...It's morning somewhere, anyway. We have some new, explosive downloads for you this weekend, so let's cut to the chase and dish 'em out:

Blubber Dragon (QB Action Games): This baby here is quite a doozy at nearly 5 megabytes due to alluring MP3 sounds. It's an arcade game, that I unfortunately couldn't play with my public terminal restrictions, but you might enjoy it very much. It looks like quite a bit of effort was poured into this one by our friend "Draco RedScale"

Bomberman Ripoff (QB Action Games): Bomberman is one of those few games that are fun to play no matter who you are. This amusingly animated "ripoff" is a great multiplayer Bomberman clone for QB. Sean Whitley, we salute you.

Quaternion Camera (FreeBASIC Graphics): Cool new shooter-in-progress by one Señor "Rel" Lope, using incredible space-age "quaternions" to rotate magnificent wireframe 3d graphics.

Textured Cube Demo (QB Graphics Demos): The aspiring "Mindless" gives a lesson in using QB45's ancestral Future Library to rotate a cube that is not only three dimensional, but textured!

Well, that's it for now. Remember, everyone, even you can submit a download and help make us even cooler than we already are.

5 comments have been posted.

      Family beckons, so I will be missing for a few days until after America's July 4th holiday Tuesday. In the meantime, I'll try and entertain emails and pm, and I'll leave you all with some tasty new downloads.

0 comments have been posted.

      A once pillar of QB activity, is gone. QBasic.com, formerly run by the ever-elusive Mallard, had not been updated for years, with its last update being an ironic "we're not dead" post. With that, it's owner fled out of sight, and out of the proverbial mind. As its forum was still populated long after Mallard left, some hopefuls are still eager to squat the domain when it expires December 2006.

6 comments have been posted.

      The June Issue of QB Express is now available!

This month we have a particularly excellent issue. For the first time in a while, I think that the Articles and Editorials are just as strong as the Tutorials in this issue. Matthew R. Knight brings us a funny and interesting personal narrative about "How [he] got started with QB", we have reviews of ASCII Scrolling Map Maker 1.0 and FB Sokoban, as well as a review of Astral Worlds in Lachie Dazdarian's new series "Searching For The Unknown". We've also got Project Updates on Qbinux, RapidQ & Legend of Aquarius, and an extensive preview of Syn9's The Griffon Legend in the gallery. Finally, there's an editorial by mennonite on flaming, a Where Are They Now? article about GBGames webmaster Gianfranco Berardi, and an interview with Sumo Jo by yours truly.

As for tutorials, Deleter has brought us an extensive theory article entitled "Ecosystem Simulation Through the Use of AI", Moneo has created a spin-off of MystikShadows data validation tutorial entitled "Data Validation Implementation", dumbledore dishes the dirt on "Using WX-C In FreeBasic", and Pyrodap informs us on how he makes random Roguelike dungeons in his RMG Roguelikes tutorial. Also, MystikShadows has returned with the final two installments of his Professional and Commercial Application Development Series, Testing and Debugging and Installation and Integration.

Plus all of the regular columns you're used to seeing every month -- News, Awards, Rattrapmax6's Comic, and more!

A great collection of great articles -- that's what QB Express #11 is!

Editor's Note: It appears that former castaway Pete has named QB45 site of the month. For all those living in 8th St. Apartment 308b, Eighth St., Atlanta, Georgia, the drinks are on me tonight (and tonight only, mooch)! Also, in somewhat dubious honors, we're naming Pete's magazine the first Centennial Site of the Century 1900-2000. Assuming no violence in the Middle East today, we'll be shipping $750,000 in large sacks endowed with bold money signs to Pete's door.

3 comments have been posted.

      Do you like text games? Perhaps you also enjoy taking part in the creation of such games? Maybe you feel strongly about this enjoyment, enough to enter a competition pitting your programming abilities against those of another human being? Well, then head on over to FBTK and enter before it's too late! (it began June 2nd).

The contest is for making Rogue-like text games. If you have no concept of such a game, then head on over to Jocke the Beast's website and read all about it.

0 comments have been posted.

      Remember these guys? Well, now these crazy Hamburgers have just release their latest opus, Restricted Area. It was released May 27th to decent reviews! Good luck to Master Creating and their commercial ventures! For me, however, I stick with the classics.

5 comments have been posted.

      I woke up bright and early this morning to find not one, but two downloads. This cannot stand, so while I wait to gather more downloads, I'll point you to some great stuff that already exist, and existed looong before FB ever came out.

FreeBASIC presents with itself some major oppurtunities, and some major porting action. Besides the fantastic TCRay of last week, here are other great remakes

Gorillas32 - Big videogame companies like to show off zillion-polygon videos of large-chested women killing people to demo their products. V1ctor rereleased a game about gorillas from 1989. And we love it. Also available from the "MS QB" repotoire of video games ported to FB is QBlocks, a tetris clone and Nibbles, a game so definitive we call 'em "Nibbles Clones", for Windows and dos.

Sokobon - Block pushing into red diamonds at its finest. I could'nt beat it when it was made before I was born, and I still can't.

Wetspot 1 - From the same mind that made it, this little game, complete with ancient multiplayer, is responsible for at least one 'C' in my undistinguished academic career. I certainly hope it inspires others to shameless procrastinate.

Dark Woods 2 - For some reason, people keep downloading. It is, by and far, the most successful QB game next to Nibbles and it's made the leap to Windows and Linux via the efforts of one Zap E. Bloobenschnozzer.

...Are we catching up? Yes. These demos have been coming out since November, but you will see much, much more in the time to come!

2 comments have been posted.

      For our first update, we have four new downloads submitted for your pleasure:

• jpeg4FB pre release - Antoni Gual's excellent JPEG routines have been ported to FreeBasic on top of Lillo's LibGFX library. Also contains a nice viewer as a proof-of-concept.
• Smaze - A nibbles-like ASCII game, in both English and French, for the ladies.
• TCRay - Another FreeBasic port by Antoni, this is of Jark's beautiful ray tracer, TCRay. Jark's homepage, along with some great info on raytracing can be found here.
• Tetris 2 Ascii - A neat twist of Tetris, incorporating elements of color-pairing games such as Columns, or the underappreciated Super-Stack series.
  

Well, that's it for this week. If we get enough downloads next week, you'll see 'em posted here. But remember, only you, the reader, has the power to make it happen...

8 comments have been posted.

      The May issue of QB Express is now available!

http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/express/issue10

This issue is the largest ever, with NINE original tutorials and nearly 300KB of text alone. We fill you in on all the latest Qmunity news (and boy, is there ever news this month), and keep you entertained with a wide variety of editorials, game reviews, previews and opinion pieces.

This month's tutorials include Chapter 5 of Na_th_an's IF Games series; a tutorial on FB Variables and Var Initializers by VonGodric; "The Art of Data Validation" by MystikShadows; Part 2 of Vincent Peters' Simple BASIC Interpreter series; "Proper Error Management in FreeBasic" by MystikShadows; an Artificial Intelligence tutorial by Robert Hambly; Chapter 1 of Na_th_an's new "Coding A Parallax Scrolling Platformer" series; and parts 3 and 4 of Professional and Commercial Application Development by MystikShadows.

Also this month, Adigun A. Polack reviews "Battle Pong" by Lithium, aetherFox writes about Artificial Stupidity, Deleter answers the question "So What The Heck Is Fun Anyways?", DrV gives us a spelling and grammar lesson, and Jacob Palm tells us about QBasic GUI Development. Plus, Jace Masula's ASCIIQUEST is featured in this month's Gallery.

Check it out now: http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/express/issue10

1 comments have been posted.

      If you've registered for an account, but not received your welcome e-mail, then please contact me or Jofers (either by replying to this news post, or via the forums) and we'll activate your account manually. I'm going to try modifing the e-mail headers in the hopes that it will get by more junk mail filters, but this may be wishful thinking.

Also, I won't be approving any FreeBasic submissions until I put up FreeBasic specific categories in both the Downloads and Tutorials sections. I don't feel that having FreeBasic and QBasic code mixed in the same places is best for organization purposes. Once I get these up, we will be approving them.

Lastly, feel free to submit news related to QBasic/FreeBasic.

0 comments have been posted.