books were. To do so, I went throught the computer books section. A TV with alot of buttons is what I thought to myself back then. But it cought my attention. When you're 7, you're basically just starting to hearn mathematics at it's very basic level, but still something cought my eye about those machines. I read the term computer picked up a best seller programming book about the TRS-80 Model I computer and I got hooked on programming right there and then.

That's when I learned my first programming language, a primitive basic dialect that really didn't offer much. Nonetheless it offered enough to get my hooked for 30 years now. I ended up reading every single computer book there was at the time on any computer and any programming language they had at the library. by the time I was 10, I was getting pretty good at BASIC, Pascal USCD, Logo (turtle graphics), and some primitive databases that existed at the time. When I learned Pascal, I started wondering why BASIC needed line numbers to execute itself properly. But I didn't pay too much attention to it and just continued reading computer books. I moved every now and then and had the chance to always have libraries with books I didn't read yet so I wasn't complaining about all the moving I did. SO I read, and learned everything I could everywhere I went. I also learned about a language called MIRA which was quite unique in it's time. It created the first 3D Computer animation I ever saw that was called "Dream Flight" and definitally got me even more hooked on learning to program so I could make one of those myself.

WHERE DOES QBASIC/QUICKBASIC FIT IN:

10 years (count them, 10 years) had passed since my first computer book, I was programming many things back then, I did a stock market simulator (at the age of 16) and always used that to add features and functionalities. Back in 1985, the long awaited release of MS-DOS 5.0 was forthcoming and I couldn't wait to finally get a new OS to play with. Every computer magazine were talking about the arrival of a BASIC language that finally didn't need line numbers (I remember that today, but back then, I didn't really care about the feature, until I had a chance to experience it first hand. First thing I did was take my stock market program I did in GW-BASIC and load it into QBasic. Then I hit F6 and was glad to see it start. Backwards compatibility, what a joy indeed. Then I when through the painstaking experience to go line by line and remove the line numbers and tried to run it again. Needless to say, all my gotos and gosubs went right out the window. So I sat down and looked at the online help file. and learned about Subs and functions. So I took my Gosubs put everything into a Sub, went back and did it again for all the gosubs I had (even back then I wasn't too keep on using GOTO, GOSUB was the messiest I wanted to get in my recipe for spaghetti a la BASIC. That was a good thing when I changed my program to using subs instead of GOSUBs. When I was done, I hit that now classic F5 button to execute it and to my surprised it worked.

My first non financial Game I played was called outpost, you had a grid, and you had enemies coming at your from every angle and you had to choose the right kind of weapon for the right kind of enemy. I liked that game quite a lot and so I decided to create one of my own so that I could add a few ideas of my own. It took a while, but I learned all of my QBasic programming from making that game alone. I enjoyed every single minute of it and right then and there decided that QBasic was going to be my language of choice for my personal projects. So I started getting ideas for new projects (games and others). By the way, I'm sure you've noticed by now that I always liked to play with numbers. It's a bit because when I started learning programming, the books I read didn't really talk about games, the talked about business development. And I liked what programming could do for numbers.

AND THEN THERE WAS THE COMPILER:

When I started in QBasic, I loved the language right away. But of course, I also knew C++ and Pascal and liked the fact that those languages could create EXEs so I didn't have to give the sources away everytime I wanted someone to play a game I made. Shortly after I learned QBasic, I found out about the existence of a QBasic compiler. Imagine my joy when I new there was a way to create EXE out of my QBasic programs. $299.95 was the price to get my bas files into exe forms. Ouch no? A big price to pay. But I really wanted it. So I saved up (for half a year) and finally managed to get QuickBasic 4.5. Once I got used to the little discrepencies of QBasic to QuickBasic (even back then I didn't get why they didn't keep the language exactly the same, it didn't make sense to me that you had to change the language in order to make it compilable). But after about a month, I was used to those differences and started producing exe left and right at will.

I started making tools and utilities that I started to distribute to local small companies. I did a cash register program (when I was 19) that the convenience store liked and decided to use permanently. In not so many words, this was my first taste of contractual QuickBasic development and I liked it. This guy at the convenience store was a friend of the family so I didn't charge him anything for it. Who knows, maybe he's still using it today. While we lived there, everytime he needed something added, he'd call me and I'd start getting busy throwing in what he wanted added. It was fun to do this kind of thing and so I wasn't planning on stopping this for nothing.

THE PDS AND VB-DOS IT WAS ABOUT TIME:

As I continued to add things to this cash register, no need to say that the program got bigger and bigger and reached a point where I couldn't add anything without getting the dreaded "Insufficient memory" error. I broke the cash register into programs that I wanted to chain together. but when I executed that the first time, it was so slow that I almost thought about rewriting it in Pascal or something. The PDS came out however and they bragged about it being able to make bigger programs with the use of overlays. For the sake of the cash register program, I decided that I would get the PDS because it was the quickest solution to my current problem. After about 3 weeks of moving modules around and deciding which part of the program should go in overlays. I finally made all the changes that the convenience store wanted and went there to install everything and make sure it worked as expected.

The PDS was a great tool to use. You really could make bigger applications or games with it and you could see, back then, bigger applications emerging all over the place. To me, that meant that horizons would broaden dramatically and very different types of games and application could see the light of day because of this. I wanted to make a TUI back then, one that would resemble somewhat Borland's Turbovision library that existed at the time. However, the PDS had beaten me to it, it already had a set of libraries to create windows and menues and dialogs so I wanted to learn how do use that in my programs. Well time went by and I always kept putting that off. Not too long after that, I was hearing sayings and rumors about VB-DOS. I got a copy of it from a friend and got a glimpse of how to create forms with it. I found it so easy that I said to myself, instead of learning how to do things in the PDS, I would just use VB-DOS instead and buy my legal copy if I should decide to sell anything I make out of it. So I was programming sophisticated applications with VB-DOS's TUI designers and forms and always had fun doing that ever since. Still today, I find myself opening VB-DOS and just having fun with using it.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT:

This is my own personal QBasic story. Alot of things happened in my quest to a programming career as you can see. Much more than that happened with the other languages I used at the time and still use today. Programming has always been a big part of my life. I just love sitting down and creating something I hope others can use. I especially love doing research and development (as in trying to make something that just hasn't been thought of before. Those of you that might think that everything has been invented in the computer software industry better byte your tongue more than once. Because still today, we are the level of making the computer do what we humans don't want to do. We really haven't yet begun to really truely create with computers.

I decided to write this piece of my personal history because I wanted to give you a glimpse of my programming life. But most of all, I wanted to justify, in some weird way, why I write so many tutorials about subjects that are so serious, and so not game like. My own history has thrown me into business development from very early in my programming life and well, what can I say, I've loved it probably as much as most of the Qmunity loves making Games, or GUI developers love making GUIs. But now, I decided that at home, I would push my learnings to beyond the commercial software industry and dive right into game, 3D and other related programming topics. so who knows, maybe one of my game experiments might make it in a review on one of the upcoming QB Express issues. Only the future will tell.

MystikShadows
Stéphane Richard
srichard@adaworld.com


QB Magazines

Written by Brad Milison

If someone ever asks me what I think about QB magazines, I usually give the same answer. “Well, I sure don’t know much about every other position, but the quarterback certainly does do a lot for his team. He should get some separate recognition.”

Quarterbacks are mainly responsible for one thing in football: passing the actual ball to players on the field. I’m pretty sure quarterbacks are usually white. I don’t know why this is, but I’ve heard many jokes about this fact. Perhaps white people don’t have that extra primal edge like other people do.

I think the ideal QB magazine should feature a different quarterback from each level of football every month. For example, you can have quarterbacks from pro teams, college teams, and if more depth is wanted, even quarterbacks from high school teams showing a lot of potential. This would be a good scouting-type idea for all. The more recognition a young up-and-comer could get, the better. Perhaps the magazine could show quarterbacks living their everyday lifestyle, kind of like other magazines featuring celebrities at home. This would show that not all quarterbacks are as tough as they may appear to be on the field. How much more personal can it get when a fan sees their favorite quarterback at home reading the paper? I mean, it could certainly get the message across to kids that these guys are real, not just meatheads full of steroids and other fun drugs (not saying drugs are fun, simply that to each his own). However, there should be a line not to cross when showing quarterbacks at home. Gardening or cleaning windows could instigate name calling on the field. It’s easy to picture a quarterback getting ready to start the play and getting distracted. “Blue 42,” he would say and perhaps an opponent might say, “Hey, why don’t you focus on the game and not the latest types of tulips you’ve planted?” Boy would that be a bad idea. Especially if the opponent assumed the flowers in the magazine were tulips when really they were dahlias.

Overall, I say quarterbacks should take their recognition in honor. Let’s just hope the QB magazines aren’t too popular, because pretty soon people will be saying, “Well, where are the linebacker magazines? Or what about the blocker magazines?” Soon enough players will be on strike until they’re also featured in a monthly magazine. But for now, press on with the quarterback magazines because some kids need real heroes and where else to look but America’s favorite past time (well, I guess that’s baseball, but football is probably on the list somewhere).

Sometimes Pete wonders whether having a completely "open" magazine is really the best choice. :-)


eg0 0v3rl0ad...
(a poem about coding)

Written by mennonite

10 it's great that you're having fun, but, you're doing it wrong.

20 your hobby won't measure up to mine.

30 it just so happens that there is one way to do this.

40 i know, i've done it every other way, and they all suck.

50 i've been doing this for forty years,

60 i know half the languages, and the others don't matter.

70 trust me, you don't want to write that the way you're doing it,

90 it'll blow up your machine, it'll destroy the ozone layer, it'll create a black hole.

100 this is why people don't respect BASIC.

110 don't walk, run, don't debug, repair, rewrite, don't have fun that way.

120 your hobby won't measure up to mine.

130 do it this way. do it the only way.

140 do it my way.

150 SYSTEM: END
Visit mennonite's QB site (Chooo!!!!)


Monthly Awards

Written by Pete

Every month, QB Express hands out two awards to recognize QB or FB coders and websites that have done exceptional work in the last month. They are not awarded for work done in the past, only for work that has been released since the last issue of the magazine. We will bring you these awards on a monthly basis to help give credit where credit is due.

Site of the Month

AAP Official Projects Squad
http://dhost.hopto.org/aapproj/

Webmaster: Adigun Azikiwe Polack


Adigun Azikiwe Polack is famous around the Qmunity for his flashy graphics, flashy writing style, flashy text formatting and flashy QB/FB game demos. When you see something created by Adigun, you know it's his. The AAP Official Projects Squad website is no exception. I've never seen another site so intricately decorated in my entire life. Some find the design charming, some would call it "excessive", others would call it "seizure-inducing" -- but one thing's for sure: it is so distinctively an AAP creation, that nobody else on the planet could ever make the same website.

But once you get past the initial awe of Adigun's web design, you'll find a truly great QB/FB site. The AAP Official Projects Squad is not only dedicated to AAP's personal coding exploits, like Frantic Journey, Star Angelic Slugger and his FB 8-bit Palette Machine -- it is also home to the FreeBasic Ultimate Demo Compo, the QB/FB Tutorials Guild and -- most importantly -- the FreeBasic GFX Demo Central. That section alone is worth the visit, and it's why I've opted to award the AAP Projects Squad "Site of the Month" for August.

Adigun's FB GFX Demo Central is a collection of 71 FreeBasic graphics demos, chronicling the entire existence of FB, from V1ctor's very first graphics demo (TinyPTC static test), to demos that came out just a few days ago. Each one of them is accompanied with a detailed description, and most importantly, screenshots. The earlier entries are focused on purely visual graphical displays, but the more recent additions include game engine demos and graphics-related applications.

Although this may not be the biggest collection of FB programs around (FBTK holds that crown), I would say that Adigun's page offers the downloads in the most straightforward and user-friendly manner of any FB site. Screenshots really are essential on downloads pages if you are distributing graphics demos, and since the majority of all FB programs released to date are graphics demos, Adigun's web design is right on the ball. His descriptions are also very well done.

Scrolling through this page is like reading a FreeBasic history book. You can actually spot the moments when new features were added to FB, or pioneering FB coders tried implementing new techniques into their programs. The evolution of V1ctor's compiler is clearly visible... just watch as the type of demos change from simple static and plasma demos to renderings of beautiful 3D landscapes. What this community has accomplished in the nine months since FreeBasic v0.1 was released is incredible -- and Adigun Azikiwe Polack site shows it to us in living color.


Anyhow, for the major updates Adigun has done to the AAP Official Projects Squad in the past month (including a complete redesign, an update to the Frantic Journey page, and adding 19 new FB demos to the FB GFX Demo Central), he is hereby awarded the QB Express "Site of the Month" award!


Programmer of the Month

Rattrapmax6
(a.k.a. Kevin / x.t.r. GRAPHICS)
http://members.aol.com/rattrapmax6/xtrgraphics.html

If I had to pick one person in the Qmunity who has improved his programming skills the most in the past year, I would undoubtedly say Rattrapmax6. Just last year, Rattrapmax6 was a beginning QB programmer, whose most significant project was the simplistic QB game Robo Raider. Jut a few short months later, Rattrap is making programs like ASCII Scrolling Map Maker, a 3D helicopter program and tons of OpenGL graphics demos in FB. He has also easily become one of the most active members of the QB Scene. He is now the #1 poster at the Pete's QB Site forums (with over 830 posts since January, 2005) and he's racked up over 1300 posts at QBasic News to boot.


This past month, Rattrapmax6 has released a few FB graphics demos, coded the mini-game Bounce!, released version 2.5 of his ASCII Scrolling Map Maker, made a FreeBasic screen saver, designed the "Excape From Windows" Wetspot 2 world, created a 3D Helicopter demo, updated his x.t.r. GRAPHICS website, organized four 3D art challenges at the QBasic News forums, written two tutorials for QB Express and on top of it all, submitted another "Horse Humor Comic". It's unbelievable -- I have no idea how Rattrap has this much energy. There is nobody else in the QB Scene who has been nearly as active as Rattrap has lately. He may not be the absolute best programmer around, but he's certainly the most productive. One thing's for sure: Rattrapmax6 always keeps us on our toes, and definitely keeps things lively around here!

For all of this, Rattrapmax6 is QB Express's Programmer of the Month for August 2005!




Comics

By Rattrapmax6

Rattrapmax6 is back this month with another QBasic Horse Humor comic!




QBasic Horse Humor




IF TUT CHAPTER 7
THE UBERALMIGHTY OBJECTS MANAGER - OM

Na_th_an

Yeah, it's true. It's here: the Uberalmighty Objects Manager, the piece of BASIC code which will make 90% of the player's inputs work. The collection of SUBs and FUNCTIONs which will give true life to your IF Engine - and the almost-final chapter in this astonishingly long tutorial series, which was intended to have just three chapters - before I realized that there was much more things to tell you than I thought. Next chapter we'll give the complete (and, of course, revised) code for the engine and if there's space we'll explain how to build a game around it. But on this one we'll focus on the OM - The true heart of our engine. It would be nice to re-read chapter #3 again to have things fresh.

Take a glance at this piece of code: those are the subroutines we are gonna code (yeah, you guessed it right: this is OM.BI):

' Declares :: Objects manager

Declare Sub Obj.Load (fileName As String)

' Common actions:

Declare Sub Obj.Ex (lid As Integer, oid As Integer)
Declare Sub Obj.Get (lid As Integer, oid As Integer)
Declare Sub Obj.Drop (lid As Integer, oid As Integer)
Declare SUb Obj.PutIn (lid As Integer, oid As Integer, oid2 As Integer)
Declare Sub Obj.TakeFrom (lid As Integer, oid As Integer, oid2 As Integer)
Declare Sub Obj.Open (lid As Integer, oid As Integer)
Declare Sub Obj.Close (lid As Integer, oid As Integer)
Declare Sub Obj.TurnOn (lid As Integer, oid As Integer)
Declare Sub Obj.TurnOff (lid As Integer, oid As Integer)

' Very important auxiliary function:

Declare Sub Obj.Visible (lid As Integer, oid As Integer, olid As Integer)

' Needed by the Location Manager:

Declare Sub Obj.ClearFixedObjects ()
Declare Sub Obj.CreateFixedObject (name As String, desc As String)

' Needed by the Exceptions engine:

Declare Function Obj.GetFlag (whichFlag As Integer) As Integer
Declare Sub Obj.SetFlag (whichObj As Integer, newValue As Integer)
Declare Sub Obj.SetLoc (whichObj As Integer, newLocation As Integer)

Whoah! We have tons of lines to code, so we better start over ;)


A word wrapping function

This got mentioned and used in last chapter. In case you don't know how to write a function that takes a text and prints it on screen using word-wrapping, here's a very simple yet effective way to do it. You can stuff this function in some "util.bas" or "misc.bas" module, and export it in its .bi file.

Sub Misc.WordWrap (t As String) Static
	Dim wo As String
	Dim i As Integer
	Dim m As String * 1

    wo = ""
    t = t + " "

    For i = 1 To Len(t)
        m = Mid$(t, i, 1)
        if m = " " Then
            'if pos(0) + Len(wo) > 80 Then Print    ' QB version
            if pos() + Len(wo) > 80 Then Print      ' fB version
            Print wo; " ";
            wo = ""
        ElseIf m = "@" Then							' @ produces a newline char.
            'if pos(0) + Len(wo) > 80 Then Print    ' QB version
            if pos() + Len(wo) > 80 Then Print      ' fB version
            Print wo
            wo = ""
        Else
            wo = wo + m
        End if
    Next i

End Sub

Let's start "light". Let's load our objects from disk

Yeah, before going complex, let's define how our objects will be stored in a file, and let's write the subroutine which will load them into appropiate data structures. But, before, let's define those data structures:

CONST MAXOBJECTS = 100        ' Total number of objects + fixobjects.
CONST FIXOBJECTS = 90         ' Fixobjects will be stored from this pos.
CONST MAXWEIGHT = 32          ' Maximum weight the player can carry.

Type ObjectType
     name as String * 20        ' Object's name.
     adjs as String * 20        ' Adjectives used if any, hence you can tell "yellow key" or "red key"
                                ' and identify them as two different objects in the game.
     desc as String * 255       ' Object's description.
     flag as Integer            ' Object's flags.
     loc as Integer             ' Object's location.
     wh as Integer              ' Object's containing location (where appliable).
     weight as Integer			' Object's weight
     size as Integer			' Object's size
     capacity as Integer		' Object's capacity (where appliable).
End Type

Dim Shared O (MAXOBJECTS) As ObjectType

Let's describe what we have in this new type structure upon which our objects array "O" is built around:

The weight/size/capacity stuff is something that I did not plan to add in the beginning -'cause this will bring some headaches-, but I think they are quite important things to have a proper engine. If we would not take any control over those variables, we'd have a game where you could stuff a piano inside a shoe box. And we don't want something like that, do we?

So let's load the objects :)

Sub Obj.Load (fileName As String)
	Dim f As Integer
	Dim objIdx As Integer
	Dim lineFromFile As String

    ' We just load a plain text file with the objects definitions one per line.
    ' Nothing very fancy.

    f = FreeFile

    Open fileName For Input As #f

    Do While (Not(Eof(f)))

		Line Input #f, objIdx
        Line Input #f, lineFromFile
        O(objIdx).name = ltrim$(rtrim$(lineFromFile))
        Line Input #f, lineFromFile
        O(objIdx).adjs = ltrim$(rtrim$(lineFromFile))
        Line Input #f, lineFromFile
        O(objIdx).desc = ltrim$(rtrim$(lineFromFile))
        Line Input #f, lineFromFile
        O(objIdx).flag = val(ltrim$(rtrim$(lineFromFile)))
        Line Input #f, lineFromFile
        O(objIdx).loc = val(ltrim$(rtrim$(lineFromFile)))
        Line Input #f, lineFromFile
        O(objIdx).wh = val(ltrim$(rtrim$(lineFromFile)))
		Line Input #f, lineFromFile
		O(objIdx).weight = val(ltrim$(rtrim$(lineFromFile)))
		Line Input #f, lineFromFile
		O(objIdx).size = val(ltrim$(rtrim$(lineFromFile)))
		Line Input #f, lineFromFile
		O(objIdx).capacity = val(ltrim$(rtrim$(lineFromFile)))

        Line Input #f, lineFromFile       ' We use a dummy line to separate objects in the file.

    Loop

    Close #f
End Sub

And done. You know, we didn't think on something very complex: text file, a value for line, and a line to separate objects in the file. I do this in this way 'cause I use a nice objects editor which has a nice windowed interface and outputs the data to a file in this format - mainly to calculate the "flags" attribute. You can do yours, or use mine [insert download here]. Note that we first read the objIdx from file. This objIdx must be an integer number between 0 and FIXOBJECTS, and defines in which array element we are gonna store the object we are just reading from the file, so it has to be unique as well. A sample file with just two objects would look like:

0
bag

A small leather bag with the typical leather ribbon to open/close it.
1
10
1000
5
5
10

1
coin
golden
A small golden coin, not very valuable.
0
1000
0
0
1
0

(Notice the trailing blank line - shitty loader limitation :D, now sort it out if you feel like it ;) ). This file defines objects #0 and #1. Our first object, Object #0 is called "bag", doesn't use adjectives in its name, has a description "A small leather bag with the typical leather ribbon to open/close it.", its flag equals "1" (container, closed) is located at location #10, it "contains" in location #1000, weights 5 units, takes 5 units of space but can contain up to 10 units of space.

Our second object, Object #1, is called "golden coin", has a description "A small golden coin, not very valuable.", its flag equals "0" (nothing special), it's located at location #1000 (i.e. it's located inside the bag), contains in location #0 (but won't be used as it isn't a container, so doesn't matter which number we use in this line), it weights 0 units (it would be stupid to try to get a coin and being replied "you can't carry more weight!"), it takes 1 unit of space (it takes 1/10 of the bag, then), and it's capacity is 0 (again, this won't be ever used as this object is not a container).

Maintaining this manually can be a hell, that's why I coded my simple proggie. You can run it whenever you want to make changes/additions to the objects file.


Defining what's visible and reachable

The very first check you have to do when attempting to perform an action over an object, is if that object is "reachable" from the place the player is located at. What does that mean? Very simple: the object is in the same location where the player is, or it is in the player's inventory, or the player is wearing it, or it is inside an open container which is "reachable" from where the player is. Note the recursive nature of this phrase.

So we have to code this recursive function which "looks" for an object. This function will be used in a lot of places (it has already been used in the exceptions interpreter: look for "Obj.Visible"). The function will return the correct "lid" where the object is, or -1 otherwise.

Sub Obj.Visible (lid As Integer, oid As Integer, olid As Integer)
	Dim i As Integer
	Dim j As Integer

    ' This SUB checks if the object #oid is visible from lid
    ' And returns where it is in olid or -1 if not visible.

    If O (oid).loc = lid Then               ' Object found in lid
        olid = lid
        Exit Sub
    ElseIf O (oid).loc = 0 Then             ' Object found in inventory.
        olid = 0
    	Exit Sub
    Else
    	' Look inside everything that's here.

        For j = 0 to MAXOBJECTS
        	If O (j).loc = lid Or O (j).loc = 0 Then
        		If (O (j).flag And 1) = 1 And (O (j).flag And 2) = 2) Then		' Object is container and it's open

					' Recursive call: We look from O (j).wh:

                    Obj.Visible O (j).wh, oid, olid

				If olid <> -1 Then Exit Sub		' Object found.
                End If
            End If
        Next j
    End If

    olid = -1
    
End Sub

You call Obj.Visible passing three parameters: first of all, the lid where we want to look from, second the object we want to look for, and then a variable to hold an exit value which will be the lid where the object has been found or -1 otherwise (i.e. it hasn't been found). If you know about trees (and I mean "tree" in the context of abstract data types, not vegetal trees) you should have recognized the width search scheme in the algo. Basicly we are in a "node" (location) and check all the "son nodes" (objects in that location).

Let's follow the algorithm with a simple example: You are at location #10, and you prompt the game to give you the examination of a match. In location #10 there is a wooden drawer which contains at 1000 and a box which contains at 1001, plus a chair. The drawer is empty, but the box contains a bag which contains at 1002 and a ball. The ball contains a coin and the match. The objects are defined to be: 1 - match, 2 - drawer, 3 - box, 4 - bag, 5 - ball, 6 - coin, 7 - chair.

So we want to look for the match, which is object 1, from lid = 10, so the actuall call is:

Obj.Visible 10, 1, olid

Inside the sub, O(1).loc is 1002 as the match is in the bag, so the program will flow accross the "Else" branch in the If. There will be a recursive call for every object which is located at 10 or 0 (the inventory) and is an open container. In our case, the wooden drawer, the chair and the box are at 10, but only the drawer and the box are containers (and we suppose they are open), so there will be two recursive calls. The first one happens with the drawer, which contains at 1000, so we have to look from lid = 1000:

Obj.Visible 1000, 1, olid

In this recursive call we enter again in the "Else" branch of the If, but as no objects are inside the drawer there's no more to check and the subroutine exits with olid = -1. That means that we'll keep executing the "For" loop thus making the second recursive call, the one for the box, which contains at 1001:

Obj.Visible 1001, 1, olid

Again, as the match is not directly inside the box (we said that the match is at 1002, i.e. inside the bag), we enter in the "Else" branch and look for all the objects which are at 1001, which are the bag and the ball. Only the bag is an open container, so there will be just one recursive call:

Obj.Visible 1002, 1, olid

This time the first If returns true: the match is at 1002. The subroutine is exitted with olid = 2, the For/Next is broken by the "Exit Sub", yet another one, and finally we exit with olid = 1002. Object found!. What we did is some kind of nice backtracking with cut of branches, just for you to learn impressive words. As a side note: always use impressive words. They make your little snippets look more pro. As long as you are applying those words correctly, otherwise you look like a n00b :P

Nice recursive action uh? Yeah, I know that recursive algorithms are slower and take more memory than their iterative counterparts. But now go and transform this into an iterative algo - you better not try. Plus, what for? In a normal game, I doubt you'd have more than 7 or 8 nested recursive callings, so fear not: your program won't crash nor will be slow for using this. Granted, you'll use this function quite a lot, in fact it gets called every now and then, but trust me: your game won't suffer of this recursivity.

Now that we have determined a way to check if an object is within reach, we can begin defining our common actions set of SUBs.

We need a couple more auxiliar functions which have to do with the weight of objects. The first of all calculates the weight of an object, taking in account that it may be a container, in which case the weight of the contained objects have to be added.

Function Obj.calculateObjWeight (oid As Integer)
	Dim i As Integer
	Dim accumulator As Integer
	
	' Guess: Another recursive function! Yahoo!

	' base case:
	If (O (oid).status And 1) <> 1 Then
		Obj.calculateObjWeight = O (oid).weight
		Exit Function
	Else

		' recursive case:
		accumulator = 0

		For i = 0 To FIXOBJECTS
			If O (i).loc = O (oid).wh Then
				accumulator = accumulator + Obj.calculateObjWeight (i)
			End If
		Next i	

		Obj.calculateObjWeight = accumulator
		Exit Function

	End If
End Function

Yup, another recursive one. It's really easy to follow: It receives an object id number. If the object it refers to is not a container, we return its weight and we're done. But if it is a container, we have to add the weight of every object which is inside - and those objects inside may be containers which contain another objects. That's why we do recursive calls instead of just adding the O (i).weight values.

The first function to use that is this one, which will be also used in get and put into. It calculates the total weight of all the objects in the inventory. When you get an object, we have to check if the weight of that object added to the weight of the objects in your inventory does not surpass the maximum weight as defined in MAXWEIGHT.

Function Obj.calculateCarriedWeight ()
	Dim i As Integer
	Dim accumulator As Integer

	accumulator = 0

	For i = 0 To FIXOBJECTS
		If O (i). loc = 0 Then
			accumulator = accumulator + Obj.calculateObjWeight (i)
		End If	
	Next i

	Obj.calculateCarriedWeight = accumulator
End Function

This one is even easier. We just loop accross all our objects and we add the calculated weight of every object which is in the inventory (loc = 0).

And, to finish with, a function which calculates the amount of space taken by the objects inside a container. This one won't be recursive (yay).

Function Obj.calculateRoomTaken (oid As Integer)
	Dim i As Integer
	Dim accumulator As Integer

	accumulator = 0

	For i = 0 To FIXOBJECTS
		If O (i).loc = O (oid).wh Then
			accumulator = accumulator + O (i).size
		End If
	Next i

	Obj.calculateRoomTaken = accumulator
End Function

Coding the common actions

1. Examine

We are gonna start with the easiest one: the response to "examine object" which should throw to screen the following information:

You'll notice a fixed scheme when we code the response to common actions. Our subroutines will always check if the object is reachable first, then do some extra checks (when needed - for example in "open" we make sure that the object is a container and that it is closed), then perform the action. This one is no exception:

Sub Obj.Ex (lid As Integer, oid As Integer)
	Dim olid As Integer
	Dim AnythingInside As Integer
	Dim found As String
	Dim i As Integer

    ' Check if object oid is visible
    Obj.Visible lid, oid, olid

    If olid = -1 Then
        Print "I can't see that over here." : Exit Sub
    Else
        ' Show description.
        Misc.WordWrap O (oid).desc

        ' Container?
        If (O (oid).flag And 1) = 1 Then
			' Open?
            If (O (oid).flag And 2) = 2 Then
                Misc.WordWrap " It's open"

                ' Show what's inside:

                AnythingInside = 0
                found = ""
                For i = 0 To FIXOBJECTS
                    If O (i).loc = O (oid).wh Then
                        AnythingIniside = -1
                        found = found + " the " + O (i).name + ","
                    End If
                Next i

                If Not AnythingInside Then
                    Misc.WordWrap "."
                Else
                    Misc.WordWrap ", you can see" + Left$(found, Len(found) - 1) + " inside."
                End If
            Else
                Misc.WordWrap " It's closed."
            End If
        End If

        ' Light source?
        If (O (oid).flag And 4) = 4 Then
            If (O (oid).flag And 8) = 8 Then
                Misc.WordWrap " It's turned on."
            Else
                Misc.WordWrap " It's turned off."
            End If
        End If
    End If

    Print

End Sub

Well - let's take a closer look. First of all, our subroutine takes two parameters: lid and oid, i.e. location id and object id, i.e. where we are at and which object to examine. Now the first thing we do is checking if the object is reachable with the suited call to Obj.Visible. If olid <> -1 then the object is reachable so it can be examined. So let's examine it.

Firt of all, and trivially, we print the description in O (oid).desc. Following that, we check if the object is a container. If it is, we check again the correct flag to see if it is open or closed. If it is open, we search among the available objects if any of them is inside the current one (i.e. their .loc attribute equals the value in our O (oid).wh), and we print what we find. Then we check if the object is a light source and print if it is on or off.

Study this function and make sure you understand how every action is performed. To summarize things a bit:

1.- Check if object is reachable; olid from Obj.Visible lid, oid, olid must be <> -1.
2.- Print description.
3.- Check if object is a container.
3.1.- Check if object is open.
3.1.1.- List all objects inside (O (i).loc = O (oid).wh, with i from 0 to FIXOBJECTS) if any.
4.- Check if object is a light source.
4.1.- Check if object is turned on or off.

2.- Get/Pick up

Remember the scheme: check if reachable, particular checks, action. Picking an object is a matter of placing it in location 0, which we defined to be our inventory:

Sub Obj.Get (lid As Integer, oid As Integer)
	Dim olid As Integer

    ' Check if object oid is visible
    Obj.Visible lid, oid, olid

    If olid = -1 Then
        Print "I can't see that over here." : Exit Sub
    Else
        If olid = 0 Then
            Print "You already have it." : Exit Sub
        Else
			If Obj.calculateObjWeight (oid) + Obj.calculateCarriedWeight > MAXWEIGHT Then
				Print "You are carrying too much weight. Drop something before." : Exit Sub
			Else
	            O(oid).loc = 0
    	        Print "You get the " + O(oid).name + "."
			End If
        End If
    End If

End Sub

Simple: first, as always, we check if the object is reachable. If it is (i.e. olid <> -1), we step to make more checks particular to this action: if we are going to take an object, first we must make sure that we don't have it already. If we don't (i.e. olid <> 0), then we perform the action of "taking it", i.e., we set its loc to "0", the special location we defined as our inventory, then show a message of aknowledgement.


3.- Drop/throw away

We'll be working in the same way, but we'll check and do the opposite thing. We have to check that the object is in the inventory and then place it in location lid.

Sub Obj.Drop (lid As Integer, oid As Integer) Static

    If O(oid).loc <> 0 Then
        Print "You don't have it."
    Else
        O(oid).loc = lid
        Print "You drop the " + O(oid).name + "."
    End if

End Sub

Note that we don't have to check if the object is visible - just that it is in the inventory, which is faster. If it is, we just set it's loc attribute to lid and we're done. Now the object is in the current location and removed from the inventory.


4.- Put in

This is just simmilar to "Get", but the object, instead of going to the inventory (loc #0), goes to the containing location of the second object, as long as this object is a container. So this time we also have to check if the second object is an open (bit #1 in the status byte set) container (bit #0 in the status byte set), if the first object fits and if you can carry its weight in case you are carrying the container:

Sub Obj.PutIn (lid As Integer, oid As Integer, oid2 As Integer)

	' This subroutine attempts to place oid inside oid2.