Functions with parenthesised parameters are now assessed in correct order of precedence by the core SEL engine now. This is probably the last major update to the core SEL engine necessary to make it technically correct, though there remains numerous minor glitches and ‘features’ of the mess that I started coding 23 years ago.
All posts by Beeblbrox
What is Beeblbrox reading?
This, and it’s absolutely everything I want so far from a gamebook, 700 references of dungeoncrawling goodness, well written, a decently thought out but simple mechanic system and beatifully presented. Mind you I am only about 20 references into exploring it – however I doubt it’s gonna go far wrong.
(No my minions, we don’t have permission to encode and publish it. One day, my adventure hungry little friends, one day…). Until then , buy your own: https://bluefoxcomics.com/products/arcane-rites-cult-of-the-pajoli-book-1-paperback
Borag Thung Earthlings
Ok, so, so far this isn’t exactly 2000A.D. of the Gamebook World, and I am hardly Tharg the Mighty. Here we are though. Zarjazz.
So it’s June 17th, 2022. I am sat almost butt naked except for my towel (yup, always know where your towel is) in my studio flat in a small town on the south coast of England wondering where on earth I can take this creaking web machine next. Having just succesfully flogged the idea of doing a blog to a good Fighting Fantasy companion (Rene Batsford, hopefully we will see his first offering with news of his upcoming gamebook shortly), it occurred to me that perhaps I should ‘smell the shit I’m shovelling’ and have a go at it myself.
Despite my handle being Beeblbrox, Tharg seems more appropriate I guess given I am attempting to bring far out adventure stories to your puny planet, as a theme for this blog. And hey, I gather in your primitive network you call the internet ‘mashups’ are all the rage these days. Personally I find them utterly abominable preferring Universe Integrity to my fiction but then, I’m not just doing this for me I guess.
Most basic stuff regarding site origins and inspirations can be found in the Creditations Page or the About Page… so I will attempt not to repeat myself here, and try to make this up to date and relevant. TBH I imagine, knowing me, that a lot of my posts will be obscure and irrelevant and sometimes even semi-psychotic – such is the price of being Hoopy. At least I haven’t crashed my starship into a sun lately anyway.
There are so many things I wish to add to the site one of my biggest problems is knowing where to actually focus myself at any one time. All I DO know is that about 6 years ago – maybe 10, it occurred to me that I am NEVER going to see the site I wish to see developed all by myself, and have so far spent a long time in an *almost* fruitless attempt at ‘acquiring and building a presence on the web with a view to teambuilding and forward processing collaborative goals’.
Excuse me I just choked on corporate buzzwords for a moment.
So, many will know me by now as a cantankerous old git with questionable ethics and an occasionally humerous outlook. Like many on that there internet I had pie in the sky notions of ‘my ideas’ being received with rapturous welcome and was appropriately sorely and sourly disappointed when I was more or less told ‘take a ticket and join the queue’, this was followed by what I can only describe as a VERY long sulk interspersed with ever more desperate attempts to get some more work done here.
And, thanks to my (real life) neighbour of 8 years now, it has gradually started sinking in that that is part of my problem – too much work and not enough play. Work IS a 4 letter word. Who the hell wants to join or even read about a crew where all you’re promised is endless internship, grind and slog? For the privilidge of hearing ‘meh, that was OK’ if you’re lucky at the end of it?
Not me that’s for sure, and I’m damn well sure it isn’t you either.
So to confound a famous quote ‘since brevity is the soul of wit, I shall be endeavouring to provide more art and less matter’ in the future. Or something like that anyway.
Demians Database Link fixed
The Database Search for Demians gamebooks.org has been fixed.
Parenthesis Bug Fixed (again)
Pretty sure it’s tight now. But then, I thought that before so who knows :-/
Added Blogs to the Site
Starting with Matt the Ward, I am starting a Blog section for any trusted Gamebook fan/author/illustrator to log their work and passions and… well, any old shit that happens in the life of a Gamebook nut.
Freeway Fighter Official Chatbot version available on Facebook Messenger
https://www.facebook.com/Freewayfighter13
Definitely worth your time
Gamebooks Internationale
Hello, Bonjour, Hola, Olá, Здравейте, and indeed 你好 🙂
Many will be surprised to learn that gamebooks have a big following outside of the english language. Strangely enough it is not only England and the United States that thought of Interactive Fiction!
Indeed the first I heard of this was with the French website http://www.legrimoire.net/ which contacted me quite some time ago. Shortly after I noticed that https://www.projectaon.org/ has as it’s first page langauge selection between English, Spanish and Italian (in fact I may have noticed this before even the French contacted me, it was along time ago!), so obviously something bigger thanI imagined was already afoot when I started this project.
Since then, especially with the advent of Facebook etc. it has become quite obvious that there are many many fans of Fighting Fantasy and gamebooks generally from all over the world and not just English primary speaking nations. Oscar here at https://fanbooks.fightingfantasy.net is actually based in Portugal, also on our Discord channel is Вилорп and friends from Bulgaria (he is our moderator so be good!) who will probably direct you to http://www.legacyofkreya.com/en/news to start with. Also I have just had word from our man in Ohio in U.S. and A. Guillermo about this YouTube channel and review of Gavin Mitchells Spanish publication of Outsider and fightingfantasy.net Las mejores webs de librojuegos (which is based from the site https://librojuegos.org/) which has some lovely things to say about us here :-)- at least that’s what I am told – my Spanish is no good at all 🙁
Since WordPress does have the capacity to be a multi-site CMS in theory I could make this place multi-lingual. If you are a serious developer interested in helping me do this and have another language in your personal knowledgebase please contact me. Or, if you are interested in your own port of the current gamebook engine to develop your own international site please feel free to enquire. I do not charge, all I ask is patience (a LOT of patience) and creditation.
Lastly if you have an international gamebook site and would like a link sometime (and I mean I may forget to make it for a long time) please feel free to drop me a link to your site any way you can get hold of me 🙂
Updates
Well, I don’t know where to begin with updating you on the work that has been completed and is in development since my last News update in October. Hopefully you will be a signed up member and can see the new features yourself. Here’s what I can remember off the top of my head:
- The Randomizer is available to both visitors and members
- The Randomizer is badly named as it also converts an entire text document of an adventure to references for you, and can save them to your book automatically, and can convert to PDF or HTML also
- I am working on easy to use ABML buttons in the adventure editor so you don’t have to keep looking up how each tag works when coding an adventure
- The GraphViz creator now includes extra checkers for you such as 1) Orphan checker 2) Dangly Link checker and 3) Dead End checker, making it a very powerful tool for checking the validity of your adventure before publishing on or off the site
- Illustrations (and the associated <img> tag) are now included and operational, though you can only use existing uploaded images or must contact me with yor illustrations for your adventures at this time for obvious reasons
- The latest new online adventure is The Altimer (our first test bed for illustrations – read and enjoy, especially the inline image puzzle! (also adapted for blind readers)), courtesy of Samuel Isaacson, which is a taster of his fully published work available on Amazon as either a digital download or printed book. I have in fact entered the entire adventure but you will find the game ends at a ‘choke-point’ in the adventure flow. If you are an author of a published work and would like to try this facility to promote your published work please contact me
Some minor other updates have been executed making fightingfantasy.net more friendly oh and we have a new artwork additions to the login page you may have noticed courtesy of mega-fan James ‘Kailo Monkey’ Kail and no less than Fighting Fantasy illustrator himself Mike Tenebrae!
Lastly my next major feature is likely to be image-map enablement – as there are a number of comic style CYOA’s I am in the process of acquiring permissions to use – you *might* know of DiceMan, a 2000 A.D. comic (that’s basically Judge Dredd for all you that need to know) which is a gamebook style comic – well basically there are some authors out there with comic adventures looking for online interactivity – and of course I am not one to shy from a challenge like that! So, watch out and keep your eyes on fightingfantasy.net for more news… 🙂
New Adventure
Xshanaar Assassin by T M Badowski is now complete and fully implemented in the play area. Enjoy!