News Briefs
QB Express Issue #1
News from all around the QB community, about the latest games, site updates, program releases and more!
QB Site News
Pete's QBasic Site Returns
After a four year hiatus, without regular updates since mid-2000, Pete's QBasic Site (http://www.petesqbsite.com/) has returned! Pete's QB Site was once one of the most popular QB sites on the Internet, famous for its "daily updates" policy (which lasted from October 1998 to May of 2000) and for being the first site dedicated to doing in-depth reviews of QuickBasic programs. The site secretly underwent a complete redesign between December 2003, and July, 2004, and opened its doors officially on July 22. This came as a big surprise to members of the QB community; you can find some reactions at V Planet! (http://www.hulla-balloo.com/vplanet/art7.shtml) and QBasic News (http://forum.qbasicnews.com/viewtopic.php?t=6479).
In addition to all of the old content from Pete's QB Site, many new additions have been made. The most significant of these include:
- An automated script which allows users to instantly add content including program downloads, QB News articles, tutorials, FAQ entries and much more. Additionally, the Program Downloads section now includes full descriptions of programs, and instant ratings by the users.
- The largest collection of QB Tutorials on the Internet. This section was recently revamped and now includes over 300 QB tutorials for download.
- The QB Zines section, which archives over a dozen different QuickBasic magazines in one easy-to-access collection.
- A gigantic links collection, which is the largest QB links collection available anywhere. Every link comes with a button image, a description of its Unique Features and a rating from 0 to 5 stars. Sites that get a perfect 5-star rating are presented with the "Five Star Site Award". So far, of the 315 links available, two have been awarded a perfect score: V Planet! and QBasic News.
- Many other sections including: QB News, Top Ten Programs, Projects, Affiliates, QHumor, QB Philosophy, The Hall of Fame, The QBasic FAQ, Pete's QB Site History, and much more!
V Planet! Reconstruction Still in Progress
Since March, the popular QB magazine and reviews site V Planet! (http://www.hulla-balloo.com/vplanet) has been undergoing a massive reconstruction process. The magazine will be reformatted into "a friendlier, more workable php format" that will make updating the magazine easier. In April, chief editor Vance Velez stepped down from his position, and it was announced that QB On Acid would merge with V Planet! and that QBOA editor Nekrophidius would take charge of the magazine. Since that announcement, V Planet! has been very silent, with only two updates and five new articles since April.
Recently, Nekrophidius informed us that V Planet's reconstruction is still underway, and that all of the content leftover from the unpublished QB On Acid issue #12 will appear on the revamped V Planet! when it is finished. According to Nek, the site will appear at vplanetmag.com, though as of press time, that url is a dead link.
QB45.com Reconstruction News
QB45.com, once one of the largest QB sites ever created, has gone through crisis after crisis over the last year. Several months ago, QB45.com was brought to its knees by a crippling crash which left the site down for three months. At one time the most-visited QB website on the Internet, the site previously known as Future Software was left a shadow of its former self. Now, the site has been temporarily replaced with a message board as a new script-driven website is designed.
Two members of the QB45 community, QB RPGs headman Fling-master and Joe have taken it upon themselves to restore the site to its former glory. Though Joe and Fling-master are currently heading the massive reconstruction project, they are being assisted by many other QB45 members.
The most recent update on the renovation process came on July 18, when some major updates to the forum were made (read about it at http://www.qb45.com/status.html). A preview version of the unfinished QB45 site, with nothing but the massive downloads collection, is available at http://www.sia-tech.com/cgi-bin/qb45site/main.ex.
Currently, Fling-master is searching (http://www.qb45.com/msgboard.cgi?action=display&num=11708) for about 100 missing files from the former QB45 collection, and members of the QB45 message board have been discussing (http://www.qb45.com/msgboard.cgi?action=display&num=11330) how the new website should be divided up to tailor to different programming languages.
Future Software and QB45 founder Jorden Chamid once said this site would never go down as long as there was a QB Community alive on the Internet, and based on the recent progress, his promise seems to be holding true.
Is the old Future Software Returning?
While the QB45.com reconstruction is going on, two QB45 members, Jatos and TheBigBasicQ have banded together to restore the old Future Software site, which evolved into QB45.com in 2002. Future Software's old site was widely visited and well-loved, offering much unique and original content that disappeared from QB45.com during its many makeovers. Last month, TheBigBasicQ posted messages around the QB community asking for anyone with old copies of Future Software content to send him copies. TheBigBasicQ wrote: "We want to find out if its feasible for us to recreate [Future Software]. But that depends on how much content we get from the old site." As of this time, we do not know if Jatos and TheBigBasicQ have decided to continue their recovery effort.
QBasic.tk Announces New QB WIKI Sumojo of Qbasic.tk announced that they are beginning a new QuickBasic WIKI, or online encyclopedia. They have invited users to sign on as contributors and add articles. This will be a neat idea if they can get enough contributions, but otherwise you're better off using existing resources like QBasic News Online Help, Dav's QB Knowledge Base or Pete's QBasic Site's Tutorials.
Recent Redesigns
Recently, Delta Code (http://deltacode.cjb.net/) and Atosoft (http://alex.biotech-warfare.com/) have undergone major redesigns. Delta Code has a lot of great content to read and download, and a nice feel to the site. The "purple mountains" design is pretty sweet. Atosoft, on the other hand, is basically an empty page. QBasic.tk has also introduced several different skins recently, and if you become a member, you can choose your favorite layout.
Project News
Syn9 In Three Dimensions
Recently, Syn9 released a snazzy-looking QB 3D demo over on the QBasic News forums. This demo allows players to walk through a medieval town with breathtaking graphics, as you can see in the screenshot to the right. Syn9's engine supports both bumpmapping and lightmaps, and the first release used DirectQB (though Syn9 was considering switching to RelLib or uGL). The maps were created using the map editor that Syn9 made for Vampira.
Also, Syn9 recently announced the creation of a team for a 3D RPG, which quite possibly could be based on the engine described above. He posted the following on the QBasic News Forum: "Syn9 is getting a team together to work on a possible 3d RPG project or to work on ZeroG2 using UGL. If you would be interested in collaborating on one of these projects, you can email Syn9 at syn9@rpgdx.net." QB Express is very excited about Syn9's engine and possible RPG, and we'll be sure to bring you the latest updates in future issues.
Frantic Journey Preview Room Updated
The website for Adigun A. Polack's highly-anticipated space shooter, Frantic Journey, has received some cool updates recently. Now if you visit The AAP Official Projects Squad (http://dhost.hopto.org/aapproj/), you will find artwork for an "all-new original design of a huge battleship for the Gigantic Battleship Stages" and "six (6) entirely different music tracks of [Adigun's] for FJ that you can preview for yourself." If you didn't already know, Frantic Journey is a horizontal space shooter with awesome graphics, some unique level designs, and and SNES "Mode-7"-style effects.
Badlogic Wows With Their CounterStrike 2D Clone
Blitz and V1ctor announced a clone they are making of Counter Strike 2D, and released some screenshots. Check out this issue's Gallery for more details.
Zelda Clone?
QB Express has received word from an anonymous source that a clone of The Legend of Zelda for NES is currently being made in QB. This project is in its very early stages right now, and the author "is not making any promises." Recently, the author has been teaching himself how to make Nintendo music, with the idea that he will include it in this Zelda clone. If this project is indeed finished, it will include a level editor so that users can quickly and easily make their own Zelda adventures.
Competition News
QuickBasic Caliber Programming Competition
Adigun A. Polack's QuickBasic Caliber Programming Competition 2004/2005 has seen much activity as of late. For more information, see Adigun's QBCPC article.
Rhiannon's QB Tutorials Competition Has Ended
On June 19th, Rhiannon started a BASIC Tutorials competition over at The BASIC Network (http://www.basicnetwork.net/). This competition was open to tutorials about all forms of BASIC, though most of the submissions were for QB. The competition ended on August 15th, after it was extended for an extra two-and-a-half-weeks. Results from the competition have not been posted yet, though you can find the latest information at The Basic Network's Message Board (http://forum.basicnetwork.net/viewforum.php?f=22&sid=d259e159ea29ed8c1545484d62702acf).
Dunric's 1 to 2K Text Adventure Competition Dunric, a QB coder who is famous for his gigantic text adventure Westfront PC: The Trials of Guilder as well as some other ASCII graphics games like P.R.O.G.U.E., has recently announced a competition for programmers to create the best text adventure they can, using only 1 to 2K of code. Over the years, Dunric has wrestled with optimizing his text adventure code to make it as memory-efficient as possible. In June, Dunric got the idea that others might also enjoy his hobby of budget adventure game coding, so he opened up this contest for interested text adventure programmers.
According to Dunric, he will accept text adventures written in over a dozen languages, including every dialect of BASIC. As for the file size, "The 2K size can be either the source coce, or the EXE, BIN, OBJ, PRG, ELF or other self-contained, self-running binary. So you can thus have, say, an 8K source code listing, so long as the binary format doesn't exceed 2.9KB of size. You may also crunch the binary down with a compressing program such as UPX or Winzip." To help get entrants started, Dunric has written an 8KB adventure game called The Melarkian (http://panks.freeshell.org/melark.zip) in BASIC.
Dunric's competition officially began on June 28, 2004, and it runs through September 29, 2004. All submissions will be posted on the official site, where they will be reviewed and graded by Dunric. (Grades will be posted on October 7th.) For more informatino, visit The Official Site (http://panks.freeshell.org/advcomp.html).
Sumojo's Maze ChallengeSumojo of QBasic.tk ran a neat maze challenge on the QBasic.tk and Qbasic News message boards. The contest was to create a program that could find its way through a text maze:
"In this challenge you will nagivate your way through a rectangular maze. The maze is a 10 by 10 grid of cells where each cell is either a 1 (representing a wall that you can't go through) or a 0 (representing a passage way that you can go through). There are two cells on the boundary of the grid which will be marked 2 (representing the entrance into the maze) and 3 (representing the exit out of the maze)...Your program should identify the locations of the entrance and the exit and display the "path" from the entrance to the exit. The path should be a string of characters made up of the letters N, E, W, S (in upper case) denoting North, East, West, and South respectively. Note that there will be exactly one path from the entrance to the exit represented by the sequence of 0's between 2 (the entrance) and 3 (the exit).
Example maze:
1111111111
1110000002
1110111111
1110011111
1111011111
1000011111
1011111111
1011111111
1000011111
1111311111The output for the program should read: WWWWWWSSESSWWWSSSEEES
The contest ended with two winners: red_Marvin and Plasma. You can read more about at http://forum.qbasicnews.com/viewtopic.php?t=6289.
Other News
Dale Harris Point of Sale on TV
Johnathon Simpson recently posted some cool news on the QBasic News (http://forum.qbasicnews.com/viewtopic.php?t=6633) forum: "The DHPOS program that I work with (written in QB) was on TechTV last week, on the show "The Screen Savers". I'm trying to get hold of a tape of the show, but I thought you guys might like to know that a QB program was featured on a cable TV show.
"I didn't write it, although I help out with the project a bit. It's got about 54,000 downloads since we started counting, roughly 100 a day, and it's used all over the world (45 countries known)."
You can find Dale Harris Point of Sale at this address: pages.prodigy.net/daleharris/pos.htm
