QB Express: Issue #16

Letters

Letter From MystikShadows

Wow, yet another outstanding issue as far as articles, reviews and tutors are concerned. And how about that news section, it sure is growing too, what a good sign of a striving community indeed :-). You must be a psychic, it is a few hours after it's release and lo and behold, and here I am making sure you hear from me lol.

Ok, I'd like to talk about what memnonite said, and what you said. I'm not exactly sure how these emails developed from the first one to the last I've read, not sure what happened in memnonite's life that basically turned him around so to speak, not sure if he'll feel the same way next month, if it was somekind of a temporary drift of reality or what. I've always had a good degree of respect towards him. And that was one of the reason I wrote what I wrote about him in my last letter to the editor. and I quote myself: "Mennonite's "It's Been A Dark Month, Hasn't It?" really left a mark. Although I don't think it's been a dark month (looking at this issue, it hasn't been a bad month at all :-). However it doesn't take anything away from his positive thoughts he projects through his letter. Everyone should print this letter and read it (and reread it too) whenever they fell like giving up. It's one of the most motivational and powerful article/letters I've ever read. It says a lot about mennonite himself. Wish more people had that kind of thinking. :-). " I said this about his letter in QB Express #14. Err am I a psychiatric case for quoting myself, doesn't it hint a dash of "talking to myself here"? lol This is the memnonite I know and respected. So I don't know why things happened the way the did in the course of the last month, like he said himself, looks like he really was depressed and I'm hoping that's just what it was and that he'll get back on track soon :-) I really enjoyed reading his material alot. To me, I agree with what you said (and I can talk about this because I'm probably atleast as big a DOS lover as he is as I've proven time and time again ;-), I even made a whole website about the subject lol. So I do know where he's coming from. He's wrong about the community itself, like you I think it's atleast trying to help out when intelligent questions are asked. I don't like to do people's homework when I know that the reason they didn't do it themselves is probably because of too many parties (college is to prepare one's self for a career, it's the future of their lives and if they wanna drink it away and have fun rather than study and work at their future, I hold no respect for that). But yeah in my opinion he's wrong, like you said the platform doesn't matter, it's the people that make the community, not the language. Now the RTFM shouldn't be taken as a flame or an insult. One thing my career as a programmer thought me is that self sufficiency is one of the most important aspect of development. If you do the 10 second google search and find the answer, you bettered yourself while the person that asked the question did not, at all. They need to be able to find the answers by other methods than asking question. The answer is out there, they just need to learn to find it. Hmmm, a tutorial on that might be a good idea :-).

I do however think that he did make a good point in all this. Now, there's no doubt that FBIDE is making excellent efforts in that regard, but it's not there yet (although it's definitaly in the right direction :-). But today, if you find a newbie on a forum and try to throw him into freebasic, to some of them, it would be like telling them to learn C. FreeBasic is much more powerful than QB, of course, as such, it's a whole different learning curve. The tools available to develop in FreeBasic aren't bad, but I'm not sure if they are "newbie" ready so to speak. FreeBasic is quite overwhelming to a soul that's just trying to learn to program. On that behalf, memnonite did make a good point about that. The language itself (v1ctor and the rest of the people are working hard on that side), the wiki is getting better too. Tools is what is missing here, user friendly tools that can make the starting programmer feel like he can do it, he can make it happen. Like I said, when FBIDE 0.5 comes out it will be a good "big" step in the right direction, but there is work to do still, it will get there, but it's not quite there yet. :-). But some of the more recent projects (like DKL's GUI Creator) are definitaly a good step in the right direction :-).

As far as the articles go, what can I say, each and everyone of them thaught me something new (well except from my own contributions lol, wouldn't that be something? lol). But yes, even at 5 AM, it was quite a read. I specifically enjoyed urger's "Some writing about writing (for the Programmer (and anyone else too))" I learned alot ;-). Althought my english isn't all that bad, I am a native french (read handicap lol) so I know that some of my sentences are probably inverted where they should have been the other way around to begin with, but in french it makes more sent to invert it so no I'm not trying to do the yoda thing, it's just my "french" way of forming sentences. So we'll see how well I learned from his article. Rick Clark has been deserving of his award and I'm glad he got it. He's been doing some great work on his DDD game but also on some other projects. I'm glad for him. The Awakened did a great follow through on his C++ learning series this time around, I think this will be a very helpful series. Ratttrap's Horse humor, made me laugh, 3 images, shortest coming he ever did and yet, the funniest of them all, go figure hehe. And the rest of the articles were very interesting to read. So again, great work to all involved, the quality of QB Express is what keeps me coming back for more :-).

MystikShadows

It's always a pleasure to get a letter to the editor from you. :-) Once again, lots of great feedback, and lots of awesome compliments. As for the whole mennonite thing, I agree with you completely -- but you can check out the next few letters to get my whole opinion on the situtation.

-Pete

Letter From mennonite

i don't know if you're going to print this (or even read it)

do what you want, it's only a letter for you (not petes qb), to you (not petes qb), but you'll do whatever you do with it.

i don't hate you, pete. i thought my last run with qbe was fitting. in it, you said you wished more people thought like me AND called me a douchebag. heh.

i suppose that's understandable, under the circumstances. although you're wrong about one thing- maybe two. one is for sure: i am not nor have i ever been anti-freebasic. what i am is ANTI anti-qb. i was passionately pro-freebasic and remain pro-freebasic.

i am also anti-ego, though i may strike some people as egotistical. i am anti-clique, even though the community has become quite the clique (by simply discluding passionate qb users *IF* nothing else) while simply firing back "no YOU are!" just because our qbasic forum talks about qbasic.

i hate bullshit, elitism, and nonsense. and yeah, we ALL have our moments, so if anything short of perfection = hypocrisy then we're all bloody hypocrites.

the other thing you're wrong about is the TON of hypocrisy and one-sidedness in the "community." the community comes to the qbasic forum to tell us about the community, as if we aren't part of it. they say they aren't a clique and we are, but they tell us "qbasic is old" (as if we didn't know) and shadowwolf calls michael a fool because michael points out a bug in fb (actually shadowwolf and michael were both partially wrong about that bug, but neither of them are fools, and it's an asshole thing to say. it's typical of the fb community to react that way whenever a shortcoming is god forbid pointed out. how is it going to improve beyond the beta stage without feedback?)

but the one-sidedness is WE can be called fools and written off (we have been THE qbasic.com forum for TEN YEARS! and mark wilhelm just comes and moves the link to our forum. that fucking sucks.) as old news while the community claims we're something separate because we still use qb. wtf?

they can flame us but we can't flame you.

that's the truth, pete. the stupid, ugly truth. but no one's gonna know. because there's too much fucking pride.

you think i care about that? why embarrass myself like i do? you think half of anyone is going to listen to my silly rantings? nah.

the bottom line is it doesn't matter. i wish it did, sure, but it doesn't.

anyway, there's my last letter to you. i thought you were pretty cool, and i tend to be right the first time, but it's just like all of this. it doesn't matter anymore.

just like qbasic, i guess. well, you know, i still care. but it definately doesn't matter.

bye, pete. it was fun.

mennonite

Here's the response I sent to mennonite after I got this email:

First off, sorry it took me so long to reply to this. I've just been busy. (Same reason why QBE #15 came out so late.)

I don't understand how you can be so anti-FreeBasic in everything you write, and then still claim that you're "passionately pro-freebasic." In all of your forum posts and all of your letters, you talk about how FB is buggy, not user friendly, doesn't have the same nostalgic feel and isn't as fun as QB, and turns the Qmunity into a bunch of assholes. I think the truth is that you're just saying your "pro-FB" to be dogmatic...or patronizing...

You say what you really are is "Anti Anti-QB," but the problem is that nobody in the Qmunity is anti-QB. We all LOVE QB, and have used it for years. Unfortunately, on modern computers, QB doesn't work anymore, and FB is the closest substitute. That's why people use FB: because it's the closest thing to QB that will work on our computers. When we tell people who are having compatibility issues with QB and Windows XP to switch to FB, we're just being rational. I don't understand how you take offense to that, if you're so "pro-FB."

As for "The QBasic Forum," you complain that we don't include you in the Qmunity -- but it's for good reason, in my opinion: you keep to yourself and don't share anything with the rest of us. Look at the major QB/FB forums these days: FreeBasic.net, QBasic News, The Basic Network, FBTK, Pete's QB Site, QB45, QBNZ and... The QBasic Forum. The thing that all of those forums have in common is that people that post on any one of those forums almost certainly posts on all of the other ones, and occasionally on The QBasic Forum. Meanwhile, the majority of the people that post on The QBasic Forum don't post anywhere else. When someone posts news on The QBasic Forum, it almost never finds its way onto the other QB/FB news sites; posters just don't see the value in sharing with the whole Qmunity. You guys are a the most exclusive clique in the Qmunity by far. If you hate cliques, then why don't you post on all the other QB/FB forums too, rather than being such a "QBasic Forum" extremist? I don't understand how you can't see your own cliquiness.

The real question is: what's the problem with cliques? I don't see it as a negative thing at all; it's only natural that people with very specific views (like people that will only code in QB and DOS and refuse to touch FB/Windows) would post with each other and ignore other boards where people don't agree with them.

Anyway, I would like to publish this letter if you don't mind... it allows you to defend yourself after I ripped on you last month. If you'd prefer it to not be published, then I'll leave it out. Let me know.

-Pete

And here's the response I got from mennonite a few days later.

First off, sorry it took me so long to reply to this. I've just been busy. (Same reason why QBE #15 came out so late.)

LOL. okay.

FB is buggy, not user friendly, doesn't have the same nostalgic feel and isn't as fun as QB, and turns the Qmunity into a bunch of assholes. I think the truth is that you're just saying your "pro-FB" to be dogmatic...or patronizing...

sigh - erm, i don't get to be patronizing. i mean, not intentionally. i'm not a Leet coder like z!re or v1ctor - i'm a user and a hobbyist.

i might be an idealist too, and i might annoy a lot of people - but i think i'd know if i was anti-fb.

read my letter over. i'm only angry at the belittling of people that like qb etc. it's the belittling that pisses me off.

i think it's hilarious that you can read what i've said in these articles

(on the forum - except where dealing with someone like shadowwolf who insists everyone switches - or someone saying "why use qb - except for the blue screen it's useless" etc. i tell people to try FB. i tell them it's a solution for memory problems and large array issues. on my old website the FIRST item on my front page was a link to freebasic.net - one of the 4 images on my website... and it was a pic that said "qb is dead. long live qb." that was from qbxl.net.

the second thing (left to right top to bottom) on my site was a link to your site.

you think i put them there to be patronizing? that just doesn't make any sense to me. i don't tend to be that subtle.)

and think i'm even remotely anti-fb. maybe it's not the kind of support that the "qmunity" wants, but in beta versions, people complaining is kind of important... now if you want to say "gee menn, i think you could be a little more civil in your complaints," so could everyone. but i already said i was hoping to make something like fb one day - until i found fb. after that i didn't feel a need to continue. the fb project was very fulfilling - because by comparison, i don't find anything OTHER THAN fb (visual basic, moonrock, etc) to be that impressive. freebasic is the best alternative to qb - and i'd like to see it be more friendly and more - what would take it beyond the beta version. and no, i don't care about the blue ide in qb. i prefer notepad usually.

You say what you really are is "Anti Anti-QB," but the problem is that nobody in the Qmunity is anti-QB. We all LOVE QB, and have used it for years. Unfortunately, on modern computers, QB doesn't work anymore, and FB is the closest substitute. That's why people use FB.

that's the other thing. when i say the fb community is anti-qb, everyone pretends it isn't. but people DO make fun of people for wanting to use qb.

geez, look at qbe #15. qb is the blue pill? like that isn't condescending. the fb community is in total denial, pete. it treats qb users like crap and makes fun of qb and then it says "man, we love qb! we're nice to newbies!"

aw, geez. anyway, i like fb. i just wish i liked it a lot more - and i wish it was a lot more like a 100% compatible replacement for qb in dos - i don't mind that it needs cwsdpmi - i don't mind that it has no ide - i don't mind that i have to play around with alternatives to chr$(0) because of c-strings.

but at a certain point i'm not having fun anymore, because instead of coding i'm debugging code that used to work - and it's all i'm doing.

who doesn't have a right to complain when something sucks?

fb doesn't suck, pete. it's great. but you know? sometimes fb DOES suck. not always. but sometimes EVERYTHING sucks. the only reason i don't get to bitch about it is because i'm ALSO pro-qb. yeah, NO ONE is going to see it that way - but that's the way it is. 100 people denying it won't change the truth.

When we tell people who are having compatibility issues with QB and Windows XP to switch to FB, we're just being rational. I don't understand how you take offense to that, if you're so "pro-FB."

i *AM* anti-xp. sometimes i tell people to try compiling in FB to get around qb problems, too. i don't find suggesting fb unreasonable - like i've said several times now, i recommend fb to people all the time.

As for "The QBasic Forum," you complain that we don't include you in the Qmunity -- but it's for good reason, in my opinion: you keep to yourself and don't share anything with the rest of us.

catch-22? how can we share anything with you if you don't include us?

while Mac (our moderator, but mostly just the guy that keeps the place from falling down) is very protective of what many of us think is the last place we can talk about qbasic (vs freebasic) his subforums are laid out primarily for organization - the other forums have subforums - so do we. while mac DOESN'T like fb i think he's unfair about it - and i tease him about it (from a pro-fb stance.) it's all about who i'm talking to. when i'm talking to people that are anti-qb i complain.

when i talk to people who are anti-fb i tease them for being anti-fb. in my mind there is still room for both. i don't use XP and in my machine qb runs pretty nicely. i have 3 versions of fb installed - dos .13, dos .14, and windows .14 - i also have qb45 (we actually bought it that many years ago) and qb 1.x.

but what do WE have to share that YOU want anyway? we aren't developing games - a few of us are working on some cool projects, but if god forbid we use gosub instead of sub we get flamed. we're just trying to have fun and help people with qbasic questions - we don't have many big projects like the other forums do. and i've always been ready to write something for your magazine - even though i'm not sure there is an audience for it - what are we holding back, pete?

The thing that all of those forums have in common is that people that post on any one of those forums almost certainly posts on all of the other ones, and occasionally on The QBasic Forum.

Meanwhile, the majority of the people that post on The QBasic Forum don't post anywhere else.

yeah - there are two main reasons for this - 1. contrary to the self-image you guys have ( i can't speak for you - i can only tell you what i see and what i hear you say in response! ) when we come to the other forums we either feel ignored or belittled or abused. people come back to us and tell us they don't like the other forums because of they way they were treated...

mac might defend qb by attacking fb - and some people end up being anti-fb because they feel like the fb community is... well they feel like i do.

but that's not anti-fb, pete. that's anti fb-community - and that's what you guys are breeding - a group of people that don't want to use fb (Even when i suggest it to them) because they don't like the people associated with it.

i think that's goofy - it's open source. everyone can use it without the permission of the people that make it - but, people are being turned off by the attitude you guys say you don't have.

so that's one reason people don't go to the other forums.

the other reason 2. is impatience - not pride, not cliquiness, not anything but impatience... our forum is extremely active - but focused. it used to be if you put a post up you could hit F5 and in a few min there would be a reply. i'm not bragging - but there is an element of instant gratification.

we don't get that at the other forums - either because the other ones are slower... or, the other ones are heavier (not lighter) in traffic and the posts get buried, whatever the reason.

nonethless, some of our regulars - mac included, DO go to your forums. i used to. but i felt it was much slower and i was just too busy. it wasn't because i feel somehow superior.

When someone posts news on The QBasic Forum, it almost never finds its way onto the other QB/FB news sites; posters just don't see the value in sharing with the whole Qmunity.

any news we have on the qbasic forum is generally posted by people like you, who are already posting to the other forums. we're actually VERY light on news of any kind. we aren't a news-based site. but, we have a place where people from other communities can post news on our board... like the latest QBE.

if v1ctor posts a message on our board, it stands to reason that he's going to post it 5 other places, too. why would we do that as well? it's not because we're hoarding news. if anything, we only have a small fraction of what everyone else has on display, because no one posts news to us. i can't think of one bit of qb news that WE posted internally. it's all stuff we heard about on your boards.

You guys are a the most exclusive clique in the Qmunity by far.

we're not a clique. the only thing we frown on is GOTO when it isn't needed (it's just bad coding - but we don't abuse people for it) and people telling us to switch to another language. we like using qb. if liking something makes us a clique, eh. we don't go to freebasic forums and tell them to switch back to qb.

some of us defend fb. i do, parttime. especially when mac starts in. i think he's just being protective. it's not a big deal.

If you hate cliques, then why don't you post on all the other QB/FB forums too, rather than being such a "QBasic Forum" extremist?

i really don't understand this pete. no, REALLY. i already waste too much spare time on the qbasic forum. i like it there. i should be there less. i just don't have time. if i'm too busy coding to go to all the forums, does that make me an extremist or elitist? demanding someone go to forums they don't have time to go to is extreme, pete. seriously, i do everything i can do. including try one more time to clarify this (since you asked) before we part ways.

i mean cmon pete, i'm a douchebag. this whole email is a little surreal, but i used to have the UTMOST respect for you and i guess if you're going to give me a chance to say something i'll take one more opportunity. this is all an issue of incompatibility. we just disagree. we can, though.

I don't understand how you can't see your own cliquiness.

i don't think we are a clique, pete. we don't think we're better than you- at worst, we think we're less of a clique. i don't think that makes us elitists... but then you guys don't think youre cliquey either. face it man, no one is going to say "damnit, we've been real assholes" on either side. so, we might as well give up on this. do you have a better idea? i wish i did.

The real question is: what's the problem with cliques?

they get in the way of communication. they weigh things down that could be simple with bullshit politics and even homemade beaurocracy. they lead to misunderstanding, and they allow egos to soar when they should be muted. as much as possible. we're all humans. cliques get in the way of basic humanity.

I don't see it as a negative thing at all; it's only natural that people with very specific views (like people that will only code in QB and DOS and refuse to touch FB/Windows) would post with each other and ignore other boards where people don't agree with them.

people largely ignore our board. that's okay - it doesn't make people unwelcome, it makes them uninterested. everyone wants a fancy board with phpbb or the like. okay. we like network54. okay. what's the big deal? none. we also like using qb without being told it's old and useless. spend all your time coding in something and be told it's worthless and see how you feel. so some of us are protective. but we're not elitists. we're hobbyists. we're just trying to have fun, for god's sake - not be professional developers.

Anyway, I would like to publish this letter if you don't mind... it allows you to defend yourself after I ripped on you last month. If you'd prefer it to not be published, then I'll leave it out. Let me know.

sure. go ahead, pete. sorry that we couldn't come to more of an understanding. i still feel this is all very one sided - when you said i was a douchebag and that i was anti-fb (if i was anti-fb, wouldn't i know?) i kinda figured you didn't even read my article.

but i knew i couldn't write it without pissing people off. what i don't understand is why it's okay one-way but not the other.

i guess we both think the other is being one-sided. that's why there isn't any point, pete. it doesn't look like either of us are moving in any direction that has anything to do with the other.

you know, even after all this bullshit - even after your response to my article - there are still two things i put up in the version of qbasic.com i was working on before mark took over. one is the new links page i was making for qbasic.com - the first qb link was to pete's qb site "to qbasic what yahoo is to the internet"

it's still up that way, tho not on qbasic.com (mark runs the links page there, not i.)

the 2nd or 3rd link was to freebasic.net.

another thing i had done was rewritten the code in the FAQ for "how can i use arrow keys?"

it included a routine that works in QB AND FB - it changes the chr$(0) to 255 - whether you're in qb or fb, the code works. eh.

maybe i've been a bastard, pete. but i don't think i've been unfair. you think different? okay, pete. don't we all?

i AM going back to my forum now. don't take it the wrong way.

- menn

Mennonite, you make many great points here -- but you haven't managed to change my mind. I'd respond further, but I have a feeling that this argument could go on for years and we'd just go in circles.

I guess I never knew how emotionally invested some people get in web forums. I consider the Qmunity and QB Express to be a hobby and a leisure activity; I don't really take any of it all that seriously. Call it thick skin, but I don't take anything that's posted on a QB/FB forum to be "elitist" or "extremist". People will say what they will, but in the end, look at what the Qmunity is: a bunch of nerds from all over the world, mostly young men, that share homebrew programs and converse over the Internet in our spare time. The "Qmunity" is not real life, so you probably shouldn't treat it as such.

-Pete

Letter From The Big Bad Wolf

hey man dont let ppl like mennonite get to you. there is always this once in a ( hopefully ) few ppl that always get stuff the wrong way.

i like you'r mag and the site so just keep the nice work up man! only downside is that there is no boobs in it but you can't have everything eh? ;)

well take care!

/The Big Bad Wolf ( Rawr! )

Thanks for the kind words -- and sorry my site doesn't have any boobies, but I intend to keep it G-rated. As for mennonite -- he didn't get me down, I just had a disagreement with him. No harm, no foul.

-Pete

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

News Briefs

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

QB Site News

Major Updates to the AAP Official Projects Squad

Adigun Azikiwe Polack has been busy working on his graphics library, AFLIB2, meanwhile keeping his website up-to-date this past month. Here's a post by Adigun from QBasic News about the latest major update to his website:

In this all-important update of the official projects site of Adigun Azikiwe Polack, the official pages of the soon-to-be-released FreeBASIC game library of AFlib2 - Aura Flow Library 2 are now up, which will sure be an *absolute* treat for you RelLib fans everywhere!!!

Also, the FreeBASIC GFX Demo Central now celebrates its own first-ever anniversary with a newly repolished look, as well as two new demos added (including Lithium�s spetactular Raycasting Engine!), and two updated demos also!

Be sure to drop on into the awesome festivities waiting for you beginning at http://dhost.hopto.org/aapproj/. Meet you there!!!

Congratulations to Adigun on the anniversary and the great job in general on the website.

News Brief by Pete

QBasic News and Freebasic.net Experience Downtime

QBasic News and FreeBasic.net, the two cornerstones of the Qmunity, both experienced downtime in the past month. QBasic News, as well as NeoBasic and other sites on Wildcard's server, were down for a few days because Wildcard's webhost had some "issues." Current QBasic News administrator Sumo Jo was accused by many of "not paying the bill," despite the fact that he doesn't even host QBasic News. All the sites were restored to perfect working order within a few days.

Freebasic.net also experienced downtime because a user uploaded some type of server hack / security exploit program through the PHPBB server, and the webhost automatically suspended the account -- though I'm not sure of the details. Anyway, everything is back up and in working order now, so no harm done.

News Brief by Pete

Todd Seuss Launches QuickBasic GUI Blog

Todd Seuss recently announced the launch of a new QuickBasic GUI Blog. The blog will serve as a news source for the QB GUI community, and Todd has done a great job of posting the latest news on QB GUI since the site launched on November 20th. There have already been ten posts, and I'm sure there will be many more to come. If Todd keeps up with the pace that he's updated this blog with in the first week, this will be an incredible resource for QB & FB GUI programmers.

News Brief by Pete

QBXL Audio Edition #8 Released

After a three month absence, SJ Zero has finally released a new version of his humorous audio QB/FB news report, QBXL Audio Edition. You can find the eighth installation at this link: qbxlAudio8.mp3. 'Nuff said.

News Brief by Pete

Z!re Offers Free QB/FB Web Hosting

I, Z!re, have started offering website hosting for QB/FB coders looking for a place to host downloads and sites..

http://goddess.selfip.com/hosted/

Rules:

Site should be FB and/or QB related
Amount of space depends on the project/site you want hosted (Currently the largest hosted site has 500mb reserved for it)

Site bandwidth: max burst 128kbyte/s, max maintained 64kbyte/s

PHP/4 and HTML enabled, SQL can be requested

The URL you get is: http://goddess.selfip.com/hosted/Your_Site_Here

It will also be listed at: http://goddess.selfip.com/hosted/

Illegal files are not allowed, instant ban.

Access:

Server uptime is 24/7, with downtime for maintenance

File handling is done via a HTTP interface (FTP available per request)

Additional questions or contacting to sign up for hosting can be done either to: XiberLord@Gmail.com or via IRC: irc://FieldView.mine.nu/Hosting

News Brief by Z!re

Project News

Lynn's Legacy Demo on the Way!

You guys are in for a treat, because just after this issue is released, Josiah Tobin and Cha0s are going to release the first demo of their upcoming action RPG, Lynn's Legacy. And hoo boy, is it good.

I was treated to a sneak preview of the Lynn's Legacy demo, and I have nothing but good things to say about it. It is a fun, atmospheric, stylistic and polished game, and without a doubt one of the best games ever made in FB. While I was playing the demo, especially after I stumbled into a dungeon, I felt as if I were playing a Zelda game -- Lynn's Legacy is that professional and well-designed. If I hadn't already previewed the game extensively in the QB Express #13 Gallery, I would have certainly written a Gallery article about L.L. in this issue. Instead, I'll write up a mini-preview here. Next month, we'll cover this game in full.

The demo begins with Lynn and her comrades flying over an ocean, when one of the flying beasts in your party catches on fire and explodes. Lynn wakes up dazed and confused in a forest clearing and vows to figure out what happened. Within minutes, she meets villagers and steps into a portal and finds herself in a Zelda-esque dungeon. The story is told through well-written dialogue boxes and pre-scripted cinematics, and it feels like a good SNES or Game Boy Advance RPG.

The graphics, of course, are fantastic throughout -- particularly the animation. Everything moves extremely smoothly and naturally. For example, after Lynn wakes up in the clearing, there is an animation of her flipping over and standing up that is so fluid and well-drawn that it has to be seen to be believed.

What I found best about the demo, though, was the lush soundtrack and sound effects. The music is very good, and adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game. The composer (I'm not sure who it was) deserves a round of applause. The sound effects are also fantastic; whenever Lynn swings her weapon, it is accompanied by a swish and a female yell/grunt. When someone talks, a "murmuring" sound plays as the text is written out in the text box. When you pick up an item, you hear a "ding"...etc. But the most impressive acoustics in the demo were the natural / environmental sound effects, like the roaring of the ocean, birds chirping and wind rustling through branches in the forest clearing, and crickets chirping during the inter-titles. It's the little touches like this that make this game feel so professional.

Anyway, enough talk. Take a look at some screenshots from the demo:

As you can see, Lynn's Legacy looks fantastic. I'm sure you can't wait to check it out when the demo is released. (According to Josiah Tobin, it should be out within a few days of the release of this issue.)

I had a great time with the demo during the few minutes I had to play. Unfortunately, I'm on a tight schedule, so I wasn't able to play it thoroughly. I don't know how much more there was to it. According to the ReadMe file, the demo includes a boss: "Grult-- a massive airborne bat-like creature with multiple pairs of wings. He uses fire as a weapon, but despises light." (Unfortunately, I died before I ever got to the boss, in the Dungeon area.) For all I know, there could be quite a bit more gameplay past that point. I guess you'll have to get your hands on the demo to find out!

News Brief by Pete

Two Lords (Classic Version) Revived

The man of a thousand names (Nekrophidius, Nodtveidt, Adosorken, Dave Perry, and probably others), and the new father, has recently started the project to revive one of his old creations called Two Lords. This is a first person shooter game remeniscent of Doom and Duke Nukem that is sure to excite you with great action-packed gameplay.

Here are a few screenshots that have been posted by him on the freebasic.net forums:

As you can see from these screenshots, Two Lords promises to be one of the best games created in Freebasic to date. The graphics are detailed, and the animation also looks to be pretty good. Two Lords uses a raycaster engine created by Lithium as detailed in this forum thread at freebasic.net.

To find out more details about this game and get a chance to read comments from others that have seen these screenshots, you can find out all about it on the this post at the Freebasic.net forum.

News Brief by MystikShadows

Distraction Software Releases "The Guardian" QB RPG

Every few months, a long-lost QB game discovered on an old hard drive finally sees the light of day. The latest of these is The Guardian, which was just released by Terry Cavanagh. It was his final QB game, and it was never finished -- but it's definitely worth a look.

Here's the info from the original post:

I was looking around some of my old stuff recently, and came across the last thing I ever made in QB. It's the first 15 minutes of a miniRPG I made for Darkdread's pureQB contest in 2002. I never released it because I actually thought I'd lost it. Anyway, maybe it'll be of interest to some people around here, I don't know. Check it out here:

The Guardian

If you want a little more detail about it, you can check out some screenshots on the most recent post at my site, DistractionWare.com.

News Brief by Pete

Turn-Based Strategy Game in the Making

Torahteen, syn9, Ryan, SSC, Rattrapmax6, Eclipzer, and xteraco, are working together to come up with the next big thing for FreeBasic. It will be a turn based strategy game, with a near futuristic timeframe. It's going very well so far, and is looking nice. Here are some screen shots of the 3D engine by syn9.

More to come as the game progresses.

News Brief by Torahteen

Dr_D Remakes Grid Game in 3D

It all started with a post made by rdc here announcing a small but challenging grid based game where the objective was to make the curves connect to each other cause a connection chain reaction which then augmented the score. Dr_D decided that game was 3D material and created an OpenGL version of the same game. Here is a screenshot of Dr_D's creation:

This new version features all the functionality offered by the 2D version along with some very nice lightning effect on selected or affected tube curves. You select the piece you want rotated with the mouse and see how many other pieces got connected and performed a quarter turn after you select the first piece. To find out where to get this game and if you can beat the highscore, take a look at this thread started by Dr_D.

News Brief by MystikShadows

"Inspiration" Re-Started From Scratch

Wallace Software's Inspiration engine has been through many ups and downs in its development cycle these past few months. Originally, it set out to be the greatest 3D engine ever created in QB -- and it was well on its way to earning that crown. It was very impressive, even -- dare I say it -- inspirational. (Check out the preview in QB Express #5.)

A few months back, though, Inspiration was pushing the limits of QB, and Wallace decided to switch the project to FreeBasic. Since then, development of Inspiration slowed down, perhaps because the program was getting too bloated and difficult to deal with. But now, Inspiration is back on track: Wallace decided to completely re-write the engine from scratch. Check out this post from his website:

I've been doing a lot of coding recently in other languages and learning some tricks of the trade in object oriented programming. These have opened my eyes, most tricks that I have learned can be manipulated to work in FreeBASIC. I want to simplify Inspiration, make the code easier to use and easier to write. Debugging was taking up a huge portion of my time with it and it was frustrating. I have decided to start over - FROM SCRATCH. This means moving myself all of the way back to the designing stage.

What I was doing with Inspiraton was having a rough idea of what I was going to do, and then adding that as ideas came along. I'm not doing that. I'm taking a few weeks to outline every single thing that I want to get out of this engine and its components. Then creating a detailed top down design, where each branch of the tree breaks down into only a few lines of code, then packaging them all together. Using this method I hope to build a much better, unified engine, much quicker. Of course there are some things that I am going to keep, I mean no one in the right mind would throw away a 150FPS raycaster. Using this method of program design I hope to not have to put an update on my site like "I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this", I would have already known the best way to do it. Most updates on Inspiration will be commenting on what I have finished and how much further I've gotten, of course there will be problems, there are with any coding project.

The new engine is still in its early stages, but it sure sounds ambitious. Just listen to this:

You and some marines are walking down a narrow hallway. It's dimly lit and the lights are constantly flickering. Suddenly the lights go out, you and your marines switch on your flashlights. Suddenly there is a yellow flash of light and scream. Then another, you can dimly see faint creatures with swords, and yellow shadows dance on the walls of your marines getting cut clean in half. Suddenly there is a bright flash and you are face to face with one of the sworded creatures. You fire a plasma bolt, but it teleports away again. With the eriee blue glow from the plasma bolt you see most of your marines liced clean in half, there intestines and blood spewed out over the ground.

This will be part of Contact 2, not a cinematic either, real game play. Everything I mentioned above can be done in the new Inspiration engine. I have figured out a new way of lighting that allows hundreds of dynamic lights in any colour and any size. A new way of displaying certain sprites, and finally a working collision detection system has been worked out.

Wow. I can't wait to see this engine come to fruition!

Check out Wallace Software for the latest updates on Inspiration and Contact 2.

News Brief by Pete

Bungy The Game

Lurah has been working hard to finally be able to release his first version of his Bungy game (an ASCII worm like game with some rather special twists). The object of the game is to navigate your worm through the playing field avoiding the red @s while eating the yellow $ to gain points and strength.

This first screenshot is the main menu of the game:

And this one is the main playing field for the worm to navigate in:

Since lurah first announced this game on a few forums, he has been getting some great reviews from the people that gave it a try. The twists to the game, I won't mention here, you'll just have to try it for yourself. The main project page is on the ASCII World website's Project page. Look under "Game Projects."

News Brief by MystikShadows

Pc72's Bomberman Clone

Pc72 just released a brand new QB Bomberman game, which will work on anything ranging from QBasic 1.0 to PDS 7.1. Here's some info about the game, from the ReadMe file:

This game is intended to entertain. It's not designed to be very professional nor good-looking. It's made for the sole purpose of literally having a blast and generally a good time. It is nowhere near finished yet, but at least now it is at a stage where it is playable! You might want to fiddle around with the constants in it a bit, but it is as working as it could be. Bombs do blow away more than just themselves, and the bad dudes are actually bad. And, of course, you earn high scores by incinerating them and collecting treasures! The latter can give you special bonuses like more bombs and bigger explosions.

I haven't had a chance to try out this game, but it sounds pretty fun. You can download it at this link: ahibomb.zip

News Brief by Pete

Kylemc Creates His Version of a Classic

Kylemc has been busy lately, creating a FreeBasic version of classic game. His creation is called Squares and the main object is to make squares by connecting dots together with lines. I remember playing a version of this on paper back when I was in school (in those boring courses). Here's a screenshot of what the game looks like:

Squares is played on a 6 by 6 possible square grid adn each player takes turn trying to connect dots together in order to create a complete square. Whoever gets mode squares than the other wins the game.

Just get yourself to this thread and download "Squares" to see for yourself how addicting this game can be.

News Brief by MystikShadows

An Un-named Game by Pritchard

Pritchard is working on an as-of-yet untitled "game" (no genre specified), starring a character named "Alpha Petrov." So far, there are several very cool concept art drawings in this Freebasic.net thread, as well as a link to a very preliminary 100MB demo.

"Expect to fight all sorts of Characters in this game. Everyone needs to make a living, right?"

I haven't had a chance to check out this game, but I thought it had some pretty nifty artwork, and some pretty cryptic messages, so I thought I'd let you all know about it.

News Brief by Pete

AFLIB Status Report

The development of AFLIB2 by Adigun A. Polack is progressing very well. Over the past month, many new functions have been added to the FB graphics library's arsenal. Here are some of the new features that have recently been added to AFLIB2:

AFLIB2 now has its own set of primitives that you can use such as: Pixels, lines, circles and elipse, triangles and Gourauds all with a translucenscy optional mode of drawing.
It has a set of 10 different font sets (that span through the whole 255 ASCII code range) that you can use in more than one way. They also feature a special accelerated printing method to display text in a very fast way.
It now has fades that do not affect the color palette. For those that don't know this means that you can make an image fade out gradually from it's originally shown colors in gradual steps towards total dissapearance.
It can also store screen in memory to be retrieved and display at a later time. It can handle up to 64 different screens.
It now has screen collision features. Some of the test features really seem to do a good collision detection between moving objects and non moving drawings, between sprite and background, and others.
It can generate translucent star fields. From the screens shots very different and unique startfields can be generated as well.

If you want more information and details on these features as well as screenshots of everything to give you a good idea on what they are all about. Take a look at this thread and you'll see all the hard work that Adigun has been busy with lately.

News Brief by MystikShadows

Marzec Converts GFXLIB2 to Standalone Library

Marzec has taken it upon himself to make Angelo Mottola's GFXLIB2 for FB a library usable by other languages beside FB: "last night i was a bit bored and thought that making the gfxlib a standalone library for use in any other language is a good idea. after getting rid of all dependencies on the fb runtime library i succeeded in compiling, linking and using the library on windows and linux."

Check out this thread for the full story, as well as download links.

News Brief by Pete

A Cool "3D Thing" / Screensaver by Deleter

Over at QBasic News, Deleter released several versions of a "cool 3D thing" that features two circles circling around each other... I thought it looked pretty cool.

He also released a version of the demo as a screensaver. Check the thread for the sourcecode or the link to download the screensaver version.

News Brief by Pete

Competition News

One Key Challenge Revisited Results!

Back at the beginning of October, Z!re started up a "revisiting" of one of the most successful QB programming challenges ever: Lachie Dazdarian's One Key Challenge. The object of this competition was to create the best game possible that using only one key for input. Check this thread for the original announcement and official rules of the competition.

At the deadline, there were five entries, by Dio, j2krei08, matt2jones, urger and Xerol. You can find all five entries in the One Key Challenge Voting thread. For comments from different voters and general chatter surrounding the contest go there.

Now that voting has wrapped up, Xerol is the clear winner. He received an amazing 12 votes. Second place was shared by Dio and urger at 3 votes each.

Xerol's game of "shoot-the-helicopters-and-parachuting-guys" seems to have caught the imagination of QBasic News forum-goers, because it was the clear fan favorite. Despite Xerol's dominance, though, many thought that urger's entry was the more genuine and unique -- and there was an argument over this in the thread. Although Z!re preferred urger's entry, she concedes: "Xerol obviously put a lot of time and effort into his game, and he is a worthy winner. Not to mention Xerol's game gives a lot more eye-candy, which we all know is important, no matter how hard we try to deny it."

Congratulations to Xerol for the win! His game can be found here.

Disappointed you missed out on this competition? A new challenge has been started -- this one is a "Mouse Only" challenge, where programmers must make a game that uses only the movements of the mouse -- and no clicks -- for input. Sounds very interesting! The rules and more details can be found here.

News Brief by Z!re and Pete

Roque Like Compo Monthly Follow-Ups

By now, the Rogue Like Compo should be no secret to anyone. From what I've noticed this month on the Rogue Compo thread on FreeBasic.tk forum people have been the busiest I've seen so far on there projects. Let's take a look at what each team is up to so far this month.

Andrew Collins and Jocke The Beast reported this:

Jocke should be posting a new BeastRogue pretty quickly. Ver .16 is the old one up there , .17D is the one I just sent him.

The game is in a mostly playable form.(still a little buggy)
Graphics have been implemented,
Damage, healing ,resistance and some detection spells work now(Parser works)
Special items work now(potions and scrolls are gotten from the spell list so they are automatically added)
Much larger levels.
Slightly more intelligent monster combat.
Visual effects(an arrow will travel down a hall, and a fireball will make a fireball)
Editable Spells(read infospells.txt in the "doc" diretory)
Editable Special Items Overlays
Editable Items
Editable Monster attacks
Editable Monsters
all in the "data" directory .txt files
And prolly a lot of other stuff I can't think of right now.

Now that's what I call a list of features. Needless to say this game is looking more and more complete and should be quite fun to play when it's ready.

rdc (rick Clark) reports:

DDD is just about ready to have a 1.0 release. It needs a bit more balance, but it is just about there. Right now, I am working on my Ascii Help (AHP) system that I am going to plug into the program for an online manual. AHP is coming along really well. I have most of the basic stuff done, and I am working on parsing the source files and screen navigation.

To those of you that haven't read last month's report, rdc was and still is the furthest along in his project. His game is just about complete (probably some final tweaks here and there to do) but it looks like we'll be playing his game very soon now.

Dr_D had this to say:

Well, Zap has dropped out, so I'm probably going to work on some other small projects for a while... unless someone wants to join my team in his place. Any takers? Please??? Seriously... I'm tired of working on it by myself. I wanted to do this as a team project, but Zap simply doesn't have enough time. If anyone wants to join, send me a pm or whatever.

well it seems there was a taker after all, I've learned recently that rdc is teaming up with Dr_D to form a new team for Dr_D's project. So this game should be moving along quickly and smoothly from here on out. Stay tuned to this monthly update to see what will happen next.

Ryan added:

Work for my project has really just been in the form of getting a good, modular server working that I can then develop a client with. So... nothing's really new since the demo I put out forever ago with the concept screen/map generator. It'll be weeks before I see any progress, as I get maybe 5-6 hours coding time a week and have to do homework for my Java class during that time. Cool (And I'm learning Ruby on Rails for work.)

As you can see from this paragraph it seems ryan is planning an online version of his rogue like game. When done, this should prove an interesting game. I don't know yet if the only version will allow for teams to play together or people to play against each other or both. But an online Rogue Like game? Very interesting in my book.

As you've read just now, the teams really have been quite busy. There's just no telling what will happen in the course of this coming month, so be sure to stay tuned to this update to bring you the latest and greatest on this ongoing compo.

News Brief by MystikShadows

GUI News by Brandon Cornell

I'm back still with a News Brief but this time instead of being about me its about the GUI Community!

-Brandon Cornell

Web Site News:

My site http://fun500.us.tt is still up and running good.
Pharoh has made a site at: http://datacomponents.ourproject.org/sf/users/pharoah/index.php?lng=en. It is hosted by Metronic.
RocketBoy has made a site for his GUI Teddy its at: Http://rocketboy.moved.in (Notice the Teddy bear made from Tux, I Made it)

GUI Releases:

M-OS Innovative has been released at: http://kldp.net/frs/download.php/2948/mosinno.zip
RocketBoy has started work on what looks like the next Rush OS!! Http://rocketboy.moved.in

The FreeBASIC Rush!

Everyone in the GUI programing World is starting to use FreeBASIC. Except DELTA,RocketBoy, and I. I don't like too much change and there would have to be a huge one. Jacob's GUI Costa is allready being rewritten in FB. I won't switch to FB until there is a great GUI like RushOS programmed in it.

News Briefs by Brandon Cornell

Send your QB/FB news to pberg1@gmail.com!

Searching For The Unknown
Bozula Block Buster by Johan Olofsson, 2001

Written by Lachie Dazdarian

Introduction

As you see I decided not to feature Robot Plague in this issue. There were few reasons. In short, the game just didn't turn out to be what I expected it to be and much smaller than I imagined. There is a very small chance anyone would actually play Robot Plague for real other than just check it out. I'm sure that's not what I'm trying to accomplish with this column.

Now to the topic of this issue. Bozula Block Buster is a Sokoban type of game. Not a hard-core Sokoban game but with the gameplay very similar to the one in Sokoban and it's clones. You don't know about Sokoban? Well, in Sokoban you control a character who can push boxes scattered around the level and the goal is to push all the boxes onto the designated positions in the level. The most notable fact about the Sokoban gameplay is that you can make a wrong move very easily which then makes that level impossible to finish. Sokoban levels are known for being very difficult and challenging and are distributed over then net in the popular .xsb format. Most of the levels I've tried through FreeBASIC Sokoban(reviewed in the issue #11) were very discouraging and made me quite disappointed in my thinking abilities. The concept of Sokoban is ingenious on some way since you can create the most challenging puzzles on a very small space and with small number of boxes. Place for imagination in the designing of Sokoban levels in endless. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I liked Bozula Block Buster so much. That game is much easier that the default and the better custom made Sokoban levels.

As far as I know there weren't many Sokoban games made in QBasic which I find surprising since they are not very difficult to code. Definitely less difficult to code than a Tetris game and there is like 17 Tetris games made in QBasic(and released to public), plus some Tetris-like games. I'm aware of this useless peace of information because I'm planning to write an article about QBasic Tetris games. Weee! Hmm...I think I'm getting way too excited about that article. Anyway, I should get back to the topic.

I know about 4 finished QBasic Sokoban games. David Joffe's VGA Sokoban is probably something Sokoban purists(do such people exists?) will like the most since it features very simple graphics, 90 non-original levels from XSokoban(X Window system), untouched Sokoban gameplay and tile by tile movement. Some but not all of those levels are also present in the default level set from FreeBASIC Sokoban. I personally don't like this kind of approach since it's the most unimaginative and requires very little effort to code and design. Another QBasic Sokoban game is Pushem by Danny Albocher which looks more like a test program than a real game since it features even less impressive and more generic graphics and only 5 levels. Factory John by RedXIII is probably the best game of all the QBasic Sokoban games but if it's the best in being a challenging Sokoban game that remains a question. I hope I wasn't confusing with that sentence. Factory John features above average graphics, pixel by pixel movement, animated character, non-original MIDI music and 15 original levels. It also features the best presentation. And as an extra feature in the classic Sokoban concept it introduces cement which appears in some levels and which you can use to destroy non-movable obstacles, in this game those are cracks in the floor. What most Sokoban fans won't like about this game is that the levels are relatively easy and I've finished most of them from the first attempt! The fact that they are original doesn't help here. Also, the controls were solved with the INKEY$ statement and you know how that works with pixel based movement. What I didn't like is that the game features only one small tileset and it's a bit drab. What you see from the screenshot is what you get. On the end that's not much different from VGA Sokoban or FreeBASIC Sokoban.

I hope you made it through this unnecessary long introduction because I'm finally getting to the topic of this article, Bozula Block Buster.

About Bozula Block Buster

Bozula Block Buster will very unlikely win the award for the best QBasic Sokoban game. It can't measure with VGA Sokoban in level design and their number or with Factory John in graphics and presentation but I found it to be the most interesting game of them all.

Anyway, Bozula Block Buster doesn't look very promising on the first look. The main menu is very poorly designed, if we can call that designing. A clear black background and the menu text written with the default SCREEN 12 PRINT font. What's even worst is that the designer didn't make the effort to place the menu on the center of the screen.

All the screenshots are clickable

The story of Bozula Block Buster is very simple. You are the little Zenmar who lost his small puddlings(a pet of some sort). It's up to you to find your way through all the stages and save all the puddlings. Now while this is not something very deep or interesting at least the designer introduces a story. And it's important on some way since you know who you are and why you have to pick up those small creatures in the stage before exiting it. There is some motive behind that. Definitely better than some circle picking up a triangle.

The stages are divided into 5 courses. The first course is called Dezert Practice Course and it's a...surprise, small practice course. It features 4 stages which are meant to introduce you with the game mechanics. The movement in the game is tile by tile based. What makes Bozula Block Buster different from Sokoban is the objective of each stage. In Bozula Block Buster you don't have to push all the blocks onto the designated positions but find your way to the puddlings in the stage and then exit from it. Most often both the exit and the puddlings will be blocked by movable blocks, walls and/or laser beams. Three important elements make the Bozula Block Buster's gameplay. Laser beams, red pills and movable blocks. The way you push blocks is like in Sokoban and you will push them in order to reach some part of the stage that was blocked or to block a laser beam. Laser beams are something that add a lot to the classic Sokoban gameplay. By pushing blocks onto the laser beams you can clear yourself a path to a certain part of the stage that was blocked by it. Red pills, on the other hand, turn you into some kind of angry Zenmar and while being in that state you can break one piece of wall. You can't accumulate red pills so eat them one by one. What's good is that you can't walk into a laser beam so you don't have to be careful around them. You can die only if you push a block that is blocking a laser beam away from the line of fire(rectangulary to the beam). Uh, I could use another word when referring to movable blocks.

Each of the next 3 courses(Jays Jungle Course, Lazer Lab Mayhem Course and Star Course) features 9 stages and when you finish one course then next becomes unlocked. This progress is saved so when you exit the game you don't have to worry about your "unlockings" being lost. Each course features it's own tiles while the Star Course features new sprites as well.

I must admit that the stages are not very difficult to solve but not ridiculously easy either. The Star Course was a bit disappointing on some way since almost all the stages were about pushing one block through the entire stage to block some laser. I was seriously stuck only once in the Lazer Lab Mayhem Course and that was because it took me some time to discover the trick the designer devised to fool the player. A bit evil idea since the player is not expecting to be tricked on that way(I'm so vague). What adds to the challenge is the highscores table and it's filled with default scores, thank God. Default scores is something I missed in so many games. The scores are not very easy to beat(except in the practice course) so you will have a reason to repeat a course after you finish it in order to beat the course highscore. The scoring works on a very simple way. All your moves are added to the score and every time you retry a stage(by your will or if you die) 10 points are added to your score. You can guess now - the lower the score, the better.

The last "secret" course unlocks when you finish the Star Course. It also features new graphics. I don't know why the designer refers to it as secret since it's written on the main menu even when it's still locked and it's also mentioned in the instructions. I won't reveal it all but again something new appears in the gameplay. You see, in that course you need to finish all the stages with limited number of moves. Before each stage you receive a certain number of moves and you can pass them to the next stage. Quite smart idea. I made it to the stage 8(out of 9) in the third attempt. Very challenging. Each move counts. There is a story behind this limited number of moves, don't worry. This makes 40 stages total. Not bad.

So no matter how this game fails in being very challenging that is compensated with the highscores and the last course.

Since the game comes with the source code(actually, it was distributed only in source code but I added a compiled executable) it's easy to find out how to unlock the locked courses, in case you are unable to do it regularly(really?).

As I already hinted Bozula Block Buster was made in SCREEN 12(640*480 graphics resolution) mode which I don't consider very important since high resolution graphics is not good graphics by definition. The game's graphics alone are above average(if not more) but the game feels terribly static. Not a single tile or sprite in this game is animated. Even when you move Zenmar the sprite remains the same for all the directions. So I can't say I'm happy with how the graphics were handled in this game but when I think about VGA Sokoban or FreeBASIC Sokoban I shouldn't moan too much.

Bozula Block Buster doesn't feature any music or sound but one PC Speaker sound effect used in the course 5 when you lose a game. The key word is "bomb". So this aspect of the game is pretty much non-existent.

While not being much more from an average game, and that's mainly because of the very poor presentation, Bozula Block Buster shows us how Sokoban games could and should look if the game designers were slightly more imaginative or motivated.

When I just think about making a Sokoban game I see so much beyond plain VGA Sokoban. I see a game that can load the standard .xsb levels but display them using neat and animated tiles. More wall tiles that are placed in the wall slots and animated by randomization. Several tilesets that exchanges as you advance in a certain levels package. Like every 10 levels. Pixel by pixel movement and an animated main character. Cool and polished design. Atmospheric background music. And an alternative game mode with some story and extra features like in Bozula Block Buster or some completely new. Do you see it? Heck, if I had the time I would start working on this right now. The idea itself would be relatively easy to execute. Darn, why I didn't think of this before? Oh, well. There is always someone else(I'm looking at you).

Final score
^4.5/₁₀

Get Bozula Block Buster

To download Bozula Block Buster click here: bozulabbuster.zip

Thanx for reading this dribble. I'm not sure what I'll feature in the next issue since I went with the best games in the first few issues of the column. So the next issues might be a slow decline in the quality of games. Or not. I have a lot of games on the list. I should be more optimistic. Cheers!

Porting the Official Hamster Republic RPG Creation Engine

Written by Simon Bradley (PlayerOne)

This article decribes the process of converting the Official Hamster Republic RPG Creation Engine (OHRRPGCE) from QuickBasic to FreeBasic. I thought I'd mention that straight away in case it sounds a bit dull, and you want to skip to the next item.

OHRRPGCE is a suite of programs for creating old-school top-down RPGs in DOS. It runs in 320x200, in 256 colours, and the only sound is Adlib FM-synth music. It is also user-friendly, has a flexible scripting system and has a decent community, giving a good stock of existing games.

Strangely enough, it was the disadvantages that initially attracted me. I saw it as a potential handheld game. The low resolution was perfect for the newer PalmOS handhelds, as was the comparative lack of sound. If I could only port the game player, then there was a library of games waiting to go.

Getting it to PalmOS is a long-range project, though. I'm not fool enough to leap right in and start coding the Palm version. No, my roadmap called for a gradual migration from DOS and QB via Windows and C, maintaining playability all the time. It's all about incremental changes, for me. I like to have something I can see running at every stage.

I'm not really a BASIC programmer; not even, particularly, a fan of the language - if you want to chase me out of town with pitchforks, now's the time - but I do believe in horses-for-courses, in using the right tools for the job, and FreeBasic was clearly going to be the simplest way of getting OHR working under Windows. The DOS/QB version of OHR is groaning at the seams. It needs to be freed of the constraints of real-mode DOS and QuickBasic so that it can be refactored into a more sensible structure. The problem is that it has grown organically, and the strictures of QBasic make it extremely difficult to reorganize. Most of the source files are pushing at the file size limit of QB such that making a small change can mean you need to displace another routine to a smaller source file. FreeBasic would remove this limitation, and allow the files to be rearranged on functional lines. It will also bring dynamic memory management, and will remove the 640k limit.

When OHR was first made open source, two of us began FB ports which eventually came to nothing. In fact that was the first time I had heard of FreeBasic, when Mike Caron announced his attempted port. That was back at the beginning of 2005, and both of us ran into problems. FreeBasic itself was less compatible, for a start, but the biggest problems were down to the assembly library used by the QB version. I was attempting to reproduce it in C, and Mike eventually decided not even to try, but to rewrite the whole thing from the ground up.

Some months later, I used FreeBasic for another project, a deliberately bad semi-game called HoldSpace. I used the built-in gfx library for this joke project, and realised that it mapped quite well to the OHR assembly library, so a little later on I decided to try the FreeBasic port once again, using 100% FreeBasic instead of trying to write a C library.

The first stage is the simple syntax conversion. For each file, I'd simply try to compile it and keep fixing the errors: comment out sections that had no relevance to FB (CLEAR, DEF SEG, etc) or that I couldn't deal with yet (INTERRUPT); rename variables that had the same names as keywords or arrays; that sort of thing. Nothing too dramatic, but a lot of find-and-replace. I also made a note of all my changes in a text file, in case I had to do it again. The QB version probably wouldn't stand still and wait for me, and it might be easier to reconvert a file than to add the changes.

Another early problem was BLOAD. The FreeBasic version is very different. Fortunately BLOAD was encapsulated in its own sub, which was rewritten to use GET. Then there was the integer size. I wanted to stick with 32-bit ints in FreeBasic, because it would give us more space for expansion later, and would avoid needing to declare everything as a short, but some of the file IO relied on 16-bit ints, so temporary short variables were added.

Because the QB version was still the lead edition, I wanted to keep the existing source files as close to the originals as I could. There was a new source file for the FB conversions of the assembly routines, and most of the work I needed to do could go in here. I would do extra work here to ensure code-compatibility with the originals. For example, a lot of data is stored in integer arrays, but is actually byte data. In the FreeBasic version I still only put two bytes in each integer, even though there is now space for four, since that is what other parts of the code expect. In an ideal world, they'd be ubyte arrays, but code compatibility is the goal at this stage, everything else should wait until refactoring.

Gradually I managed to get the major systems working and compatible: the graphics, the keyboard, the file access, the timer, etc. From empty stub functions, to loose approximations, to reasonably accurate duplicates of the original assembly routines. I tried not to let my lack of knowledge of assembly and of FreeBasic get in the way. Some of the routines were obvious, some could be worked out from context, some needed me to look up DOS interrupts, and some needed me to stare at the assembly source until it made sense. The keyboard handling was particularly tricky to replicate with multikey, and is still a bit odd. When a key is down, it doesn't continually register, it only registers at regular intervals. Without this repeat delay, things happen too fast: the cursor moves too fast on the selection screen, and the popup menu doesn't even get the chance to appear.

Finally, I had something that could almost play games, and I released an exe to the OHR dev community. Fame and fortune inevitably followed. Er, well, they must be on their way, right?

It was still quite rough, at that stage, and had no sound, no mouse support, and a few other omissions, but the potential was there. James Paige, the original author, set up a Subversion repository for me, and also implemented some of the simpler changes (variable names, and so on) in the QB version. In the end, the differences were comparatively small, and we wondered if it was possible for the QB and FB versions to share source.



Some early development screenshots.

Having too much time on my hands, I chipped away at this, bringing the common files closer and closer together. I created a header, compat.bi, and a source file, compat.bas, which would contain the differences for each version. The BLOAD wrapper function was moved, the default font loading routine (VGA interrupts in QB) was moved. I added a dummy CLEAR function to the FB version. I fixed the STR$ incompatibility using a #define macro replacement in the FB version of compat.bi. The macro changed each occurrence to XSTR$, a new function which added an extra space to STR$ for positive numbers, as in QB. To get the short integer declarations I needed, I added an empty sub FBDIM to the QB version, and used that to implicitly declare the integers, while the FB version used another macro to replace FBDIM with DIM AS SHORT. With a couple of compromises and a bit of preprocessor trickery, I was able to bring the source files together. Bar a small number of system-specific files, the FB and QB versions now share the same source, and can be maintained in parallel until the QB version is sidelined and the FB version becomes the lead.

Bugfixes and enhancements followed, until only one major hurdle remained: sound. The original game uses FM synthesis, which is not really supported under Windows and not found on many modern soundcards. There were two schools of thought on this, we could either try to emulate the Adlib sound somehow, or we could convert it to MIDI. I initially favoured a middle course: build a waveform from the FM instrument definition, and then use a MOD player to play it back at the necessary different pitches. There is a massive potential range of synthesized sounds, and MIDI just could not cover them all. In the end, though, this was probably too complicated, and too expensive to do on-the-fly. Also, most of the BAM music files were built using a General Midi instrument bank, so converting to MIDI would just be a case of figuring out the instrument and converting it back. Mike Caron had already written a player which worked on this principle, but I was still unsure. I wrote a little test utility to look up the instruments in a BAM file, and found that a fair number did not use the GM sound bank. Almost all of those used one other bank, which I also had access to, so I was able to set up mappings to GM. A small percentage of sounds were not in either bank, and would just have to be defaulted to something which could be entirely inappropriate. I wrote a command-line converter to test the principle, having first found out how to write minimal MIDI files, and the results were good. I incorporated it into the main project. With FMOD playback, we were finally ready for a public release.

There were a few problems with that release, some of which have yet to be fixed. Since then, FMOD has been replaced with SDL_Mixer due to licensing considerations, and the FreeBasic version has been merged back into the main trunk, the QB version. My own copies are slightly behind the times at the moment, since I have been distracted by other things.

So far, I have been entirely focused on the game player. Firstly, that was all I ever intended to port to PalmOS, and secondly, the editor is a different class of problem. There are many ways to make an editor, you simply (hah!) need to ensure that you write out the file format correctly. A proper Windows app would be possible, and there is a Python-based version under development. With the game player, everything has to be reproduced more accurately. The timing has to be right, the display has to be right, the scripting has to work the same. That said, the assembly library is shared between the player and the editor, and I have already done much of the conversion. I left out some functions that the player doesn't use, and I left out some aspects of functions, but I think it should be achievable without too much extra work, so maybe I'll have a go at that next. If it hastens the official move to 32-bit, then it can only be good.

Official OHRRPGCE page: http://www.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/
My FBOHR page: http://www.pocketfuel.co.uk/fbohr/
OHR Community: http://www.castleparadox.com/

Writing A Story For A Computer Game

Written by Lachie Dazdarian

Introduction

Articles of this kind are not a rarity and just about everybody and their granny(I love using this line) has something to say on this issue. So maybe this article shouldn't come as a shock to you. :P

I don't consider myself an expert in(I say this a lot) story writing but I flatter myself that I can detect what is bad and what is good in computer game stories better than most. Also, I have a huge experience with QBasic games and somewhat less but still large with old computer games so I know what kind of stories worked for me and what didn't. This brings me to the biggest flaw of this article, subjectiveness. I can't know how much my taste and observations apply on the taste of the majority of people. Still, I like ALL computer games(well, all but flight simulations) and ALL possible types of stories and settings so at least I'm not bias in that like some are.

This article mostly deals with topics like how to write story intros and outros, how to present and pace a story and stuff like that. The basics. It will deal with story(plot) development very little. I think too many articles dealt with plot development instead with the things that make most players interested in a game before that. In one sentence this is a game design oriented story writing article.

Does your game need a story?

Not all games need a story and I've seen quite few games where a story was forced and wasn't incorporated into the game. It was just something I would half-read before starting the game and very soon forget while playing it. Ever played MHTris or Pac-Clone 2?

Just check these screenshots of Pac-Clone 2.

Totally unnecessary, especially because Pac-Clone 2 features very generic, themeless tiles. Nothing that relates to the story.

Coffee break games and similar puzzle games(I'm not saying all puzzle games, mind you) don't need a story and you can only make it worst by trying to implement a story in a game of that type and ruin the graphical design so it would fit the story.

Even some long action/arcade games don't need a story because the driving force and the reason for playing that specific game can be above all the addictive and entertaining gameplay and not some background story or a mission.

What kind of story your game should feature?

Well, any kind of story you want and can think of, of course. But you must resolve with yourself how much the story is important in your game and how much points you want to score with people when they think of your game's story. The less the story matters to you the less you need to be original and uncommon. I don't know if something can be less or more original but you know what I mean. It's always good to feature a story that was done 50 or less times before than feature a story or a setting that was done 500+ times before somewhere else, in any medium(book, comic, film, computer game,...). Unfortunately, many people consider original and intelligent the things that really aren't that. The Chronicles Of Riddick and Dark City are perfect examples of movies written by people who have a misconception about what is original and what is smart. If you want to impress others with your game's story don't feed them with that kind of junk.

Very nice examples of original computer game stories are ARC Legacy and Wandering Hamster. ARC Legacy features a story of adventurers called Archaeologists who search for the remains of the previous civilization after the Earth got devastated in a nuclear war. That kind of story is far more interesting than a story where you fight against "an unknown plague that came down on the land" placed in a classic Tolkien kind of fantasy world. Wandering Hamster is a beautiful example of a cool, quirky, different and original game world. A world filled with things like sentient hamsters living together with humans, wolves who speak Esperanto, a bubble magician who looks like a Mexican peasant and dozens of other colorful characters/places. All this content makes Wandering Hamster a very intriguing and fun game to play from the first second.

"The ARC Legacy"

"Wandering Hampster"

Both of these games show that when designing a story you can put more importance on the game world, the setting and not on the plot because a game world can be enough for the player to get hooked. Anyway, a plot is about characters interacting and on how many different ways characters can interact? Definitely on less number of ways than you can construct a whole new world with it's own history, rules and features that make it special. If an original and different world is not what you have in mind and simply don't want to go crazy with it then try to be more unconventional and uncommon with the plot. It's not the path I prefer but it doesn't mean it can be less effective. Avoiding the classic good versus evil battle no matter on which side you would put the main game character can be a good start. Just don't start your game with a story where an unknown plague came down on the land and you are destined to save it. Even if during the game the player discovers that the force behind the plague is his mother, father, sister, brother, a person from the party or he himself because all of that has been done zillion times before.

Allow me to say few words regarding the issue of humor in stories in this section since I don't know where else to put it. This paragraph is mostly inspired with my recent experience of playing Kids Of Karendow. Very good humor is pure gold for any story and can make your game several times memorable and more fun to play. Why I'm bringing the issue of humor is because I want to make this point - you must be aware of your limitations! Average jokes or average humor in general can't do much damage but not much good either. Also, there is a very thin line between average and bad humor. If you don't have a good sense of humor don't force it. This is probably the only thing you can't learn(or it's extremely difficult to learn) in game design. I should point out that good sense of humor is not the ability to copy jokes from other games, movies, books or comics. If you decide to feature a humorous story you still must keep a serious approach to the story though this may seem like a paradox. Your story mustn�t seem like something the designer didn't consider serious or important. No matter how much your story may be wacky the plot, the characters and their motives must make some sense. Make your story funny but treat it well, if you know what I mean. I think a good example of a humorous story poorly managed is The Quest For Opa Opa(reviewed in the issue #9) which starts with a really poor introduction featuring an inbreed lumberjack living in a town called Wankerville. A huge mistake especially because the rest of the game features very good humor. I was a bit disappointed and surprised how Na_th_an failed to recognize and discard bad jokes from the game and what is the worst, the story is based on them. Don't get me wrong, The Quest For Opa Opa is a very good game overall but it starts very poorly which is something you must try to avoid as I will explain it in the next section. So to return to my point. Be aware of your limitations. This doesn't apply only on the humor in games but when someone fails in being funny it hurts the most. :P

Is the story so important?

I would put the story somewhere behind the graphics and the gameplay in the list of importance when evaluating any computer game. But here is the catch. Many people might compliment your game's graphics and the gameplay but not really play it. It's not the type of users we game designers seek. We look for people who will play our game and not just try it out. The story can be crucial in capturing the player's interest and putting him or her in the positing where he or she can actually experience your game. Many games are excellent but not very enjoyable on the very start, when we are still not familiar with the game mechanics and similar. That's where the story kicks in.

Writing/designing the story intro

There are few common mistakes game designers do when writing/designing the story intro. The biggest mistake you can do is overwhelm the player with too much information and pure text. Perfect example for such a mistake is Jonathan Wallace's Contact, where you are forced to read two pages of text dealing with unnecessary background information before getting to the part that really relates to the game. A similar mistake appears in Lithium's XGmae but XGmae's story intro is just on that limit where the player is ready to skip it because the intro jabs about events that happened 1000 years before the game's current time. Luckily it's not that long. If you want your game to feature background information try to divide it from an introduction of the main plot that relates to the very game. Put it somewhere else where the player can read it if he or she is bored. Also, be sure that your game really needs this kind of information to be available. Sometimes a joy of playing some game is in discovering it's world, characters and things that make is special. Yes, the main game character should be aware of these things but we are not living this character we are only playing a computer game. Fixation with realism is bad.

It's important how you will pace and present a story. Very good example of a well written story intro is Dies Irae where the designer quite intelligently tricks you with interesting and odd events which sadly don't lead to good plot development or a rewarding ending. But that intro, the dream where you are killed by an unknown person because you refused to destroy the world with him, was the reason why I got interested in the game and played it for few hours. If I knew from the beginning what about the story really is I'm not sure I would stick for that long.

"Dies Irae"

"The Griffon Legend"

Another example of a well written and presented story is The Griffon Legend where the sentences are carefully constructed so that the story is easy to follow and read. And the intro is not too long. Just the right length.

Of course, most often you shouldn't make the intro too short. I must say, I really disliked the intro in DarkPhear which practically reveals nothing. The intro opens with a dream where some girls calls you to save her. From who? What girl? And after you wake up your master asks you to find some fruit so he could make an antidote for the King's illness. And since this task lasts too long and requires too much patience you will probably not stick long enough to get hooked if something else awaits you. It's not the reason for me to dislike the game but enough for me not to get interested in it, especially if my free time is limited and I have other games, more interesting on the first look, to play. Reveal enough to make the player curious about the setting and the plot but don't reveal it all because something has to happen and reveal between the beginning and the end of a game.

Another thing, content is more important than form. It's more important what you say and not how you say it. Nietzsche, for example, features an intro based on a very decorated and a bit pretentious(sorry SJ) style of writing which is a bad substitute for an average and unoriginal(or even less than that) plot because it can only do more damage.

I can't give you many valuable tips about story presentation but anything is better than white letters on a black background(unless we are talking about IF where you don't have a choice). Scrolling the text, adding a nice background music, taking care how to construct the sentences(making them sound good and read easily), adding some animations if there is a lot of text, ...all of this must be taken into consideration when designing the story intro.

Does your game need an intro? Well, not always. But this is limited to very specific types of stories where the main character suffers from amnesia or has been transported to an unknown location. Not telling anything can be very good in such situations since you can easily project the main character's feeling onto the player. I would reserve this option to adventure games and perhaps RPGs.

A plot line

Most of us know these things but I think an article of this kind should mention them anyway just to make it more through-out. Repetitio est mater studiorum. In rough translation, Repeater eats mother's studio. Hmmm...I forgot my point. :P

Anyway, the longer your game is you should revel less in the intro and then add new plot lines/surprises later. It's important to keep the story fresh during the game. Knowing who is the main bad guy from the beginning and where the entire plot is based on characters wanting or not wanting to help you in your quest is not fun. I will mention ARC Legacy again because that game doesn't start with a very original plot but the very setting keeps you playing it. And the huge number of plot twists and new characters brought into the game keep it interesting constantly. I'll refer to something I said in one of the previous sections. The more your game world/setting is interesting and intriguing it will be easier too keep the player interested and to add new events and story lines in the plot.

Also, your game doesn't have to carry one same plot during the entire game. Wandering Hamster shows how you can start with one plot and end with something completely different. Your main character(if your game features one) can grow and change during the game(not in the sense of RPG experience points growth).

Writing/designing the story outro

The story outro(ending) is not terribly important as the intro and plot development because it has a completely different purpose. If you made a long and challenging game keeping the player to very end of the game is already a proof of your success. Still, the outro can be very important in leaving that final mark and impression on the player. With a bad outro and possible high expectations the player might have because of the excellence in the rest of the game I sincerely believe you can lower the player's opinion of your game from "excellent" to "very good". Of course, what kind of outro your game will feature completely depends on the rest of the game. Very often experience of finishing a game is not a reward enough and the player expects something more on the end.

I will mention few games that made me have high expectations about their endings and left me very disappointed. The first two are Fury Of The Furriest and Mega Lo Mania, commercial games from the early nineties. Fury Of The Furriest is an excellent platform game and it features a really nice story intro with full screen animations and stylish graphics. The ending alone is not terrible but compared with the intro it left me disappointed. Mega Lo Mania is a classic, a brilliant strategy game featuring a unique, mystic-like style of the graphics. In Mega Lo Mania the story is presented with a cool slideshow of excellent and stylish images. The ending is almost non-existent and it was a huge disappointment because the entire game design seemed like a build-up for something grand on the end.

For an example of a QBasic game featuring a disappointing outro I'll use Robot Robbery which I reviewed for QB Express in the issue #8. As mentioned there this game features an excellent, polished, funny and relatively long intro but not any kind of outro, only the credits screen. Definitely a disappointment because the game even features cutscenes between the levels. I remember Keith(the designer of Robot Robbery) explaining me in an email that he had problems fitting an outro in the code but you mustn�t allow yourself to end up in such or similar situation.

My point is if you have the skill and will to create a very cool intro and very good or excellent graphics for the entire game don't drop the ball when making the outro. It's recommended that you work on the outro while doing the intro. Don't save that kind of work for the end of the development because then you will be burned out, fed up with the project and not in the mood to create something on the level. But even if you leave it for the end there is no need to rush with the release of the game because you don't have a strict deadline which I can assume was a reason for such disappointing endings in Fury Of The Furriest and Mega Lo Mania.

Also, while keeping the outro on the level of the intro and the rest of the game it's always good to reveal something that is not revealed during the game or by the very act of finishing it. A very good example of a good revelation saved for the end is TerraScape, a great QBasic game I reviewed in the issue #14. Unfortunately, I can't reveal what the ending from that game contains but it's a school example of what an ending needs to accomplish.

So let's wrap it up:

- decide if your game needs a story or not(not all games need it)

- decide how important the story is in your game

If the story is important to you take these things into consideration:

- try to introduce a story that was not done many times before(or at all) and try to create an interesting and colorful setting, easy to manipulate

- don't make the intro too short and not enough revealing(you must catch the player's interest; make it intriguing)

- don't make the intro too long and reveal it all(the player must have a reason to play the game other than just beat it; implement discoveries and revelations in the plot line)

- an intro is not obligatory; you can leave it out with some types of stories

- try to present the story in a way it's easy to follow and understand; don't overwhelm the player with too much background information

- if your game is relatively long implement surprises and twists in the plot; you don't have to end the game with the plot your started it with

- try to keep the outro on the level of the intro and try to reveal something new on the very end

That would be it. Of course, I don't think you should follow these tips as The Ten Holy Commandments because computer games can be so different and my observations can't apply on all of them the same. Just consider this article as a set of advices. Take what you like and leave what you don't.

Until next article, stay among the living. :P

Visit my reviews/articles site: kentauri.digitalblackie.com/articles/

Download a copy of this article: Writing_A_Story.zip

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42 Total Votes

QB Express

Issue #16 ~ November 26, 2005

In This Issue

From The Editor's Desk

Written by Pete

Submit To QB Express

Letters

Letter From MystikShadows

Letter From mennonite

Letter From The Big Bad Wolf

Express Poll

What is the most deserving QB Express site of the month?

News Briefs

QB Site News

Project News

Competition News

GUI News by Brandon Cornell

Gallery

Written by Pete

The Janitor

Searching For The UnknownBozula Block Buster by Johan Olofsson, 2001

Written by Lachie Dazdarian

Introduction

About Bozula Block Buster

Get Bozula Block Buster

Programming Language Syntax Tenets

Written by Agamemnus

Porting the Official Hamster Republic RPG Creation Engine

Written by Simon Bradley (PlayerOne)

Review of Tera-Mamoliny by Deleter

A review by Stéphane Richard (Mystikshadows)

INTRODUCTION:

PLAYABILITY: Score (4/5)

OVERALL ENTERTAINEMENT: Score (3/5)

REPLAY VALUE: Score (3/5)

TECHNICAL FEATURES: Score (2/5)

EDUCATIONAL VALUE: Score (4/5)

THE FINAL VERDICT: 16/25 (64%)

Site Review: Venosoft

Written by Alec Elton

Writing A Story For A Computer Game

Written by Lachie Dazdarian

Introduction

Does your game need a story?

What kind of story your game should feature?

Is the story so important?

Writing/designing the story intro

A plot line

Writing/designing the story outro

So let's wrap it up:

Monthly Awards

Written by Pete

S

Searching For The Unknown
Bozula Block Buster by Johan Olofsson, 2001