Letters

Letter From Lachie Dazdarian

I want to congratulate you on another great issue, Pete. It was so good to see it finally compiled, and featuring so much content.

The section I'm most interested in, News Briefs, the highlight of the magazine, was so well compiled it was a joy to read. Such a detailed scoop of the community events for the past month/two months is an invaluable source of information for anyone interested in the community as the community, other than in his/her own project (whatever it might be). The ability to download the magazine and have this part of history saved on my hard disk is only another plus. Anyway, I'm glad I was able to help with some parts of it.

It's nice to see Qlympics moving forward, although after a year of delay. :P

I only hope the next edition of the awards will be managed much better. I must admit that I was somewhat disappointed with certain finalists for some categories, but that's what you get with any community voting. Not that I think people are dumb, but the majority just doesn't take the time to seriously reconsider and analyze their choice. They just click. I mean, do I have to mention People Choice Awards? Funny, I remembered to vote in the Qlypmics poll only yesterday. I hope most will remember to do the same. I didn't vote in several sections. Mostly those I'm not interested in, and those I'm highly disappointed with (namely, Best FB Ports of a Past QB Game). Anyway, seeing some of the results I'm starting to lose interest in such type of awards (where the entire community decides) so I probably won't be much of a help with the next Qlympics. Sorry. It's just how the human mind works. When you put effort into something and it turns out quite different from what you expected, not a big chance you'll do it all over again. Am I right? I guess I was never a fan of democracy. :P

It was interesting to read your response on Z!re's article and the community reactions on it. I don't remember anymore if I was against publishing the article back then, but I honestly don't blame you for publishing it. I was mostly annoyed with Z!ire writing it, and mainly criticized the article, not the very fact of QBE publishing it.

Pritchard's article about disliking QBE was also an interesting read, and although he is not completely wrong, I pretty much don't agree with most of his points. I definitely didn't create the FreeBASIC Games Directory because QBE disappeared. I did it because FreeBASIC.info administrator couldn't handle hosting FB games anymore, weather along archiving them properly. QBE is the result of the community, and not the opposite. If the community stops being interested in QBE, less and less articles will get submitted, you Pete will lose interest in editing the remaining bits of content, and that will be the end of it. If the community turns toward some FB portal, submit news zealously, comment other people news, fine by me. And even if such portal would exist, QBE would make sense as its philosophy and format is rather different from any forum/news portal. As you replied to Pritchard in the FreeBASIC.net forum, "The point of the magazine is to take the most interesting content posted by the community and reformat it into a concise, informative and easily-readable summary of everything that's going on."

Anyway, I'm having doubts in a success of a FB portal, especially one that is user-driven. It simply seems that our community isn't breathing that way right now. I can testify that with my FreeBASIC Game Directory. Maybe it’s because our community is way more than a gaming community, which the old QB community mostly was, so it is difficult to reconcile all the different parts of it with a web-portal sort of site. QBE, on the other hand, with its editors and format can handle that aspect of the community much better.

I can understand his slight annoyance with QB content, as I tend to be disappointed seeing some tutorials written for QB instead for FB. I keep getting amazed still seeing people around in some parts of the community asking question about using EMS in QB and similar. I just don't get what these people are trying to accomplish, and why they are so stubborn when a perfect substitute (the best they could wish for) exists.

The articles section in this issue was fine, but I felt it was somewhat lacking. I kinda missed the usual gems from SJ_Zero and Deleter. Love their stuff. Hope to see more of game design rambles in the next issue. I can never get enough of those.

The tutorials section was also good, but not great. I guess I just didn't find enough content that would intrigue me. Mathias' "Programming Simple Cellular Automata with Freebasic" tutorial was very interesting, and I'm glad someone decided to write a tutorial on this topic. On the other hand, I'm still trying to crack stylin's tutorials, as the topics he chose and the style are really getting through me. :P

Very nice comics in this issue, but I especially loved James Kinney's one. Very witty, and one of the best I've seen in all the issues so far, together with Matt2Jones's masterpieces.

I don't know else to say, only wish you many submissions for the next issue.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to compile something. The next edition of my angle tutorial shouldn't be difficult to do, but since I started working I'm finding it very difficult to allocate my free time properly. I'm learning new understanding for people who can't find time for the community.

In case you missed, I released a final version of Mighty Line, so if you don't mind, compile something in the news briefs about it. Thanks!

As for LONG, it’s in the mud, and I’m not sure if this will change soon. I started brainstorming with Zamaster regarding a new joint project (don’t tell anyone :P) so we’ll see.

Cheers!

Lachie Dazdarian - The Maker Of Stuff

Hey Lachie, lots of great feedback.

I agree that the results of the Qlympics nominations round were a bit disappointing, and for the Qlympics 2008, I'm considering selecting a panel of judges who will put a lot of thought into who they vote for. That doesn't mean I'm going to completely remove the Qmunity voting aspect, but I think that I will create two divisions -- "The People's Choice" and the "Judges' Choice" -- and see how everything down. It's many months away still, so I'll have a lot of time to come up with the fairest possible system.

As for Pritchard's whole debate about whether or not QB Express is hurting and stifling creativity in the community, I obviously don't agree with him; I think QB Express does just the opposite, and there are plenty of examples to prove it. If anything, QB Express is a motivator -- people know that their work will be featured in the magazine, so they will go above and beyond to do a better job on everything. I rest my case.

-Pete

Letter From Stéphane Richard (MystikShadows)

I know, I'm one of the editors, but hey, I still wanna have something to say so I addressed it to Pete so i don't look like i'm talking to myself (you know what they say about that hehe).

You said so in your introduction, that QBE was really back with Issue #23 and you weren't kidding. just look at all the awesome contents we've been presented with in that issue. Beautiful work to all involved. NOW I can say, just like you did, that QBE is back. I enjoyed everything i read in there and the comics were great. ( in an effort to save computers all over the world I looked long and hard to find that liballeg.dll.a is in C:\FreeBASIC\lib\win32 ;-) ). there, now you all know. hehe.

Ok a small paragraph about Pritchard's article (I'll try to keep it small atleast). I don't know how long Pritchard's been part of this whole FB movement exactly but he needs to remember that Fb wouldn't be without the people from QB. And I bet FB wouldn't have the success it has today without the great startoff it got from the QB community too. And like you said, there's plenty of FB contents in QBE so QBE isn't blocking FB out, no reason for the opposite to occur. I still ponder his posts on FB.NET which I can't link to since it was in the offtopic but I'm sure he knows them..Blaming QBE for him giving up on those projects has no point or purpose. From what I've seen with all the efforts made in different attempts at starting something for FB (including other websites, other forums, other projects and the "less than great feedback, or lack there of from other members" I'd say QBE was brought back to life because the other efforts were welcomed so badly. So QBE responsible for both his projects going to crap? I don't think so, I don't buy it, he'll have to come up with a better excuse than that to convince me.

As far as the rest of the magazine goes, what can I say, it's QBE like we know and like we loved, every single part of it brought a smile to my face and it showed that a great deal of work went into this issue. The comics well hey, they were all great. Just can't get enough of those comics. Short yet very entertaining. Can't wait to see more of them.

The Gallery was quite filled, that's great to see. I think Rokkuman's game is looking very promising, Option V (even if not updated screenshots) looked pretty darn awesome to me. Ande well just seeing anything in the gallery is a good promise of things to come. So I always hope atleast a couple of screenies of new things make it to the Gallery every issue :-). also, It was great to see Color Triple YAHTZEE! mentionned too. My first take at a real game. Sure the game itself isn't original, but it was fun to make. :-)...I really enjoyed. I see Na_th_an's back among us a little more. So na_th_an, when can we expect to see the next part of your awesome series? ;-).

I can tell Lachie right now that his problem isn't from within himself. It's not about how good you are. I think he's mixing cause and consequence to his recipe. So to him I can say this. If I compare my Color Triple Yahtzee to his vector X game demo, sure my game is complete, but it's text, has no sound, and well he already knows what it is. I can't compare my game to any of his, cause his games (as flawed as he says they are) are way out of my league right now. And that's the main reason ColorTriple YAHTZEE is a text based game. I could have given it a gui, but I not with FB, not as it is right now. But you know what? Color Triple YAHTZEE is my first game, and it gave me the bite I needed to get into it. So even though it might look, let's not be shy with words, looks crappy to most people as Text Game can only go so far these days, I'm proud of it. :-). So Lachie, hang in there, stick with what you know, don't take on the world it doesn't work, but you can start by taking your own backyard and you can make your backyard look better than it was and you can make it look better than your neighbors ;-). And while you perfect what you know, you can play with what you don't know (whatever that is) and learn it as you go. Programming, game or otherwise is a question of logic, design and patience. :-) He of all people should know that already so sorry for sounding like your concience's broken record lol. There's such a thing as being a harder judge on yourself than you are when judging other people, that's a big part of it. And well, games.freebasic.net rocks. :-) And what's to say about his "Angles in 2D environments and artificial smarts based on them" great material right there, I learned alot from it. :-).

I never realized that MOD and remainder were such an issue until I read Moneo's article on the subject. And he might not know it (or maybe he does ;-) ) but I have the highest respect for his experience and knowledge. I have to admit that in more than one time, now that I read his article, I probably should have used the remainder technique instead but was too stubborn to reinvent the wheel so I used mod with a set of operations on them instead. Oh well, I should tattoo this article on my forehead in reflected mirror image so I can read that again and again every morning lol.

I liked Mentat's tutorial on AI with value points. Short might have done good with a bit more explanation but I got what he was saying and the subject was awesome...I think he should write more. Interesting subject presented in an interesting way even if short ;-). Dean Menezes wrote the answer to one of my greater questions in his How to write a chess program article. I had some idea on how I would do it if i was to write a chess program. However, I gotta say my way would have been very different and probably longer than his. I really like the way he coded it and well, seems to work pretty good to (though I'm not a chess master and can't test it thoroughly).

Programming Simple Cellular Automata by Mathias was good too. anything that leads to simulations or AI is greate in my book :-). And this is one of the better ones i've read on cellular automatas. he has a great way of explaining things in there. :-) great work to say the least. Likewise for stylin's Singletons tutorial. Clearly written by someone that knows what singletons are all about. Coincidentally I have the same thing to say about his "Using procedure pointers to vary behavior" article. I want more from stylin hehe. I like his gift in explaining. :-).

And yes, as if 6 parts weren't enough I had to be bold and create a 7th part to my Commercial and Professional software development series (hangs low and out of sight for a while hehe). But yeah, this aspect of a project is often neglected by personal projects and I've seen it neglected at a professional level as well. So I figured something to emphasize the importance of that phase might be a good thing. :-).

Great work to all, I can't wait to read more in the next issue. :-)

MystikShadows (NOT WRITING TO HIMSELF HERE, BUT TO PETE ;-) )

I always love your enthusiasm, MystikShadows! Regardless of how much people trash QB Express, I can always expect a positive response from you. I agree on your thoughts on Pritchard's article...we're all trying to make the QB & FB community a better place, so why can't we all just get along?

Great work on Triple Color Yahtzee. Even though a lot of people in the community consider you a veteran programmer, it's surprising to hear that this was your first game ever. Well, you really pulled it off -- it's a fun and complete game, and it really captures the game nicely.

Thanks again, and I'll expect another letter from you next month. :)

-Pete

Letter from E.K. Virtanen

Hi QBE :)

I hate to repeat myself here, but again it was a great issue. Also it was good to see that Qlympics are back in business. Im waiting here to see results. Not because of for some reason Bungy got nominated (i was like "wtf???", bungy is nominated but atleast three great text-games was not...maybe i do remember theyr years wrong or something.) when i did see it there. But because i have there special favorites, wich ones i really do hope to win.

One thing i did wonder was that FBSound by D.J.Peters was not nominated at libraries. I have worked it with now for few weeks and i can say it is a great sound library. I recommend it for every one to try if any audio is needed. Hopefully D.J.Peters keeps up a good work with it.

Closure of FreeBASIC "Off Topic" subforums was a good call. It seemed like there were few persons who's only "Function" was flaming and whining about everything. FreeBASIC forums dont need that kind of posting.

Also your new policy is good one. If letter/article is made only for a flame, it should _never_ get published. Hopefully things calms down now. Too much bad and evil words has be seen. Cha0s and whole FB dev. team; You are doin a great work, ignore all flamers and keep on doing :)

E.K.Virtanen

www.ascii-world.com

Thanks for reminding us about FBSound. I agree that it should have been nominated! (But then again, the nominations were entirely up to the community, so I guess we collectively overlooked it.) Anyway, it will be eligible for next year's Qlympics, so never fear!

As for the closure of the Off-Topic forum at Freebasic.net, I actually don't think it was a good idea. The Off-Topic forum was a very active and interesting part of our community, and while there were some debates that occasionally denegrated to "flaming," I think it's important that those debates take place. I can't stand discussion getting silenced because some administrator doesn't like it. As I've said many times before in QB Express, I'm a near absolutist on free speech, and I wish the Off-Topic forum would return. It was also a very tough call for me to modify the QB Express policy on publishing *everything* due to Z!re's article, but once I realized that the subject matter was entirely unrelated to QB or FB, it made the decision easier.

-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!

Site News

Dav restores his QBasic site

Dav, a QBasic programming legend, restored his old QBasic site which is now hosted at www.qbasicnews.com. The site is his personal collection of QBasic stuff (programs, tools, …), but he also promised to restore soon his much more popular site (in the “good old days”) - The QB code post.

Visit the site here: http://www.qbasicnews.com/dav/

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

RubyNL Launches new website

RubyNL has launched a new QBasic site featuring his original programs and tutorials.

RubyNL has programmed mostly graphics effects such as Sphere Mapping, Explosions, Rotozoomers, Scrolling maps, Water effects, Bumpmappers, Julia Fractals, etc., and has also written tutorials on the subject of QB graphics coding. (Many of his tutorials have been featured in QB Express, including a fantastic one this month.) Anyway, this is a very useful website, and very few people have even heard of it yet, so I thought I'd write a little news brief about it.

Visit RubyNL's Homepage!

News Brief by Pete

FB-World moves to a new host

FB-World, a QBasic/FreeBASIC news portal, moved to a new host, and you can now find the site at this link: fbworld.adaworld.com. Also, a new forum has been installed.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

QuickBasic GUI Scene is alive...barely

It's been a few months since JacobPalm.dk went down and was replaced by an "Under Construction" message. Since then, the QB GUI Community has not been nearly as strong, and many have assumed that the death of Jacob Palm's site had ushered in the death of the QB GUI scene. In fact, the only GUI to release in 2007 is Brandon Cornell's Fun500 GUI.

But the scene is still not quite dead and gone. There are still about 5 dedicated members left and they hang out at The QuickBasic GUI Blog. If you're interested in checking out some of the GUIs this community has put out, or becoming a member, that's the place to go!

News Brief by Pete & Brandon Cornell

Nine new games in the FreeBasic Games Directory

Lachie Dazdarian's FreeBasic Games Directory has continued its regular updates in the past month, with the addition of nine new games since the last issue. Lachie collects just about every FB game created for the FBGD, so this is an excellent barometer to judge how many new FB games have been released. Games that were added include: Mighty Line, Catloaf: 2600, 1945 ver0.55 and the Moon Project Beta and more.

We encourage you to log in and rate/comment a few of the games in the collection. While each game is given a master rating by the staff of the FBGD, user comments and ratings are just as important for helping the users judge which are the best (and worst) games.

News Brief by Pete

QBasic.com Forum Changes

Mark Wilhelm, owner of the highly-trafficed but mostly inactive QBasic.com has updated the site's forums:

"If you take a good look at the new, upgraded QBasic.com forums (now running on vBulletin), you will see that the "Programming Help & Discussion" forum redirects to the N54 QBasic forum. There's still a subforum for people to post in for help if they don't want to leave QBasic.com."

That's it!

News Brief by Pete and Mark Wilhelm

Project News

RetroSound with FMod

redcrab has released an interesting library for using QBasic-style SOUND in FreeBasic, using either fmod or fbsound. One bug has been found; I'm not sure whether it has been fixed yet or not. In any case, I foresee much fun with this one. You can get it here.

News Brief by notthecheatr

HEX FACTOR demo released

Vdecampo has released a demo of his upcoming space shooter entitled HEX FACTOR. The game opens with an excellent AVI video, and features very cool graphics and sound. Vdecampo has several more features to complete before the final version, but the game looks very promising so far.

Check the original forum thread here.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

FreeBasic 0.18.1 Beta Released

A slightly-updated version of FreeBasic has been released. According to the release notes, "This is primarily a maintenance release to update a few of the binaries and correct the installation problems that some users had with the 0.17 Beta release."

The most significant changes were:

Strings and User Defined Types (structures) are passed default BYREF in the -lang fb compiler dialect, and all other data types are passed default BYVAL. This is different from both fbc-0.17 and fbc-0.16 versions of the compiler.

Due to a name mangling bug in v0.17b, most FreeBASIC libraries must be recompiled to work correctly.

To get the new version, visit FreeBasic.net.

News Brief by Pete

Another (final?) demo of 1945

dreamerman has posted news and a download link for a new version (0.55) of his old-school shooter 1945.

dreamerman on the game update:

Important changes:
better power-up's system,

volume changing works now,

changed main_loop style,

More info in "to do.txt" file.
Currently game is 'one infinite level game' and has most of final version features. Now I want concentrate on other projects, so for some time this will not be continued. Next step for this game would be changing it to 'level based' game, that's plan for distant future.

Check the original forum thread here.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

FInstall

KristopherWindsor, a forum regular, released an update to his useful program FInstall, a program for quickly running forum examples. It seems to be a very useful program; it takes source code from the clipboard, saves it in a .BAS file, then compiles and runs it.

Version 2.0 is out. It lets you install .BI files (without attempting to compile them), recompile the latest program, or open it in an editor.

The forum post is here; the download is here.

News Brief by notthecheatr

VISG GUI builder

mrhx, a relative unknown in the FreeBasic community, released a visual GUI creator for FreeBasic last month. A few similar things have been done, notably vwx-c by dumbledore (which uses wx-c to create GUI elements), but this seems to be the first one that works using the Windows API only. It also generates code for many programming languages other than FreeBasic.

For more information see this forum thread.

News Brief by notthecheatr

DaBooda OldSchool Gaming Library

After last month's cool demo, DaBooda has released his oldschool gaming library as well as fairly extensive documentation.

This library was created to provide a structure for programmers to create retro 2d games. Much like the older console systems(ie. Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis). It is really fast, but with speed comes a very low level of interactivity with the library.

For those who missed it, the demo is very nice and runs a sweet 60fps on most machines, even with 1024 sprites moving across the screen and parallax scrolling of the backgrounds. Yes, those red and green arrows are sprites!

DaBooda's original forum post is here; the library, manual, tutorials, and two tech demos may be found here.

News Brief by notthecheatr

MoonProject

AlexZ has released his first short game, it's a simple but fun tile-based strategy game set in space titled "Moon Project."

For more information, look at his forum post; a download link is posted.

News Brief by notthecheatr

Mighty Line

Lachie Dazdarian has released the final version of Mighty Line, the runner-up of ciw1973's last competition. This version includes few important gameplay changes, bugfixes and two new music tracks.

For more information check this forum post or visit the game's homepage here.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

Sky Test Demo by syn9

syn9 posted a download link for a very cool 3D demo in the FreeBASIC.net forum which was announced to be used as sky backdrop for his Zero GTR project.

Check the original forum thread here.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

Redcrab updates Moon Lander

Redcrab released two consecutive updates (ver 1.4 and 1.4.1) on his longtime developing project Moon Lander. The updates include retro sound fx, cavern capability, zero g / space travel, sub-levels, text story cut scene, 8 story-drive levels (more to come), and more. Additional updates have been announced.

Visit the official game thread here.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

The roach simulator

paulevern posted news on his very interesting and still developing roach simulator project entitled MaHiRoSi.

Visit the project homepage here.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

netmsg (a networked chat program)

Segin posted news and the source code of his small FreeBASIC client-server instant messenger for use on any TCP/IP network. The current version is 1.01 (for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD), and new versions have been announced.

Check the original forum thread here.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

A 3D Pacman game announced by Dr_D

Dr_D posted news and a download link for a demo of a cool upcoming "software 3D" Pacman game in FreeBASIC.

Check the related forum thread here.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

Competition News

Another ciw1973 compo?

ciw1973 has anounced plans for another competition coming soon, though the exact details of the competition have not yet been hammered out. As before there will be monetary prizes for the top 3 entries; ciw1973 also indicated that it will not be a particularly difficult challenge, that beginners and pros will compete equally. Given the success of his last competition, it will be interesting to see what this one will produce.

News Brief by notthecheatr

A RPG competition by Eponasoft

Eponasoft has started a new competition in the FreeBASIC.net forum entitled The "Standard Resources" RPG Competition. The competition started on August 22nd, and was scheduled to end on November 1st. The main rules are that only FreeBASIC traditional-style role-playing games are accepted, the story has to feature “members of the community”, and contestants are referred to "standard competition package", which contains graphics, music, and sound effects, but are not obligated to use it.

You can check the competition thread on this link.

Eponasoft was strangely silent regarding the competition since the last post from August 25th, so we can only speculate at this moment on the success of the compo, although few people expressed their interested in the very beginning.

News Brief by Lachie Dazdarian

Have news you would like us to report? Email qbexpress@gmail.com!

Qlympics 2006 Results

Written by Pete

The wait is finally over. After more than a year, and three different rounds of voting, we've finally narrowed down all of the QB and FB programs that have been released between 2003 and 2006 to the best of the best.

Congratulations to all of the winners!

Best Arcade / Action Game

Winner...

Zero G by Syn9

With 32% of the vote, Zero G is our winner! Syn9's Wipeout-inspired 3D racer is one of the most impressive QB games of all time. Zero G has some of the coolest, most stylistic graphics ever created in QB, and its zippy, breakneck racing action makes it a blast to play. And with six different ships and four tracks, it's got more than enough content to keep you coming back for more! Plus, Syn9 is busy working on a FreeBasic sequel to this game, so you don't have to worry about the Zero G franchise fading into obscurity.

Runner-up: Mux

Pieslice Productions' awesome 3D shooter is arguably the best FPS ever made in QB, and it received 27% of the vote -- just narrowly being edged out by Zero G to win this category.

Best RPG

Winner...

Lynn's Legacy by Cha0s and Josiah Tobin

With 53% of the vote, Lynn's Legacy wins by a huge margin. Lynn's Legacy impresses on almost all fronts. This action RPG really captures the essence of games like the SNES Zelda and the other greats of the genre. With beautiful graphics with smooth animation, multi-layered sound and music effects, a deep and enthralling quest, and lots of collectible items, and a lot of style, Lynn's Legacy is a very deserving winner.

Runner-up: The Griffon Legend

Syn9's popular FB action RPG pulled in 25% of the vote, but it wasn't enough.

Best Strategy / Puzzle Game

Winner...

StarQuest v1.1 by Jace Masula

With 53% of the vote, StarQuest by Jace Masula is our winner. StarQuest strands players in a spacecraft in the middle of the galaxy in quite a predicament: they must survive while avoiding space pirates, mining for resources, researching new technologies, buying ship upgrades, and feeding the crew. This is a deep and compelling strategy game, and a deserving winner!

Runner-up: Poxie

Lachie Dazdarian's FB puzzle game managed to pull in a very respectable 36% of the votes, but Jace Masula's QB strategy game edged Poxie out for the win.

Best Text-Based Game

Winner...

Deep Deadly Dungeons by Rick Clark

With 45% of the vote, Deep Deadly Dungeons (text version) is our winner. Rick Clark programmed two versions of DDD -- a graphical version, and this text-based version -- both using the same engine. While Rick Clark's graphical Roguelike only received a few votes in the "RPG" category, it dominated the text-based game category. A very fun game, DDD is an excellent example of the Roguelike. And once you're done with this game, check out Rick Clark's other FB roguelike, FBRogue!

Runner-up: The Quest for Opa Opa

Na_th_an and Aetherfox's deep and compelling Interactive Fiction game is very popular -- and one of the first FB games ever released. It received 30% of the vote in this category.

Best Graphics

Winner...

Lynn's Legacy by Cha0s and Josiah Tobin

With 56% of the vote, Lynn's Legacy is our winner. Josiah Tobin's colorful and stylish graphics gave Lynn's Legacy a fun, inviting feeling that hearkens back to the days of SNES and Genesis. But just as importantly, Lynn's Legacy animates smoothly and feels very "alive." Josiah also proves that oftentimes in graphic design, less is more. For instance, Lynn's sprite doesn't even have any facial features (her head is just an orange ball), but it looks fantastic nonetheless.

Runner-up: The Griffon Legend

Syn9's action RPG came in a very close second with 44% of the vote. It was a tight race between these two FB RPG moguls -- and between the two of them, they completely edged out the other nominee, Frantic Journey by Adigun A. Polack and RelSoft.

Best Sound

Winner...

Lynn's Legacy by Cha0s and Josiah Tobin

With 34% of the vote, Lynn's Legacy is our winner. Lynn's Legacy is on a roll...but much deservedly. This game features rich music and sound effects, but even more than that as well. Lynn's Legacy features soundscapes -- birds chirping, nature sounds and more. This attention to detail is surely the reason why it was our winner.

Runner-up: The Griffon Legend

Once again The Griffon Legend is playing second fiddle to Lynn's Legacy -- with 29% of the vote.

Best Gaming Hunk

Winner...

Jocke of Hungry Jocke

With 34% of the vote, Jocke is our winner. This character, based on the popular QB coder and roguelike fan Jocke The Beast, is the only hunk that was based on a real person. Sure, he is just the default ASCII smiley face character, but looks aren't everything. Jocke's winning personality is what made him win out in this category!

Runner-up: Fayne from The Griffon Legend

We should give Syn9 a consolation prize for all of the Griffon Legend runner-up finishes, heheh.

Best Gaming Babe

Winner...

Lynn of Lynn's Legacy

With 65% of the vote, Lynn pulls in her fourth award! Lynn's Legacy is cleaning up, winning every category it was nominated in. This time, Lynn really dominated the competition, pulling in nearly two-thirds of voters with her seductive green hair and orange-ball face.

Runner-up: Alexa Cullers from Cyber Chick

WisdomDude's heroine Alexa Cullers received 26% of the votes.

Best Villain

Winner...

Margrave Gradius of The Griffon Legend

With 44% of the vote, Margrave Gradius is our winner. Finally a win for The Griffon Legend! The final villain in Syn9's action RPG was a tough and intimidating foe, and the community agreed.

Runner-up: Vlad Dracula of ...In The Nocturne

Vlad Dracula pulled in 26% of the vote. DarkDread never ceases to amaze me. Every QB RPG he's made -- even the ones that he spends only 24 hours on -- turn out to be fantastic. And even though Dracula is a pretty generic villain, DarkDread created a phenomenal sprite and wrote phenomenal dialogue to make this a deserving runner-up.

Best FB Port of a Past QB Game

Winner...

Wetspot: Tenth Anniversary Remix by Adigun A. Polack

With 42% of the vote, Wetspot: Tenth Anniversary Remix is our winner. Adigun A. Polack's port of Angelo Mottola's heralded Wetspot is a shining example of a port done right. With new modes and updated features, this FB port proves that Wetspot is still a fun game, even a decade after its initial release.

Runner-up: The Secret of Cooey

Tunginobi's port of Darkdread's first 24-hour RPG creation, The Secret of Cooey received 33% of the vote. The first Cooey game was always pretty hokey and rushed (considering that it was thrown together quite quickly), but it's a welcome flashback to our QB days of yore -- and as I mentioned before, we just can't seem to get enough of DarkDread's RPGs.

Best Graphics Demo

Winner...

RelSoft

RelSoft had two entries in this category -- his QB graphics demo Mono and Disco, as well as his collection of FB graphics demos -- and between the two of them, he received 80% of the vote! (34% and 46%, respectively) That makes RelSoft both the winner, and the runner-up for this category. Even though he was splitting his votes between two excellent graphics demos, he still managed to take the prize -- proving that he is a supremely deserving winner!

Best GUI / Fake OS

Winner...

Millenium OS by Todd Seuss

With 64% of the vote, Millenium OS is our winner. Todd Seuss is known for his website with reviews of just about every QB GUI every created, so if there's anything he has an expertise in, it's the Fake OS. His product, Millenium OS, mimics Windows in a DOS environment quite nicely -- and as a result, it received almost two-thirds of the vote.

Runner-up: Costa .80

Jacob Palm's GUI received the other 36% of the vote (not surprising, because it was the only other nominee!)

Best Library

Winner...

YAGL by Marzec

With 42% of the vote, YAGL is our winner. Marzec's "Yet Another Game Library" features all kinds of useful graphics routines for aspiring FB game programmers, and this library is popular for its great speed and ease of use. Although the project is now defunct, it is still a very deserving winner.

Runner-up: RelLib

With 30% of the vote, RelSoft's self-titled library came in second. This is the best (and perhaps the last) big gaming library for QuickBasic, and if you still haven't moved on to FB, RelLib is as close as you'll get to matching FB's speed and flexibility.

Best Utility

Winner...

AsciiQuest Editor by Jace Masula

With 42% of the vote, AsciiQuest Editor is our winner. Jace Masula's ASCII game programming engine is a polished, easy-to-use and fun program to play around with. Although it was never entirely finished, it has enough functionality to create cool little ASCII quests (perhaps starring "Jocke" the smily face) -- and it's a deserving winner.

Runner-up: ASCII Scrolling Map Maker 2

Rattrapmax6's ASCII Scrolling Map Maker program received a close 39% of the vote, much deservedly. This is a very cool program that can convert your ASCII maps into 3D landscape renders.

Best Overall Programmer

Winner...

V1ctor

With 44% of the vote, V1ctor is our winner. Is it any surprise that the creator and mastermind behind FreeBasic won this competition? Without V1ctor's contribution to the community, most of us wouldn't be here, and this magazine certainly wouldn't exist anymore. QB has been on its way out for a long time, and if not for FB, chances are the community would be nearly dead at this point. V1ctor's contributions are incalculable.

Runner-up: RelSoft

RelSoft is a jack-of-all-trades who programs great graphics demos, phenomenal libraries, helps with many games, and writes great tutorials. His expertise on all things BASIC makes him a more than deserving runner-up to v1ctor.

Best Tutorial or Tutorial Series

Winner...

RelSoft's 3D Series

With 49% of the vote, RelSoft's 3D series is our favorite tutorial series. The 5-part series covering all the basics of creating and manipulating 3D graphics in BASIC is the definitive resource for people who want to learn the basics of three dimensional design, and is one of the most downloaded tutorial collections ever in the QB community.

Runner-up: MystikShadows

MystikShadows is one of the most prolific writers in the QB/FB scene, and his tutorials are very popular. For his many series (MIDI, GUI Design, Commercial & Professional Application Development, File Manipulation in QB/FB, more) he received the second most votes.

Best Article or Article Series

Winner...

QB Express Gallery / Blast From The Past - Pete Berg

With 55% of the vote, my article series for QB Express won out in this category. I'm glad you like my writing! I put a lot of work into QB Express every month, and it's nice to get some recognition for it. :)

Runner-up: "Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? No, It's FreeBasic!" - Blitz

The official announcement of FreeBasic in QB Express received the second highest number of votes, with 27%. This was the most important news event ever published in this magazine, and it ushered in the next generation of BASIC and the next generation of our community. Due to its historical significance, this is a very deserving runner-up.

Best QBasic of FreeBasic Site

Winner...

FreeBasic.net

With 50% of the vote, FreeBasic.net is our winner. It only makes sense...the homepage of FreeBasic and the hub of the FB community and message forums is the most popular FreeBasic site on the Internet.

Runner-up: Pete's QBasic / QuickBasic Site

My site was the second-highest vote getter, with 32% of the votes, thanks to the huge collection of tutorials, active message forums, and QB Express this magazine that you're reading right now.

Well, that's it! Thanks for voting, everyone, and congratulations to the winners!

The next Qlympics will be held in 2008. See you then!

Review of Lodestar developed by Shendelyar Evgeniy (ShenZN), 2007

Written by Lachie Dazdarian (Aug, 2007)

Introduction

Lodestar was developed by ShenZN, a relatively unknown community member who seldom appeared in the FreeBASIC official forum, only asking seemingly random programming questions. His Lodestar was not announced at all, and therefore was a pleasant surprise to anyone interested in the FB gaming scene once a topic about it appeared in the FreeBASIC forum's Projects section.

Anyway, Lodestar is an unconventional action game of a smaller size, consisted of 5 story-driven stages, each stage featuring different gameplay and challenge, ranging from pong, space invaders to lander. This gives the game a unique flavor and results in a rather uncommon gaming experience.

Despite featuring quite few novice game design / programming mistakes, the story written in horrible English, and virtually "impossible to finish" stage 4, almost everyone who played the game was eager to see these mistakes corrected and the game released in the best possible condition. That brought us to much improved version 1.0.2, the one I'm reviewing.

The Review

The story of Lodestar is nothing particularly intriguing, nor something completely underdeveloped.

In the distant future the humanity inhabits the Earth along with other planets of the solar system. As a result of this more and more energy resources are needed to sustain the existence of the human space empire named Lodestar. You are a space ranger charged with a special mission to transport the prime Lodestar source of energy - the Energy Sphere created on the Earth with the joint scientific effort.

The game starts with an alien race Andropes attempting to steal the Energy Sphere, this triggering our plot and taking the player through several different adventures.

As I previously pointed, the game is consisted of 5 different stages, each introducing different gameplay.

The first one is a pong-like stage where you bounce the Energy Sphere back and forth between two ships, trying to keep it inside the screen and avoid collision with the space trash. A relatively easy and un-thrilling stage. One could say, not very promising for the rest of the game.

The game pickups up with a second "space invaders" stage, bringing more fast-paced gameplay, but still not challenging enough. Also, this stage lasts a bit too long for the variety of content and challenge it provides.

The third stage is a collector-type of game where you control your spacecraft with mouse clicks (rotation) and space (thrust) in order to collect the lost life pods. A quite different experience from the first two stages, and definitely more tricky.

The forth stage is my favorite one, and the most challenging. It features an exciting mission where you need to land 5 life pods on a passing ship at the bottom of the screen, and the time is of crucial importance. There are asteroids to avoid and gravity (?!) to worry about. Fun!

The last stage is an aim and shoot type of game, sadly far from challenging enough for the finale, but still solidly executed.

You may notice that I didn't describe any of these stages as something exceptional, but what makes this game fun is the sum of all these parts. They simply work great as parts of a single story, providing thrilling gameplay experience. I found it very difficult to stop playing the game before completed it, or reaching the impossible stage with the original version 1.00.

The lack of challenge still remains a notable flaw, and some players reported that they were able to finish this game from the first try. Still, this fact probably won't leave you terribly disappointed. You will most likely regret the journey lasted so short. The game does require about 20 minutes to be finished. Hopefully you'll need more than one try.

Being obviously a first game by an inexperienced game designer, this game won't impress with its smooth gameplay and some glitches and clumsy features/mistakes are present even in this version (note the incorrect direction of the falling rockets/bombs in the last stage).

The second element of the game that leaves much to be desired is the graphical design. While featuring few cool pictures and sprites, overall is incoherent and unpolished. Nothing to seriously dislike there, but nothing to be impressed with either. It IS intriguing in it's unconventional style on few places, but just that - intriguing.

Beside the changing gameplay, the strongest side of the game is the excellent original music, done by the very game developer. ShenZN definitely shows talent here, and I can only envy him for having this (so much desired by game designers) skill. Very cool and skillfully composed tracks that suit perfectly each stage/screen they accompany and highly enhance the play experience.

Definitely a promising release by a debut developer. ShenZN did left us much to wish for in Lodestar, but also much to hope for from his future project, whatever it might be.

The Verdict

Graphics: 69 %
Sound/music: 88 %
Gameplay: 64 %

Overall (not average!): 67 %

Good:

changing and story-driven gameplay

excellent music

Bad:

novice programming and graphics design

lack of real challenge

lack of high scores

short play time

Download Lodestar here.

Written by Lachie Dazdarian: lachie13@yahoo.com ; The Maker Of Stuff

Programming on a Collaborative Project

Written by Stéphane Richard (Mystikshadows)

INTRODUCTION:

As the title suggest this article will try to cover everything you need to know about collaborative efforts and group projects. SOme of you might believe that working as a group is as easy as getting a few of your friends and start coding. THis might work for very small projects but definitaly not if you want to make a good detailed elaborate project that warrants team development. For this reason, you need to organize things and people alike. This is what I'll try to convey during this article, how to know what exactly a project is all about, what it needs, and how people fit in the team and take it all the way to selecting the right people for the job at hand.

We'll start this off by taking a sample project, describe it, break it down so to speak because in the case of projects big enough for team development, if you don't plan you're either killing the project or slowing it down so much that you end up thinking "I should have done this myself". Lack of planning (atleast minimum planning but the more planning the better) is one of the key elemnents that can break a project no matter how good the idea of the project is because let's face it, a big project just isn't that easy to just split in X amount of coders and then patching it all together in the hopes that it all works out. So let's start this collaborative journey and see where it can go shall we?

OUR SAMPLE PROJECT:

For the sake of justifying this example we'll create an imaginary huge project. This will be a game, a huge game that has many different sections and coding and whatever else to do. This game we will call it Quest For Collaboration. We'll use alot of things for this game as you'll read below. Basically a project so big it would be ludachrist to even think of doing it alone. Here is the ron down of what Question For Collaboration needs to be able to accomplish.

Coded to work with either DirectX or OpenGL:
This is a prerequisite as some OS make better use of one of these and others don't. You want this project multi-platform and you want it to rock on all supported OSes. Hence you decided that this was a necessary step.

100% Original Graphics For Everything:
You want people to remember your game or the awesome graphics that were created just for that game. To do that you'll need to think of alot of things and alot of different types of arts. There's more than one of course and they all have to fit together under the main theme of your game. Some people are good at creating characters, others are better at creating background landscapes, to each his own.

Needs to Have a Good List of Songs and Sound Effects:
You're a copyright paranoid and and want everything created by you and your team. Since you realize not everyone might enjoy your type of music you also need to create a system that let's them pic their own playlist from the players own files if they so wish to.

A Very Elaboration Scripting Engine:
Think of this as almost a programming language in itself. From this language you want to be able to completely control every other parts of the game. From sound to graphics to textures to you name it. You want to be able to do anything you want in this language. So it's a good engine in itself that you can then use in future projects.

Two distinct Evolved A.I. Systems:
By that I mean one for your enemies and one for your allies. They both need to perform different types of evaluations and you chose to keep them independant for that reason, just too different to be in the same engine.

A Brand New conversational system:
Basically, you don't want the conversations in this game to look like or feel like the classic Zelda games. And you can't find a suitable Open Source alternative to some of the conversational and dialog systems that some of the better games have. Hence, you need to make your own.

Internet Enabled And Chat Facilities:
What good game doesn't have this feature? If you're going to go against these big boys this needs to exist as you can understand. Two things basically are needed here. The first is checks for updates and update downloads so the player can be sure to be playing with the latest version. The next one is an IRC Client for the users as well as an IRC server for you (or for the central server that will host the chats).

A Database System
Sure some might question this in a game. But what if your game's purpose is to simulate a real world situation like a collaboration project? There is alot of data that needs to be shifted left and right from one module to another. You might be able to use binary files, but a Database system will typically give you your results alot faster and presorted of your queries are formulated right.

Strong Statistics, Trend analysis features:
with this you can evaluate certain things from how the player is playing and adjust the AI of your characters accordingly. There's more than one criteria to consider, some of which can only be obtained by a good statistically based trend analysis.

Of course you might look at this and think that you could use this or that to take care of this or that part and you might be right. But for the sake of this project let's say that there's nothing premade that can be used. Or you're stubborn and want everything originally made for this game. Now that we know a bit more about this imaginary project, we can start asking some questions.

WHAT'S WHAT IN ALL THIS:

You'll notice here that so far I didn't talk about other coders or anything. I can say that the first step to a big collaborative effort like this one isn't to call your friends up front and tell them to get ready to code on your ultimate game project. The first thing to do is to split this project into sections that can then be split into tasks and start thinking about what type work each of them mean. Once you have that (as we'll attempt to do below, then you can start thinking about who does what. So for now, let's enumerate the different types of tasks so that we understand a bit more of the actual work involved.

DirectX and OpenGL Support Engine What we're talking about here is a high level Interface between these two low level 3d Engines. Something that will detect what's on the player's machine and given the right options as it finds them available. This interface should be able to perform the same jobs on both engines in the most optimal way so that the graphics are nice and smooth no matter which Engine is being used. this engine should also be able to create windows, insert objects, attach materials, adjust camera and lighting and other needed functionality expected from a 3D Engine.

Graphics and other Artwork this means of course the title pages, sceneries, characters, creatures, things to find this to fix or solve (depending on the game). basically, in a good detailed game like this you're probably looking at a good 300 to 500 original arts, textures and the likes (maybe even in the thousands). Added to that is any cinematographics that you might want added in there as well as visual special effects. No programming here just art and creativity.

Music and Sound Effects Today, a good game has music (themed music) and sound effects. Depending on how elaborate the game is, this can easily mean a couple 100 sound files and atleast 3 theme songs, one for the introduction, one for the game play itself and typically one for each type of ending the game can have. After that, any more music is usually appreciated by the players, hence, icing on the cake. For this project, let's say there's about 10 themed songs to do.

Evolved Scripting Engine As mentionned above, the scripting engine should be sophisticated enough to control all aspects of the game from all AI systems to graphics, to music to any events and interactions that can occur between the player and the other characters, allies or enemies, as well as interactions between diffferent elements inserted into the world created in the 3D engine. This way it's a good head start for future games that can make use of this scripting system.

Enemy and Allie A.I. Systems Remember here that these aren't simple AI engines. And that Enemies and Allies are two different entities in what they would actually have to do in relationships to themselves, against each other, in relationship to the player and to the environment they are in. Diffierent enemies will have to behave differently in all these circumstances and so will the allies. Truly not a small thing to do right.

Sophisticated Conversational System I guess here that this can be indirectly tied to the A.I. systems. By using a 3 level understanding of the player's input and interactions it would be possible to create a completely independant and surprisingly sophisticated conversation system that could just be plugged in where needed and let it do the rest after you pass it a sentence. How detailed you want to go in this engine depends completely on how much dialog you want to see occur in a typical encounter of two characters (regardless of if the encounter is with an enemy or an allie).

Internet And IRC Support These two are in the same engine but internally they are two different things. What we need on the internet side is to be able to upload/downloads either updates on the games, new maps, whatever is made possible at a given time. Maybe you'll want the players to be able to create a profile of themselves and upload it to the central server so others can see who they are and how well they are doing in the game so far. On the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) system it's about creating an environment where people can meet up and talk to each other during the game play itself. This means connecting to some IRC server, joining rooms (called channels) and sending messages, sometimes files, other times private messages between two players and other standard chat features like that.

Database System I won't be a masochist here. You're allowed to use MySQL or some other database system if you want. What I mean by database system is the entire set of tables and queries in those tables to allow you to do typicaly database work like creating databases and tables, inserting records, updating information, deleting records and the likes. Hence you'll need to create these standard SQL queries to do these jobs for each of the table you need in the database system. All this plus the code to connect to the database and execute these queries in the programming language of your game.

Statistics and Trend Analysis Though this is summarized as two elements, it can ramify itself into a very complex engine. First thing it depends on is exactly what you are trying to get from the data you're analysing and what you plan on doing with those results. What you'd like to do is be able to compare a user's performances in the game against the following: 1. The true right way to act or react in a given situation (which you should know since you're creating the game), 2. Compare things to how the majority of users would and should react in this situation, 3. Evaluate how bad (how far away from the right path so to speak) the player is at all times. There's more, but the object is to learn about the player's way of playing the game because you want the game to adapt to how the player is playing. You'd want that either so you can make the game a bit harder (if he's doing good) or maybe just know what kind of hint to give him to set him back on the right path. doesn't sound all that sime does it? but that's ok, you're going to be a team anyway.

And now we have a better understanding of what and how much work we're dealing with. Depending on the project it might be a good idea to detail this even more than I did here. When you're dealing with any project of bigger sizes, the more you can document and fully understand, the better it is for the success of the project. So then what's the next step? You know what you're dealing with in your project at this point. Now comes the time to take it a step further and start seeing how to involve people in there somehow. So let's talk about this side of a collaboration shall we?

WHO CAN DO WHAT HERE:

Before you start throwing names in the air. The very first thing you need to establish is if your friends or the people you know best can help you with any of this. You created this project, I'm assuming at this point that you actually want this project to be realized, to see the light of day, hence, to succeed. In that frame of mind, the first question is not "who's gonna do what?" but rather, "Is there anyone (known or not) that can do one of these things, or more?". unless your friends with thousands of people chances are there isn't enough people that you know to fill in all the gaps of the project. Some of your friends or whoever you'd want on the team right now might be able to do some of it. Maybe you know a musician, maybe you know an excellent graphic artist, that's all great if you do. But if you don't, it's not like you can just take graphics out of your project so what can you do?

Indeed, your friends shouldn't necessarily be the first in the list unless you know that a. they can do the kind of job you want them to do, b. they will have time and want to do that particular job. Once you do know the particular kinds of job (as listed above) then you can start asking your friends if they'd like to work on the project and do what you'd like them to do on it. Once you have the answers from those people, you list yourself whatever is not checked in the list so you know what's left to do. For those jobs not yet assigned to anybody you have more than one possibility. The first of which is if you can do it or not. If you can't, can you learn it fast enough for your own deadlines? If not that either, can you get someone else, that knows that stuff, to do it for you? What's the best way to get people to do help you out? Let's look at that right now.

ASKING FOR THE RIGHT HELP FROM THE RIGHT PEOPLE:

Most of those reading this right now will probably think "ask for help, yeah right!". Well, one thing I can say is if your game sounds intesting enough, that alone might entice some people. Of course, it doesn't stop there. You've seen some people ask for help before, you've seen some of the replies they got too. So why did they get that reply? Let's review some of the possible reasons and try to bring some solutions to them.

Don't be a stranger:
Sound weird maybe? This is for the regulars and the newcomers too, this one is addressed at the newcomers if you want help for a project, don't ask and dissapear for a few months. That's the first sign that your project is not going to be realized, atleast it's the first conclusion we can come to when we read your request for help. You have to keep people posted. Let's say you asked for help in 4 different forums and from one of those forums you got the people you needed. Go ahead and let that fact known to the other forums. So we're not all just looking at it for months with "yup, I knew it, another vaporware!" in our heads. If you didn't find anyone yet, go ahead and repost as a reply to your original post. So we know you're still looking for help. We don't have a crystal ball, we can't know these things unless you tell us. This alone shows you have interest in atleast attempting to finish your project and who knows it just might make the difference you need.

The project is way over their head and will never be realized:
Sound familiar? I thought so too. That's probably the most common type of conclusion people jump to when they see a request for help on a game. My first suggestion here is to two one of two things in your request for help. 1. You can show that you can do it (no the game is not over you heard) or 2. You can show that you have the people that can do it. No one here is stupid per se. People can read and they can see, if you post it right, that you're not a newbie, this is or isn't vaporware because you either have the know how or the organization and group to make it happen.

The project is too big way too many things to do even if you know how:
Well, anyone reading this want to create their own complete 3D flight simulator? That's a huge project and if you look online it's been done, by groups of people. Here again the fact that you are a group and that you want more members shows your dedication to the cause. in a lot of cases, tasks like those described above can be brokem down into independant engines that can be created simultaneously and independantly of each other. If you can spot them and assign people to these independant tasks you successfully cut down the development time of your project. To show this without having coded yet, you need a website or a page that shows how the organization is done. Showing this also shows how ready you are for this big project.

I don't want to see the results of my work in 5 years:
This one is typical too, but this is for the readers actually. Sure you don't want to wait 5 years to see your results, in a way, you could help make that time shorted by perhaps seeing where else you could be useful and helping out even more. Your project isn't the only one out there. Perhpas with a bit more of a community effort both projects could be ended a lot sonner than intended or expected.

Be polite and curdious, give credit where credit is due:
This one goes to everyone, requested and replyers to requests. If you posted to request help. And you happen to not get any replies, don't go posting that we all suck for not helping you. It won't get you anymore help on your next great game project when you ask for help again. Sure it's no fun to not get replies, but it doesn't mean you won't get replies on your next project. And if you follow the previous three points, you just might get replies which nullifies this particular point. If you're a replier to a post for help. There are ways to reply. Saying something like "I won't participate because I think your game idea sucks!" isn't going to help anyone and especially not you if you ever do need help. You get what you deserve, if you're bad in replying, we'll be bad at replying to your requests for help. This isn't a complaint, simple base rules so to so speak for good relationships for future projects for all. And of course, if you do get help, make a good effort and not forgetting to credit those who helped you. That goes without saying.

So then with these points in mind, you can start to formulate your request for help. Don't post 6 pages long requests just because you want to tell them everything now that you've read this article. It's best to stick to the facts and link instead. Something like: "I'm creating this game which is a 3D realtime RPG. There is alot of work to do and if I'm to succeed in this effort, I'll need help. Here are the types of help I need:" Then you list the different help items on your list. and you can finish it with: "If you're interested in learning more about the game, here's where you can read the details as well as how things are organized for success so far.". And of course don't post that until you do have the page with the information you say it has. If we click on it we don't want to see an "Under Construction" sign, we want to read about your project. You can be quite surprised how much of a difference a little organization and preparation can make in your request.

Now that you have everyone you need, is your job done? The answer is no. The truth of the matter is that at this point, you're only about halfway there. Because once you have your people ready to help you. You need to keep yourself on top of your game (literally and figuratively speaking). For one thing, maybe you have part of the coding or design to do, you make sure you do it, do it well and do it promptly. But that's just the beginning. In the next section we'll look at what you need to take care of from now until the release of your game.

THE PROJECT MANAGER TO DO LIST:

The first note I'll make here is that I do realize that this isn't a commercial effort, it's a game project you want to do. It doesn't mean that you can't apply some of the professional project management concepts to help you out. So no, I wouldn't expect everyone to get themselves something like Microsoft Project and use that. But there are ways to organize people and work that can play a big role in how long it could take to make the project and how good the chances are of actually making the project a sucess. Alot of them involve simple common sense and a bit of reasoning. The others are there mostly just you help you use your common sense. Here we're going to list some of the better ones to give you an idea and we'll describe what they are and what use you can make of them.

The Infamous To Do List:
Yes infamous because most coders don't want one of those. However, you're not most coders, you're the creator of this project of yours and in dealing with a group effort, this can prove to be one of your most powerful tools if done right. It's also a good way to get a quick view of recent progress made to the project. The list should be simple one item per line with a status column, here's a simple example:
```
                Quest For Collaboration To Do List
                  As of Monday, August 27th 2007

1. Arts and Graphics:

   Work Item             Resource            Status
   --------------------- ------------------- ----------------------
   Title Page            Mister X            In Progress (20% Done)
   3D Textures           Mister Y            In Progress (25% Done)

2. Music and Sound Effects:

   Work Item             Resource            Status
   --------------------- ------------------- ----------------------
   Main Intro Theme      Mister A            Done
   In Play Theme         Mister B            Not Started
   Ending Theme (win)    Mister C            In Progress (50% Done)
```
This can be done in a regular text file, in a webpage, in a forum post it doesn't matter where or how, the important thing is that it exists somehow somewhere for all members of your team to see. You put all the items you have in your files in this list. This way you have everything you need in one place and you can see what needs to be done next, what needs to be started and so on. As you can see, this is simple enough, and you fill in the status but not before talking to those doing the job of course. which brings us to our next item.

Set The Priorities Right:
Sometimes this can be the trickiest. But this is also the task that relies on common sense more than most others. In your project, you can probably determine most (if not all) of what the really important elements of the project are. It's not impossible to start giving an order to things too. If you want the scripting engine to play sounds when issued the right command it's probably good common sense to be sure that the music and sound effects system is working before you start the scripting engine. This way you'll know the engine is there, and you'll also be able to make lists of function calls and their parameters so everyone else that will use this engine will know how to call things in what order to get their music or sound effects to play. This kind of ordered classification of tasks and engines is what I mean by priorities.

Get Information From Your Team:
This is good for the first item, the to do list. But it's also good to know if there are any bottle necks. If someone is working on an engine that is needed by 2/3 of your project you might want to see what you can do to make sure that particular engine gets done as soom as possible to avoid useless waits for 2/3 of your team and for you too. Constant progress is the best way to motivate you and your team to move forward and to get things done. If you don't ask the question for two months, you might cause a two month delay in the project. So it's good to ask around at regular intervals just to get a good idea of what's happening where.

Give Information To Your Team:
As the organizer of the project it's your responsibility to keep the team going. This means two things. 1. you don't want your team to be stagnent (immobilized by one person) basically, if you ask information from your team frequently enough you can see a bottle neck coming because that particular task just won't seem to be moving forward. Likewise, other members of your team might start telling you that they're waiting on this or that engine or system to be ready before they can start work on this other task. If they can, instead of just waiting, they could see if they can help the other user in some way so that the task gets done and the rest of the project can move forward.

Keep your team motivated:
By this I don't mean to by the pizza every friday or the beer. I mean don't be affraid to show some gratitude. Especially on a project like this. People in your team are taking their time to help make your dream a reality. They don't have to even if they are your friends so letting them know their help is appreciated and valued is the least you could do, don't you think? This plus the points above (keeping them informed, keeping the work going, avoiding bottlenecks when you can, all that together promotes the success of your project.

Know When It's Time To Switch Things Around:
This means three things. The first is, if you follow the points above, and you can still see some serious dragging in the project, maybe it's time to talk to your people, see what's going on, it's a competence issue? Did someone throw himself into something above their heads when they told you they would do this or that task for you? If you just let it drag you won't know why things happened. And not knowing something in a project is one of it's greatest killers. Don't be mad if they did go over their heads, maybe they didn't know appriori that this task would ramify into such a big monster. It depends how you described it at first and what it is now. The second meaning to this is as I mentioned earlier, to make sure the bigger tasks are attacked first, and in group if you can. If it's over someone's head, maybe another member of that sub group might get an idea that will work. The third meaning is about you, the creator of the project. We all have the best of intensions when we start a project. If you get too many bottlenecks or you have one that just doesn't seem to be able to make it go away. It's time to take step back and see if the problem isn't one level up, in your level need to be broken down differently. If that's the case, don't keep your team in suspense and let them know so they don't bust their brains for too long for no reason. Better to take a week if you have to to replan that section than to let them try to figure it out for three or four months. Better for you, for them and of course for the project.

From these points I think that you can be very well equipped as far as what needs to be done before (all the documentation, organization and so on) and the start of during the creation of the project. In the next section I'll talk to you about some of the tools at your disposal during the creation of your project that are there to help you move things forward. Using this tools helps, but these are more stated in case you're curious because ultimately, with everone on your MSN lists a few emails and time you could probably do the job good enough for a good big project.

THE TOOLS AT YOUR DISPOSAL:

There exists tools that have been specifically created with project collaboration in mind from the grounds up. So if you have time to familiarize yourself with them you might notice the many advantages they have when you're tackling a team project. It all depends on how you like to work too. This is why I'm listing more than one of these tools because one of them might allow you work exactly like you want to work while another one might be closer to how someone else likes to work. in essence they typically all have the features for group projects, it's all about which of them makes the most sense to you since you're the one that will be using it. But if you're considerate you might want to get your team to look at some of them to see who's confortable with which tool so you can reach a decision on which tool is the best for all team members. Here there are, in no particular orders. Note that all the tools listed here are freely available so don't be affraid to look at them.

Open Workbench:
If you happen to be one of those who know what Microsoft Project is, seen how it works, what it offers and you like it, this is the best Open Source alternative to it. It features probably all the features (though I didn't compare them feature for feature) that Microsoft Project has but it's open source and free. It's designed from the grounds up to give you everything that the other one offers and is a great application to work with. If you want to use it but don't know anything about it, I would guestimate the learning curve of this to be about 2 weeks max. which isn't all that bad considering all it offers.

Task Juggler:
If you know Microsoft Project and you want something different to manage your projects, Task Juggler just might be the tool you are looking for. It features a unique way of organizing people and resources all based on a grammar syntax file (a script almost) which allows for fast editing. From these files you can then create not only the classic Gantt chart like reports but also many other views of a project that reveal other very important factors of the success of the project.

These two seems to be the only applications (as in not web based) that are probably worth mentionning. What follows is the web based collaborative solutions available that I deemed worthy of mention.

Dot Project:
This is a website based collaboration application done in php. It is very much used in alot of collaborative efforts and it seems, by some of the evaluations, to really fulfill its promise to help organize group efforts.

Active Collab:
The first thing that hit me about active Collab is how simple a layout it had. It may lack some of the functionality of Dot Project but the layout and organization of information is very well done which might make it a better tool to use for someone starting out in a group effort like this.

The Trac Project:
This is one I noticed very recently. The unique thing about this system is that it's a wiki based project tracking system. We all know the advantages of a wiki in itself. Take those advantages and integrate them into a project management tool and you get Trac Project. I have to say that the way wiki is integrated into this tool makes it quite unique and adaptable to it's intended purpose.

Of course there are other groupware / collaboration tools, these are, in my opinion the top three. If you want to see more of them you can visit the Open Source C.M.S. website and check out their "Groupware" section where they list about 10 of them. These type of tools, when used right really help everyone involved (organizers, designers, graphics artists, musicians and developed under any and all of the sub projects involved get their job done without delay. For this reason, I would take a good look at them if you're planning on team development before crossing them out. You just might have that tool to thank for the success of your project so taking time to learn one might not be as bad an idea as you might thinnk. Aside that, if you plan on making your game open source as well, you have the Source Forge website which does offer some groupware features as most of you probably known by now.

IN CONCLUSION:

A successful team depends on these tools, but they also equally depend on how good you and your team are at staying on top of things. Projects like these are based on good faith of all members of the team. They should also be based on keeping it real. Like I mentioned above, if something is over your head, don't be affraid to say so, right at the start or if you figure it out in the middle of the development, let it be known to the one organizing the project. If it's over your head but you really want to learn how to do it, let it be known too. You might still get to do it and learn what you want you wnat to learn and at the same time others won't expect things that fast from you if they know you're learning along. Simple things like that can really help make a project move forward smoothly and avoid alot of grey areas so it's important to consider this from the very start of a project whenever possible. And this of course can be accomplished with good communication from you, the organizer of the project and the team members. That is between you and team members, team members and you, team members and team members (in different engines for example). Communication is often the key to the success of projects like these so don't hesitate to communicate what happens when it happens. This means that If you know something's coming up that will cut your time available, let it be known right upfront as soon as you're aware of it so that the team can have a chance to adapt itself accordingly.

As with all my contributions, I hope that this was fun to read and most of all that you learned something that will help your next team project to move forward and succeed. That's the bottom line, if this can make your project work then my mission as the author of this article has been accomplished. So, if parts of this aren't as clear as they could be or if you believe you might have a good idea, be sure to contact me (my email is below in my signature) so we can talk about it and see how it can all work out. Until next time, happy reading and "team" coding.

MystikShadows
Stéphane Richard
mystikshadows@gmail.com

Download a copy of this article: collaborativeprojects.html

What makes a game good? What makes a game great?

by Joe King

What makes a game good, and what makes one suck so bad that you wish you hadn't downloaded it in the first place? It's important to know this difference, so you can take your game from something mediocre to something great.

Out of all the QB games released over the years, many were pretty horrible. It's not that the games themselves were meant to be this way (okay, maybe some were) it's just that everyone else who plays it can't play it like the developer intended. Maybe it runs too slow or too fast, or it's not fun, or it's too buggy, or maybe it just won't run at all. Yes, even some of my games I made in the past suffer from these issues. But I've learned from them and hope that you will learn too. Let's not have this epidemic plague the FB scene like it did with the QB scene. I've seen a lot of quality FB releases, so let's keep it that way.

What makes a game good?

Whatever your game may be like, no one will play it unless it passes the following rules:

1. It must run
2. It must be user friendly

These rules may sound simple, but let's go into them with more detail.

Rule #1: It must run

This may sound pretty obvious, but there's a lot more to understand about this idea.

Your game must run, and run well, not only on your computer, but on every other computer out there. If you finished a game, tested it, and it works great, then that's just the beginning. You need to try it on other computers. Send it to friends and have them play it on their computers. Try to expose your game to as many systems out there as you can, and note the differences. If it runs well on one computer, but a little slow on the other, or maybe it crashes on another, then diagnose the problem and fix it. Your goal is for every computer to run it the way it's meant to run. Now getting your game to run on every computer out there is close to impossible, there are different operating systems, processing speeds, etc. But you should be able to get it to run on every computer that falls into the same category as yours, and if possible, many more computers.

Rule #2: It must be user friendly

You might think that your game is the best thing in existence, which is fine. Maybe it is, but if no one but yourself can figure out how to play it, then you're game won't get the recognition it deserves.

A game that is user friendly is something that you can just pick up and play. If most people can figure out how to play your game on their own easily, then you're in good shape. But many more games can be complicated, like RPGs. Some games do have a learning curve to them. If they do, then still try to make your game as easy as possible to learn and use. Always include a manual of text file with the basic controls and game rules. Nothing's worse when people get frustrated with your game and throw it into the recycle bin.

What makes a game great?

Just because a game can run and be fun doesn't make it great. Although it may be fun to play, it can also get boring really fast, or once you beat it you have no desire to play it again.

So what makes a game great?

1. Fun Factor
2. Replay value
3. Polish

Fun Factor

Let's face it. No matter how good your game looks, or how many special effects you pack into it, it's not going to amount to anything unless it's fun. Fun factor is that hook that keeps you coming back for more.

Before you release your game, have some friends test it out first and get feedback from them. If they say it sucks, don't take it personal. Instead, take it as an opportunity to improve upon your game. Nothing feels better than when someone says your game is awesome, not because they're your friend and don't want to hurt your feelings, but because they really feel that way.

Maybe you're friends will come up with some crazy ideas that you'd never even try to implement if you had a knife held to your throat. If that's the case, then don't push the idea off. You do have to be realistic when developing your game so that you'll be able to finish it. So instead of pushing the idea completely off into the gutter, try to do what you can with it. Maybe tone it down a bit to see if you can fit even a piece of that into your game to make it better. Just do what you can. Every little improvement helps.

Replay Value

If someone beats your game, will they delete it and never have the thought of playing it again ever cross their mind? If so, then your game needs some replay value. Replay value is how fun it is to play to game over and over. Give your game a longer lifespan by adding some of this.

There are many ways to increase the replay value of your game. Some maybe you'll be able to come up with, but I have some ideas if you can't think of any.

Add a score keeper. People always have a reason to come back to your game if they can beat their old score, or top someone else's.

Add some secrets to give the player a reason to come back and find them.

Give your game more depth. What does this mean? It basically means adding more things to do and places to go. For example, if you are making a platform game, add different routes through the level. So if the player beats the level, it doesn't mean he's seen everything. He can always come back and take a different route and it'd feel different like another level to explore.

Polish

This may not seem a necessity, but this is one of the most important parts of a game. Polish gives your game presentation. It makes it feel professional instead of amateur. It gives your game that great first impression that makes players want to come back for more.

Scenario: It's the middle of the night. You are making the final additions to complete your game. Once you finish it, you upload it and submit it to as many game sites as you can. You post it on as many game and programming forums as you can. Then fatigue sets in and you hit the sack. When you wake up in the morning and read the forums, it's nothing but complaints about how your game sucks or that it doesn't run.

Don't let this happen to you.

If you finish your game, always spend time to go back and make it better. Because most of the time the first version of a completed game is pretty lackluster and mediocre at best. It's like writing a story or a research paper. You start with a rough draft, and then you get feedback from friends, fix the spelling and grammar errors, make the noted changes, and then release the final draft. Developing a game is no different. You're first release (often called the beta version) is your rough draft. You should never officially release your game while it's in this stage. Fix all the bugs you find, make it as user friendly as you can. Polish the graphics and try to make everything look professional. Make sure to get some feedback and fix everything that anybody might complain about. Because if something can go wrong, chances are it will to at least someone.

Remember a little game QB called Wetspot 2? Oh yeah, it's been hailed as the greatest QB game of all time. Well, what made it so great? Let's see what the developer, Angelo Mottola, had to say about that:

"Good gameplay and polishness. I put lots of effort in the small details, and that's what makes games good games. Of course by polishness I also mean bugfree: I spent several months just for the beta test phase, to ensure the game had no bugs when I officially released it... Even today I've never heard a person complaining about the game stability."

Source: QB Express: Issue #5: "Piptol Meets... Angelo Mottola"

Wow! He spent several months polishing it and fixing bugs before he released it. Learn from his example. Wetspot 2 wouldn't have been as great if it was buggy and only ran on half the computers that played it.

Conclusion

Anyone can make a game, but only a few achieve to make a great game. Your game must run well, and it must be user friendly to those who play it. If you're not going to be the only one who plays your game, then you better test the hell out of it. Get some friends or people over the internet to test it and give you feedback. Always improve your game when you have the time. Fun factor, replay value, and polish make a game great. Many games suffer from a lack of these three important factors. Don't let your game suffer from lack of polish. Always spend some time to make your game better after you finish it.

Even if you're a beginner and new to programming, or an expert guru, implementing these concepts and factors into your game will improve it no matter what level of programming you are on.

Visit Joe King's website, Delta Code.

Eternal Journey Preview

Written by SmithcoSoft

This article is to explain to the community in more detail than ever before what Eternal Journey is all about. I will break down several aspects of the game including the battle system, character development, and items / equipment in the passages below.

Battle System

The battle system is based on SNES turn based RPGs. With that I mean when you encounter an enemy (or enemies) you will be taken to the battle screen where you will combat the opponents. The system uses an active time battle technique so there is no pausing of the battle when you are accessing menus and choosing commands. This means that the longer you take to choose commands for your party the more time your enemies will have to inflict damage on you.

This game will be more difficult than traditional RPGs in that the battles will be harder and longer, requiring a bit more skill and strategy than just : attack : attack : attack: heal : attack . . . and so on. There will be skills and magic in place to fortify the party, to weaken the enemies, as well as an elemental aspect. This elemental aspect also adds to the strategy. It would be wise to direct specific attacks depending on your strengths and weaknesses and your enemies’ strengths and weaknesses. For example if one of your magic users has trained for fire attacks it might be a good idea to have another character train to enhance those effects. If you can weaken an enemy against fire then your magic will do significantly more damage. In the same regard if you are fighting an enemy that does fire damage you would want to fortify you party’s fire defense. There are skills and magic for every aspect of combat you could probably think of and your opponents will take advantage of this, even if you don’t.

To balance the Fighting vs Storyline and Exploring you will encounter less enemies than your standard RPG as well. This is accomplished by using a timer based encounter system. Say you get attacked, after the battle is over you will have a set length of time (depending on the enemy population and encounter rate in the current region) before you are able to get attacked again, giving you time to explore and enjoy the storyline and environment as opposed to getting in battles every few steps in a pure random encounter. You will still spend significant time in battles, but the game is setup so that the battles are mor involved and there is more time in between encounters to play the rest of the game.

Character Development:

The character and party development in Eternal Journey is fairly robust. As of now there are over 40 classes planned and each with their own distinctive traits. Many of which are upgradeable to advanced versions of that class. For example: Say you start off as a Blade Apprentice Class Once you hit a certain level you will have the option to advance to Blade Master, which gets better stat boosts and more abilities. You Will learn about new and advanced classes in the game as you meet the prerequisites for that class. Lets say just as an example Blade Master requires you have a character level of at least 40 and a Blade Apprentice level of at least 20 (I will explain the level system in a bit). Until you meet those requirement you won’t even know the class exists or what its about. There are a few setbacks for changing classes so you should be prepared to choose wisely, I’ll explain. Once you change classes you must remain with that class for a set number of levels before you are allowed to train for another. Also, while you will keep ALL skills and abilities (besides special abilities) you learn throughout the course of the game, once you change classes those previously learned skills, while useable, will no longer be able to level up. The classes also have ‘bonus’ stats which you will lose when you switch classes, however you will retain all base stats you gained from the class while it was active.

Now let me tell you about the leveling system. You have 3 separate leveling types to keep track of.

First you have your Base Character Level, affected by this are pre-determined stats that your character will develop throughout the game, each time your character levels up those stats will increase (generally at least 1 point in each stat).

Second you have the Class Level, this is a more focused level system designed to hone your character’s stats toward a specific field. Depending on what class you are using you will gain different stat increases. Warrior type classes for example will focus more on strength and defense, while magic classes will generally focus more on intelligence and magic defense. Increasing your class level will also give you access to additional special abilities and skills.

Third you have the skill and magic levels. The simplest way to explain this is – the more you use it, the more powerful it will become. Your character will be able to develop exactly how you want, by using the abilities you want to get better at you gain experience toward those abilities. So if you want to focus on attack damage you’ll want to attack often, or in the same respect if you want to focus on a specific physical attack skill, the more you use it the more powerful it becomes. Magic is similar but the difference here is as the magic advances in level it has the ability to spawn into new more advanced version of that ability. Lets say for example you have a fire spell you use quite often, eventually (assuming you are still the class you learned it with) you will learn a new advanced version of the spell. It may be more powerful or maybe it will be able to hit multiple enemies, this all depends on the spell and your class.

As you can see there are hundreds if not thousands of character combinations and possibilities. You can develop your party precisely how you want to. This gives a slightly unique experience for every player.

Items / Equipment / and Ailments

There is not a lot to say about Items. They are pretty standard, you use them to heal party members and increase stats. The only difference from most other RPGs is that items in Eternal Journey will be somewhat limited. You will find items on occasion and will be able to buy them, but they are expensive to buy and it is somewhat rare to find good items. So all I can say is use them sparingly.

Equipment in this game offers a wide variety of possibilities. First off Equipment can affect every aspect of your characters stats positively or negatively. Equipment can be found or bought from vendors, but they can also be created. By finding recipes (from doing quests, beating special enemies, or buying them(rare) you can find out what it takes to make rare and in most cases more powerful weapons, armor, or accessories. Once you find one of these recipes you must go out and find all of the parts listed before you take it to a smith to construct. Once you have all the parts it will still cost you money to have it made. This can provide a fun and productive way to explore the EJ world, look at each recipe list as a quest of its own, a quest to find all of the parts and create a powerful weapon or perhaps a beefy piece of armor.

There are to date (August 25 2007) a total of 38 different Ailments you can receive from various sources in Eternal Journey, these sources being Equipment, Enemies, Items, and Classes. Some of these Ailments are beneficial, most are negative, and a couple can be both, depending on the situation. Equipment can either prevent you from contracting an Ailment or give you the constant status of it. Items are primarily used to cure these Ailments. And many enemies will be capable of inflicting wounds other than damage. Some Classes are immune to certain ailments, others have the constant status.

Well I hoped you enjoyed this read, and that it was informative. Perhaps it will spark some more interest in this ongoing project. If you have anything you want to contribute, or perhaps just discuss the development please go to http://forums.smithcosoft.com Comments, criticisms, even a slap in the face is welcome =P But seriously, I would like to encourage people to give suggestions to the development, there is always room for improvement, no matter how much time you put into a game.

By SSC - SmithcoSoft Creations 2007
http://smithcosoft.com
http://forums.smithcosoft.com
ssc@smithcosoft.com

Programmer	Votes	Percent	Graph
Angelo Mottola	12	41%
Delta Code	3	10%
Jace Masula	2	7%
Kevin Reems	1	3%
Michael Hoopman	4	14%
Milo Sedlacek	3	10%
Nick London / NutzBoy	1	3%
SonicBlue Productions	0	0%
StarsDev	0	0%
Tsugumo	3	10%
29 Total Votes

QB Express

Issue #24 ~ September 11, 2007

In This Issue

From The Editor's Desk

Written by Pete

Submit To QB Express

Letters

Letter From Lachie Dazdarian

Letter From Stéphane Richard (MystikShadows)

Letter from E.K. Virtanen

Express Poll

Greatest QB Game Programmer of all time? (Division 5)

News Briefs

Site News

Project News

Competition News

Gallery

Written by Pete

Legend of Ardiad Demo by Elitecpr

Fun500 GUI by Brandon Cornell

About Fun500 GUI

Qlympics 2006 Results

Written by Pete

Best Arcade / Action Game

Best RPG

Best Strategy / Puzzle Game

Best Text-Based Game

Best Graphics

Best Sound

Best Gaming Hunk

Best Gaming Babe

Best Villain

Best FB Port of a Past QB Game

Best Graphics Demo

Best GUI / Fake OS

Best Library

Best Utility

Best Overall Programmer

Best Tutorial or Tutorial Series

Best Article or Article Series

Best QBasic of FreeBasic Site

Review of Lodestar developed by Shendelyar Evgeniy (ShenZN), 2007

Written by Lachie Dazdarian (Aug, 2007)

Introduction

The Review

The Verdict

Programming on a Collaborative Project

Written by Stéphane Richard (Mystikshadows)

INTRODUCTION:

OUR SAMPLE PROJECT:

WHAT'S WHAT IN ALL THIS:

WHO CAN DO WHAT HERE:

ASKING FOR THE RIGHT HELP FROM THE RIGHT PEOPLE:

THE PROJECT MANAGER TO DO LIST:

THE TOOLS AT YOUR DISPOSAL:

IN CONCLUSION:

What makes a game good? What makes a game great?

by Joe King

What makes a game good?

Rule #1: It must run

Rule #2: It must be user friendly

What makes a game great?

Fun Factor

Replay Value

Polish

Conclusion

Eternal Journey Preview

Written by SmithcoSoft

Battle System

Character Development:

Items / Equipment / and Ailments

Monthly Awards

Written by Pete

Site of the Month

Programmer of the Month