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Topic: bb4wgames.com (Read 139 times) |
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bb4wgames.com
« Thread started on: Jan 31st, 2014, 08:51am » |
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As you may already know, the owner of the bb4wgames.com site has carried out his threat and closed it down. bb4wgames was the most important online showcase for BBC BASIC for Windows, particularly in demonstrating its suitability for graphics and games programming. It was also the repository for the GFXLIB library, a huge suite of code modules, mostly written in assembler, designed for high-speed 2D graphics applications.
This is the third occasion, that I am aware of, when a previously enthusiastic BB4W user has set out to damage the language (the previous ones were the withdrawal, by its author, of one of the most useful add-in utilities, and the hacking of compiled BB4W EXEs to extract a version of the original BASIC program).
I cannot claim to understand what has motivated these actions, other than to assume that the people concerned have a personal grudge against me. The effect is to suppress my desire to continue maintaining and supporting BBC BASIC.
Richard.
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JGHarston
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #1 on: Jan 31st, 2014, 2:29pm » |
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on Jan 31st, 2014, 08:51am, Richard Russell wrote:| I cannot claim to understand what has motivated these actions, other than to assume that the people concerned have a personal grudge against me. The effect is to suppress my desire to continue maintaining and supporting BBC BASIC. |
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But that means they've won.
Unfortunately, I've seen this happen all too frequently in the Acorn and Acorn-related communities where small minorities seem to deliberately set out to continuously piss people off with arguments along the lines of: how DARE you do something useful/interesting/creative, until they they (the targets) just give up. I rarely visit the Acorn newsgroups nowadays for exactly this reason.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 31st, 2014, 2:29pm by JGHarston » |
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admin
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #2 on: Jan 31st, 2014, 2:46pm » |
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on Jan 31st, 2014, 2:29pm, JGHarston wrote:| But that means they've won. |
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I know, but after 32 years of supporting BBC BASIC I'm getting to the point of not caring any more. 
Richard.
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ScriptBasic
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #3 on: Jan 31st, 2014, 5:45pm » |
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I would think BBC BASIC would have better luck with the Raspberry PI / dev board group than trying to compete in the Windows market where everything is either COM/.NET centric. BBC4W is a hobbyist language and that is where the hobbyists have migrated to. (cheap fun)
BASIC is an easy to use language. Once you drift from that principle, you lost a good portion of your customer base with it. KIS is still relevant.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 31st, 2014, 5:45pm by ScriptBasic » |
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admin
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #4 on: Jan 31st, 2014, 6:54pm » |
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on Jan 31st, 2014, 5:45pm, ScriptBasic wrote:| I would think BBC BASIC would have better luck with the Raspberry PI / dev board group than trying to compete in the Windows market where everything is either COM/.NET centric. BBC4W is a hobbyist language and that is where the hobbyists have migrated to. |
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Since you support an alternative dialect of BASIC, and have even chosen its name as your forum user name, you will not be surprised to learn that I totally disregard your comments.
Richard.
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Richey
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #5 on: Jan 31st, 2014, 8:19pm » |
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Hi Richard - I really find it hard to fathom why someone would go to all the trouble of producing all that work and then throw their toys out of the pram by deleting it - it seems childish, selfish and churlish. At the end of the day, It can't take away what you have achieved with BB4W and to be honest it is nothing to do with you and BB4W and everything to do with them and their fragile ego. Don't let that person and people like them bring you down. I feel BB4W is at the start not the end of the journey...coding is being made compulsory in English (hopefully in Welsh ones too soon!) schools - a whole new generation that could be exposed to BB4W - I feel a letter to Michael Gove coming on...!  in the meantime, I'll certainly be sticking with (learning) it...
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admin
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #6 on: Jan 31st, 2014, 9:31pm » |
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on Jan 31st, 2014, 8:19pm, Richey wrote:| it is nothing to do with you and BB4W and everything to do with them and their fragile ego. |
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It is my problem to a degree. In the past, if anybody contacted me to ask whether BB4W was suitable for writing fast, animated video games I would point them to bb4wgames.com. Not only did it provide 'instant' confirmation of BB4W's suitability, the very library needed - and its documentation - were there to read and download.
What do I do now if I'm asked that same question? I could refer them to the Wayback Machine, where archived copies of the site can be accessed, but that's not very satisfactory.
Richard.
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Matt
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #7 on: Feb 1st, 2014, 06:02am » |
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Hi,
I've never used the site, LIB or utilities, so I may be talking rubbish here, but would it not be possible to somehow recreate the important areas of them? (Although, I appreciate this might be a lot of hard work for someone.)
Matt
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admin
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #8 on: Feb 1st, 2014, 09:25am » |
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on Feb 1st, 2014, 06:02am, Matt wrote:| I may be talking rubbish here, but would it not be possible to somehow recreate the important areas of them? |
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Technically it would be straightforward to copy the site, but legally far from it. Much of the material is the Copyright of the site's owner (not least most of the screenshots, executables and of course the GFXLIB library itself) and, given that he clearly doesn't want it to be available, getting clearance is likely to be problematical!
Recreating it, if by that you mean rewriting the library and games independently from scratch, is of course totally out of the question. They were the culmination of years of work by a very talented programmer with a flair for graphics, games and music. The GFXLIB library alone amounts to more than 2 Mbytes, most of which is assembler code.
When, a year or so ago, David announced his intention to close the site he actually agreed to allow somebody else to take it over, but in the event he changed his mind.
I find this so depressing. 
Richard.
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KenDown
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #9 on: Feb 18th, 2014, 6:51pm » |
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Well, I was not even aware of the site's existence until I read this thread - probably because my interest is not in games. Your version of BBC BASIC is so useful for all my programming needs - it would be a positive tragedy if you abandoned the program.
It's just a shame that the Yahoo site where people could upload their programs is no longer with us. I picked up one or two demonstration games from there and such a site could still be used to provide the evidence to which you were referring about the usefulness of BB4W.
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admin
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #10 on: Feb 18th, 2014, 8:04pm » |
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on Feb 18th, 2014, 6:51pm, KenDown wrote:| it would be a positive tragedy if you abandoned the program |
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So why don't you, and others who feel the same way, do something about it? The future of BB4W is in your (collective) hands, not just mine.
But sadly the recent record of contributions from users has not been encouraging. DLGEDIT (Community Edition) - abandoned. GUILIB - abandoned because people refuse to collaborate. BB4W v6 - about half of the testers (despite enthusiastically volunteering) haven't even acknowledged receipt of the beta-test version.
Quote:| It's just a shame that the Yahoo site where people could upload their programs is no longer with us. |
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In what sense "no longer with us"? As far as I'm aware nothing has changed as regards the ability to upload and download programs. It's admittedly no longer possible to publish a link to an individual file, but you can link to a folder, for example:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/bb4w/files/Games/
Quote:| such a site could still be used to provide the evidence to which you were referring about the usefulness of BB4W. |
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Not really. You need to be able to see the programs' output (either as a still image or ideally, for animated games, a video) to convey 'at a glance' what it's capable of. A list of files that you need to download just doesn't cut it.
Richard.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 18th, 2014, 8:25pm by admin » |
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Kirkkaf13
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Re: bb4wgames.com
« Reply #11 on: Mar 11th, 2014, 10:02pm » |
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This topic saddens me but at the same time I have found inspiration to continue my learning in BBC Basic.
Richard has created an excellent foundation by providing this wonderful language, as a community we should be obliged to build upon that.
Rome was not built in a day.
Kirk
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| « Last Edit: Mar 12th, 2014, 10:35am by Kirkkaf13 » |
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