August 23, 2004
New QuickBasic Magazine: QB Express
I am proud to announce that the first issue of my new QuickBasic magazine has been released! It is called "QB Express" and it has a wide selection of QB Community news, tutorials, editorials, articles and much more. Click here to read it!
This issue has many interesting articles, including Relsoft's Metaballs / "Blobs" tutorial, interviews with both members of Bad-Logic, Blitz and V1ctor, lots of information on V1ctor's online DOS library, DSock. You'll also find a nifty tutorial on RPG plots by Levi, Comics by Matt2Jones, an article about the QB Caliber Programming Compo by Adigun A. Polack, and an article entitled Does The World Need Another QB Forum? by yours truly. There's a whole lot more, too -- it's definitely worth a read!
I have always wanted to start a QB magazine, ever since I was originally updating my website in 1998-2000. Just a week and a half ago, I began gathering articles and content for this first issue. It turned out great--way better than I ever expected. This issue is absolutely massive, with 141KB of text and several hundred KB of images (dial-up users, beware!).
After you're done reading this, be sure to contact me and tell me what you thought. I am also looking for submissions for future issues, so if you're at all interested in writing something, make sure you let me know.
Posted by Pete |
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August 15, 2004
New QuickBasic Magazine in the Works!
Since the only remaining QB magazines have ended as of late, I have decided to start a new QuickBasic magazine. QB Cult Magazine will be having its final issue sometime soon, QB On Acid has ended its latest run and will be merging with V Planet! and QB Accelerator has turned into an article-by-article publication. The QB Community needs a magazine, and I think I'm up to the task!
You can find some of the preliminary information about this magazine at the following QBasic News threads: here and here.
However, I can't do it without YOUR help. I am looking for all kinds of submissions to help make this a better magazine. Anything you submit will make it into this magazine. I have adopted QB On Acid's policy of an "open magazine" where anyone, no matter who they are, can submit stuff. Anything you want to submit, you can send to: pberg1 "at" ithaca.edu -- just replace "at" with @.
Here's a list of stuff I need:
- Ideas for a title. That's right, I still don't have a title. If you have ideas or want to judge ideas for titles, check out this thread.
- News from around the QB community. Anything about updates to your QB site, progress on your game or utility, or other newsworthy things. I will also run screenshots. I'm especially interested in "breaking news" that hasn't been published anywhere before. If you have a big new announcement, make sure you let me know!
- Tutorials on any QB or game design related topic. If you want to write a new tutorial for this magazine and need ideas, check out this topic.
- Rants, Raves and Editorials -- is something bothering you or exciting you that you'd like to write about? Write a little article about it and send it on in!
- QB Community Articles that discuss the history and happenenings of QB on the Internet.
- Program reviews -- currently I have not settled on an official reviews format, so just write your review up in any format you want, whether it's long form or rated based on different categories.
- Letters to the editor -- this is the easiest way to get your voice heard! Just drop me an email.
- Ideas for new sections, new articles, etc. Send them on in!
- Anything else you can think of and want to write.
Remember, this will be an open magazine. Anything you submit will be included! Make sure you contribute stuff, using the links above or the message board.
Meanwhile, I am going to be gone for the next week and will not have Internet access. Until next Friday or Saturday, you guys are on your own. But that doesn't mean updates have got to end! You can submit all kinds of content to this site and it will be auto-updated. Most sections can be updated instantly, so there's no reason to hold off on the submissions until I get back!
As for the magazine, the first issue will appear in about two weeks. I expect you all to submit a lot of stuff for the magazine by the time I get back. I want my inbox to be full!
All right, I'm gone. See you guys in a week!
Posted by Pete |
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August 13, 2004
315 QB Tutorials Now Available!
That's right! Three-hundred and fifteen tutorials. After spending hours upon hours over the last three weeks collecting and indexing QB tutorials from all over the Internet, I am proud to unveil my revamped QBasic / QuickBasic tutorials section.
This is by far the largest QB tutorials archive available anywhere. The second largest tutorials archive, at QB45.com, has only 80 tutorials available. (They do, however, have some tutorials that I don't have in my archive.)
Currently, the tutorials are split over three sections: Beginners, Pete's Tutorials (with just four tutorials I wrote in 1998), and the Main Tutorials Section, which houses over 200 of the tutorials.
The Tutorials section is far from done, though. If you know of any tutorials that are not available in the archive, please submit them. Eventually, I plan on searching through all of the QB magazines that are available and adding the tutorials from them. I also plan on making the archive more organized so that it's easir to find what you're looking for. Tell me if you have any suggestions on how to do that. (Once Google indexes this new section, organizing it might end up being irrelevant anyway.) :)
Anyway, enjoy the new tutorials! I'm sure they'll help someone!
Posted by Pete |
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August 7, 2004
The QB Zines Section is Now Available
As I mentioned in my last news update, I have just put together the brand new QB Zines section. This is a compilation of just about every QB magazine I could get my grubby hands on, from the Basix Fanzine to QB:TM to the QB Times. They're all here, and it's a very interesting archive for all you QBers out there to wade through. QB sure has had a long and eventful history, and each and every one of those magazines is like a little time capsule.
Once again, I'm going to thank Barok for putting together his archive of QB magazines last year. Several of the publications I directly reprinted from that archive, since they're not available anywhere else (like the QB Times and Tek's QBasic Gazette). Although some magazines or issues were absent from Barok's .zip file, or were converted to .doc form for printing instead of viewing in a browser, I was able to track down the originals and most of the missing pieces. All of the magazines you see in that section are unmodified from their original versions, and are reprinted exactly as I found them. Anyway, I definitely couldn't have done it without Barok's help!
However, there are many significant QB publications that have been made over the years that have gone missing, and I was unable to find. These include all of the QB On Acid issues except for the first three, Rems' incredible QB Voice magazine, Qubed, Razor Diskmag, and Inside QuickBasic. At the bottom of the Zines section, I've written everything I know about these lost magazines...which usually is not very much. If you have any issues of these mags, or know where I can find them, make sure you tell me! (Reply to this news post in the message board...click the "Comments" link at the bottom of this post.)
During the last update, I also promised that I would add the tutorials I've been gathering to the Tutorials section. Well, I plan on doing that soon. That is next on my agenda: a complete overhaul of the Tutorials section. I will probably double or triple the number of tutorials there. I've already compiled one of the biggest lists of QB tutorials available, but there are so many great tuts that are still missing. I'm gonna track as many down as I can.
One more thing. I'm really pleased with this site's message forum. A lot of people are posting, and several are posting regularly. The QBasic Questions & Answers board has been bustling with lots of posts. People are getting their questions answered left and right...and there has been no flaming going on whatsoever. Keep it up, guys!
Okay. I'm out.
Posted by Pete |
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