Welcome to the first issue of BitDreams. This being the first issue, I thought it pertinent to write about the magazine and give some background info on it and it's authors. For those of you reading the HTML version of the e-zine, the following text mostly applies to the offline reader that you can download from the BitDreams main page.
A while back Emil sent me email about a new e-zine that he had put out entitled "Darkness." I downloaded it and was immediately impressed with what he done. Although it was text based, it had smooth hardware scrolling and some dizzying demo effects built in. Emil had asked if I wanted to be a part of Darkness, and I jumped at the chance. I had been toying with the idea of writing an electronic magazine for a while, but I wasn't sure what the format should be. Darkness was nearly perfect for what I wanted.
I sent email back to Emil telling him I'd love to be a part of the e-zine, but that I thought it would be better as a graphical e-zine. Since my specialty is graphics programming I had most of the libraries already written to do the e-zine. What you are looking at is the end result of more than a year of programming on an Object Oriented VESA graphics library.
After two weeks of on and off programming BitDreams was finished. As of this writing it is 767 lines of code. All of BitDreams was written in Borland Pascal 7.0 and runs in 48-bit Protected Mode. The VESA library is a combination of Pascal and Assembly, and was compiled with BP 7.0 and TASM. For those of you out there who think that Pascal is not a real programming language, this should demonstrate that you are incorrect.
Almost all the graphics in this program came from Emil. He rendered them using a variety of programs, not the least of which are LightWave and POV-Ray. He is truly a rendering genius. The font, however, came from a very popular game (I'm sure you can guess which ;).
You may be wondering why we would make a reader when all the articles can be easily viewed over the Internet from one of our web-sites. Well, it's because I wanted to do something and show off my programming and Emil's rendering abilities ;). Okay, that's not entirely true. We did it for the "kool" value.
An easter egg is something that the programmer of an application has added into the program without documenting that it is there. There are currently 2 easter eggs built into BitDreams. I won't say any more ;).
Well, I'm the graphics programmer for MonsterSoft. However, I also work freelance on other projects (the graphics engine for an OS and a program for airplane pilots - just to name a few). So, if you are in need of some nifty programs or graphics programming information feel free to contact me. My main desire is to write arcade and console quality platform (run-and-jump) games for the PC.
Emil is an aspiring (albeit young) programmer and an excellent 3D gfx artist. I've never actually met him (nor have I spoken to him), but I hear he lives somewhere in the bowels of Australia. For more information about him I recommend reading the Editor's Corner.
That's about all the space I can spare this issue. I hope that you enjoy this e-zine and will support it by downloading future issues and spreading the word that it exists.