Blitz Newsletter

I used to receive a monthly Blitz Newsletter but have not had one since March 2005. Does the newsletter still exist?

No news since then

Wez laid back man.

(I didnt know there had been one. Was it any good?)

It was pretty good, but, alas, they stopped doing it :(

Trouble was, there wasn't much news in it.

Well, let's have a Blitz letter then :)

I rather have a MaxGUI forum, and (a wild guess) a handful of other blitzers want Max3D..

oh, and another few want an offtopic forum, and, and, and.. I'd gladly trade the newsletter for all that :P

Off topic would be nice, and a MaxGui forum would be good.

This Max3d thing whats that? You mean Max2d dont you?

I want MaxHeadroom.

> Trouble was, there wasn't much news in it.

Not much has happened in the past 6 months either.

Perhaps that is what he meant, but a single forum to discuss all the third party 3d engines usable with BlitzMax would be nice. People are not keen on having 3d topics cluttering up the BMax programming forum, and I can kind see their point, but we need somewhere to discuss it.

Well, I'm certain my Blitz Oblivion would have featured in back to back issues - such was the excitement.

Aplogies for bumping this year old thread - but being a bit of an 'obsessive collector' I was wondering if anyone has a copy of 'Blitz Newsletter #14' they would be prepared to copy for me - as it's the only one I am missing from the 17 available issues (the archive is missing it too)?

You talking about the online newsletters?

#14 was probably never released. They were a bit sporadic.

Funny show.

I'm pretty sure that there was an issue which never came out, so big10p is probably right.

I love Blitz Newsletter but they have stop it because there werent much news in it :(


oh well...maybe someone who can do Blitz Newsletter :)

Check your email Chalky.

Why not have snippets of useful code, and interviews with programmers that have 'released' programs/games etc.

Who knows

I thought it stopped because minib3d wasn't going to code itself.

I used to do a blitz newsletter and they are an awful lot of work.

@markcw - excellent - thank you!

It would be nice if it talked about what's on the agenda for Blitz, had tips n tricks, had cool blitz games recently released, hot user modules, and sure interviews or whatever + whatever else is relevant Maybe a forum member would feel like putting something together that Blitz can mail out? Or a group. Wouldn't be too hard if a sticky thread was made to accumulate newsworthy stuff, then it could just be all edited into one big newletter every 3 months say.

Users taking over doing the newsletter has been talked about several times before. That's as far as it ever got: talk.

Like a lot of things in life unfortunately. Anyway, I still think it would be a good idea...

When i first came to the Blitzforum the newsletter was one of the first things i've read and also enjoyed reading. I do understand that these things cost time but if there is no time from the core members why don't you try to deligate it to someone you can trust and is interested in doing it (if there is someone)?

I joined the community after they had stopped making them, but I think it would be nice having a monthly newsletter.

I think a quarterly newsletter would be a good idea. Some reports of what users have done and what is currently in wip. And of course a 'resume' of BlitzMax development, where it is, where it is going...

Having been the editor of a small hobbyist magazine in a previous life - and if a suitable mechanism can be found for the submission of articles etc. - I would be happy to prepare a quarterly newsletter. I'm not sure that a sticky thread is the best method for gathering content - as by the time the newsletter was released, most (if not all) of the news would be 'old' due to people having already read it via the forum. Other considerations would need to be the format used (HTML, PDF, RTF etc) and the method of distribution. However, the biggest challange will be sourcing enough articles for each edition (particularly about BlitzMax development etc.) - and making sure they don't simply duplicate information that is already available elsewhere.

Sounds great!

I think that not all Blitz users are regular visitors to the forum so many may not know the knews and some of the Bmax development news is actually quite tricky to locate in the worklogs etc. (if you didn't know to look there). So maybe some other forum or a simple blog where people can post the news ready for the next newsletter.

Of course the first step (once a valid plan is put together) is to check that BRL would be happy to send the newsletter out to their database of customers once it is ready. If not, it could be an "unofficial) newsletter which just get's posted in General Discussion and people link to via their sigs (oh and it could get mentioned on the front news page) etc, but that wouldn't be as neat I don't think...

Ok - well I will try to change that if enough people think it worthwhile and someone can help me set things up...

The main things I need to sort out are a holding place for information (like Grey Aliens blog idea - unfortunately I know nothing about how to set up a blog!) and where I would locate Bmax news (if it is stored somewhere other than the worklogs). Then we will need a way of telling potential contributors how/where to place forthcoming news. Once all this is in place, we need to decide on a distribution method.

If anyone at BRL or on this forum can give me any pointers as to how I might get started I would be very grateful...

www.blogger.com easiest way

I have created the following blog as a holding place for news etc:

BlitzBasicNews

Never having done this before, I have no idea whether this is accessible to everyone - maybe someone could try posting something and letting me know how they got on? If there are sufficient posts over the next 3 months, I will explore how I might assemble and distribute the newsletter to the community.

Coool, a good start. We can't add to it yet though. What you need to do is create a single post called Newsletter #1 or something and then people can add comments to it which contain news. That would be the best way. You don't want to let people sign on and make new posts as giving away the logon details could be a nightmare. Hope this helps.

@Grey Alien - Thanks for pointing me in the right direction - I have now added an initial post for people to add comments to...

That's a good start. To add comments it seems that we have to have a Google/Blogger identity (which I don't), can you see if there are any options to allow people to leave a commetn just by giving their name and email address (and possibly website too)? Lots of sites seem to offer that "basic" alternative so hopefully it's in the options somewhere. Maybe someone here knows more...

@Grey Alien - could you try again please - I think I have changed it so that anyone can comment...

OK I've posted some news. Looks like it works thanks!

No problem - thanks for your help. Be interesting to see how much stuff accumulates over the next few weeks.

Can anyone please tell me how to get this put on the blitzbasic.com home page as a news item?

Actually that's pretty easy, on the home page at the bottom is a link saying submit news. I wonder if you should be using the phrase "Unofficial Newsletter" for now or have you actually spoke to BRL yet? Maybe once you have some good content they'll agree to distribute it.

Hmmm - good point - I'll add "unofficial" to the blog blurb. I was going to wait to see how much feedback I got before contacting BRL as I thought there was little point approaching them if the end result was that there was no news to distribute. Of course - if I'm bombarded with reviews, snippets and news - that could be sooner rather than later... :o)

Yeah it would be great to have a newsletter quite soon whilst it's a hot topic, like in Jan, to inspire people to make cool stuff in 2008 :-)

Hey you should add the blog to your signature so that everyone can see it. If you get some good posts and it gains momentum, ask BRL to make a stick post about it at the top of General Discussion or maybe the Showcase.

Added to signature.

YAY Chalky :) I am looking forward to reading :)

cheer

http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/?gf=newsletter

This is the darkbasic newsletter. Might be worth looking at for some ideas.