Links

This page will contain links to useful sources of programming information and anything of general games development interest. Feel free to submit relevant links to James, but note that not all will necessarily be posted -- we'd like to go for quality, not quantity!

General Programming

Programmers' Heaven - OK, a bit of a geeky title, but this site is a great resource for all sorts of useful programming information: maths routines; 2D and 3D graphics routines; artificial intelligence; compression techniques; general games development ideas...you name it, it's probably here!

Wotsit's Format - Huge searchable database of file format descriptions. Very handy if you plan on writing a custom unarchiver for your game; importing animations; converting graphics formats not yet supported by Blitz; whatever. Also has some good documents of general interest relating to file formats.

Magic Software - Excellent free library of graphics routines (mostly C/C++), aimed at fairly advanced programmers. Get porting!

Games Development

GameDev.Net - Excellent site with up-to-date news about the latest developments in the games programming world, tutorials and ideas for games development and example source code in various programming languages. Well worth a look!

Scuttle - Another great site with lots of games development information.

GameCoding UK - Lots of games-development information, interviews, news and reviews -- well worth a visit!

RetroBlitz - Great site devoted to the preservation of old classics through Blitz Basic!

Graphics, Music and Other Clever Stuff

Ari Feldman's SpriteLib - An excellent collection of totally free sprites (subject to a few minor conditions -- see the site). Writing a game? Can't draw? Who cares? Would also come in handy if you need to get a game programmed but haven't yet found a graphics artist to do the final graphics.

Miscellaneous

Blitz Bugs - This is a fine database system to which you can submit bugs reports concerning problems you find in Blitz Basic. Please check first to see if your bug has already been reported though!

Unofficial egroups forum - This forum is a little less moderated than the BBS on the Discuss page. You can choose to either read and write messages on the web via your browser, or post and receive messages by email, just like any other mailing list. Please observe good "netiquette"!

Acid Software - Oh, dear...Mark's sordid past (this site is great fun though -- check out the Java version of Zombie Apocalypse!).

The Sheep Pen - Guildhall Leisure's Blitz Basic supremo, George "I quite like sheep, me" Bray. The Sheep Corporation awaits you with loads of games-related stuff!

Unofficial Blitz Basic Developers' site - This is an unofficial Blitz Basic site offering free @blitzbasic.org and @blitzbasic.net email addresses, forums, code examples and so on. Not yet active, but keep an eye on it...