Blitz Research News...
Community Forums/Common Room/Blitz Research News...
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| Hi, I've just posted some news to the Blitz Research facebook page. Here's a copy. Hi everyone, A slightly sad update... After careful consideration, and in order to concentrate more fully on monkey2, I have decided to downsize Blitz Research operations. In particular: * MonkeyX will be completely open sourced and the Monkey-X.com site will be closed. * Blitzbasic.com will be closed. * The monkey2 site will remain, as will the monkey2 Patreon page. My plan is to continue working on monkey2, but to also enhance my income by creating things with it to be sold commercially such as an IAP module for mobile, a simple 'Maplet' style modeller for the upcoming 3d module, and hopefully even a game one of these days! I would urge monkeyx users to switch to monkey2 if possible. It is very similar to monkeyx, and is by now just about 'feature equivalent' with it. Monkey2 does not alas generate html5 code so you'll still need MonkeyX for that, but MonkeyX will still be around. Website closures will probably happen before the end of the month. This is definitely a bummer. BB.com in particular has a long and colorful history and is IMO still a great programming site. But the truth is BRL isn't even making enough money these days to keep the sites running. I've been hosting them on a dedicated server which is not cheap, and while I guess I could move them to a smaller, cheaper server, I think it's time to let them go. I've been coding and hosting community websites for over 10 years now and I feel like I've had enough of that for a while. All in all, I just want to get back to hardcore coding! I've been having a great time working on monkey2 and, even if it doesn't turn out to be as popular as stuff I've done in the past, I don't really care if I can manage to make a living out of it! Good luck for the future to everyone, and thank you so much for buying BRL products in the past! |
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| * Blitzbasic.com will be closed. ...I'm assume that includes blitzmax.com then? Would be really unfortunate if all of this will completely disappear, including many years of old code and solutions to problems... |
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| Would be really unfortunate if all of this will completely disappear, including many years of old code and solutions to problems... I am working on a plan to make sure all resources remain available from an alternative location. |
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| Erm, so this website and forum is going to close? Man, that's really sad news. On and off every day for 18 years coming here. I am working on a plan to make sure all resources remain available from an alternative location. Any ideas on when that will happen and when will the site be temporarily shut down? |
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| I do not understand, the google translator does not help much. What is going to happen?. |
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| In short, Mark Sibly the creator and owner of Blitz and website is shutting this website down at the end of this month. Hopefully Skidracer will move all the resources to another site. |
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| Sad news :( Like passing of an old friend! Is there anyway to archive the site for future reference? |
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| Maybe it stores a copy of the site in an external server and can download, or someone with economic solvency is made load of the server and the domain. As users of this community, we could collaborate among all with the payment of the domain and the hosting. only is it an idea. |
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| I am working on a plan to make sure all resources remain available from an alternative location. Wishing you the best of luck. I'm assuming that skidracer is going to try and archive the site, but do we have a place for the community to go to? Does anyone have any recommendations for a different programing language if all else fails? And I know I haven't been here very long, but I'm going to miss you guys. |
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| Rooster said: but do we have a place for the community to go to? Combining monkey1 forum and blitz languages forum into a single forum for people asking for help in making games in the future.? However, is it easy or difficult to combine them together.? |
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| @davidboy I think Mark said he's closing the MonkeyX site. |
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| Only, http://monkey2.monkey-x.com/ |
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| Okay, I've stopped panicking a little bit. I did a web search for "free forum sites", and found http://www.freeforums.org/. I think could make a forum there if need be, or if anyone wants me to. So what are you guys thoughts about this? |
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| So what are you guys thoughts about this? If any move to http://monkey2.monkey-x.com/forums/ Become a Patreon and make BRL great again, it's gonna be HUGE! It's true... :) |
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| @Playniax Yeah, I know it's there, but there is not really a place to ask BlitzMax or Blitz3D questions there. And it feels like asking in General Programming Discussion forum wouldn't be the most appropriate place to ask. |
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| And here I was thinking that Simon took over this site a few months ago. Guess the word was wrong. Good luck everyone. |
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| My hosting plan has unlimited bandwidth and storage. I'll volunteer to host an archive of the forums. Edit: I'm also volunteering to host a version where the forums can stay active. |
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| maybe we all might get more productive now that 66% of the brl forums are gonna close |
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| This is awful. Good bye then. I will not switch to a language which is somehow similar to C++. I will use C++ directly then together with AGK2. Monkey 2 might be feature wise the same but it has an unusable IDE, almost NO documentation. Good luck anyway Mark. I followed you all the time hoping you would at least learn just a tiny bit about marketing and product placement but I just give up now. Good luck with Monkey 2, 3, 4, ... whatever will follow with new websites and split ups. I don't get why you want to close down the sites. I'm so pissed... |
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| Skidracer has access to the forum DB. He should consider writing a converter for phpbb or another popular maintained forum. As everything is open sourced then, there is no need for a portal style website. Forum should be enough. By converting to.a standard forum we would gain default features and easier maintenance. Hosting such a small forum will cost less then 10 euros...and I am still talking about a dedicated server or a more powerful vmachine. After complete conversion the password reset link should be send to the users (as hash type will have changed making login not work). People with outdated/invalid emails will have to manually convince the admin of their valid interests in an account. After this is done, all website links on bb.com/bm.com should redirect properly (php http header) to the new server so google could index it really fast. If the website closes down, skid (or so) could transfer!! the domain to him, so no domain squatter is able to buy it. If one needs help for a blitzforum->otherforum converter, i think we surely could collaborate but maybe skid will just take over the website and data? Bye Ron Bye Ron |
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| Become a Patreon and make BRL great again, it's gonna be HUGE! It's true... :) Playniax you must be kidding. How many are there? BRL has 73 backers (patrons), where one of those has this giant >$500 thing running to support the 3d module. If that's done... oh well... There's nothing going to be huge at all. BB was huge, Monkey was still somehow big, but Monkey 2 is just the remaining fanboys. Consider me a fanboy as well but even I cannot deny the facts that .... oh well don't get me started... |
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| @Derron I really hope what you are saying pans out. |
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| ..oh man..this is bad..why such radical move? Hosting web site such as this one shouldnt be expensive and im sure, there is more than enough folks here who will support it, including me..so, why killing this place? |
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| Could we set up a mailing list or something to keep each other informed when a replacement community springs up? |
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| Good idea GW, I've posted a thread here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=108152 |
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| This news didn't surprise me. I think that it's been coming for a while. I've never really bothered much with BRL products since Blitmax became a lame duck with Linux being broken after the first OS update and never really fixed properly. A paid for product that makes claims of being cross platform and remains broken for one of the targets, doesn't entirely instil a lot of faith in it or the company. And then there is MonkeyX with it's flaws and again Linux was just an after thought. And now there is Monkey2, and I think that I can see problems arising there as well. You should be able to get old forum post from The Web Archive's WayBack Machine. The last archive was from 3 June 2017. But having an all in one community forum for all of Blitz Research products is what many were asking for. As everything is just about open source now, there are plenty of free forum hosting sites out there for non-commercial use where such a forum can be held. |
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| In b4 the lock.... lot's of good people here, and BB.com is at the top of my Firefox dropdown site list (meaning, it's the one I access the most). |
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| I am sure we can work something out. |
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| I am sure we can work something out. I Hope that includes you starting a Patreon account so we can support NG development. This site and it's community is practically an internet landmark. |
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| Playniax you must be kidding Yes, in a way I am kidding hence the smiley but I am also a bit cynical. And I am not specifically talking to one person but I view most criticism as a bit exaggerated. Also the countless threads, 'how to save monkey' or 'how to save BRL' and 'Mark must do this and that' and other negative attitudes towards anything Mark does isn't good enough anymore also do not help. Wanted to save BRL? Funding would have been a start. Sure everybody has a right to have an opinion and there is still a lot of things that can be done about monkey2 but it isn't really that bad as some people make it out to be and you can't expect Mark to keep working and improving it without the proper funding! One man can do only so much. If 'you' haven't jumped the monkey2 wagon yet, chances are it will not happen. Maybe 3d will change some people's mind but only for people that need 3d. For now, my number one choice is Monkey2/Pyro2 but I will focus on games in the future! So, I get his decision, it's time to move on... I already did! |
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| I know, Xaron. I bought BlitzBasic on Mini-CD (and still have it here), and in my opinion Blitz3D afterwards was the biggest success for BRL. Must have been a good time, 17 to 15 years ago. In my opinion (then, from outside), everything following Blitz3D wasn't as successful. Everybody outside the BRL community knew about Blitz3D, the 3D game programming language. It was mentioned in every IT magazine! It changed with BlitzMax. Outside of the BRL community, not many people took notice about BlitzMax. It was said it is cross-platform, and there were no useable libraries at the beginning. It was sold while still in development (alpha/beta stage), and that was the big mistake, IMO. You can't really sell an un-finished, un-polished, product in alpha or beta stage - without enough libraries, without a good IDE, etc. Speaking as a PureBasic user here. Bought it in 2000 (one-time-fee), and watched some other, similar products. PowerBasic, BRL products, ... all gone by now. PureBasic still alive, in active development, and getting enhanced. They even made 'SpiderBasic' now, a 'PureBasic for the Web' (JavaScript/HTML5). Those guys developed 1 product over 17+ years and enhanced it! Mark decided to develop a product for a few years and abandon it in favor of doing something new. I understand the reasons for starting anew, for starting a new language with new syntax, while learning more about programming languages and compiler construction/design, etc. Mark probably had his best times 15 to 17 years ago, with the Blitz3D programming language and an exclusively included/packaged DirectX7-3D-gaming-library. It was a product that was useable out-of-the-box. IMO the IDE of the product was still not good, but people got attracted by the product. At that time, I was working on and enhancing the PureBasic IDE. 15 years later, the IDE still has many features and ideas from me, and was not discontinued, but enhanced even further. PureBasic v2.x, v3.x, v4.x, v5.x, v6.x, ... that's how they changed and enhanced the product. Mark decided to not go the way of Blitz3D v1.x, v2.x, v3.x, v4.x, v5.x, ... Instead, he decided to do a new product every few years, abandoning the old ones, and as it turns out, it was not the best decision, according to user and customer counts. Mark learned something on his journey: compiler design & construction, developing programming languages. I still remember a blog entry by Mark 15+ years ago, about reading the 'dragon book' on toilet and talking about learning something new. It was funny... ;) |
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| Very sad news indeed. End of an era. I've been here (through the various forum incarnations) for over 17 years - cracking on for half my entire life. I'm forever grateful for the existence of Blitz and the opportunities it's presented. :( |
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| Sorry for my rant. Just want to say thank you to all, especially Mark. |
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| Sorry Playniax I don't see Monkey2 ever being as big as this site was, Blitz was a milestone a shining beacon harkened from the Amiga days at its roots, with games like Worms pushing it and loads of other's. Then came BlitzBasic which also sparked a whole new load of coders for the PC. Then Blitz3d which is still used extensively today by some people. When everyone asked for cross platform BlitzMax came out and for a time it was good. To be honest after that time it seemed to fade and things seemed to go quieter. We had Max3d and all the issues that came with that then to kick it whilst it was down the monkey split. So from an old coder who has been here since this was a beta forum and the forums before it I can tell you MonleyX2 will not be as popular unless Mark actually decides where he wants to go with it. At present mobile support is sketchy some of the Base nodules are rough drafts which mark has said he will return to after doing 3d so now is the WORST time to be bombing the communities and killing 66% of your audience. I'm off to continue writing my own engine as to be honest it's down to me to work on and nobody could pull the community out from under us. Also using another system in the meantime whilst I get it ready for prime time. |
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| Feeling very disappointed, cannot forget you all, especially RemiD and Matty..... |
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| Every know and then BRL have this unexplainable ability to take the wind out of your sails. Whatever happens and wherever we all end up I do hope that the community can find itself settle down in a good place, for all to enjoy as we do now. Please keep us all posted where the next meeting place will be :-) |
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| Blitzbasic.com will be closed. Wow! Such a surprise, and so very disappointing. End of an era, and the only enjoyable programming community I've ever been a member of. |
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| I wanted to do a MX2 community forum/platform at http://forum.mx2.community/ Nobody was interested. I was paying the money anyway. People only following BRL's official forum... and now it's the end. |
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| Wow! Such a surprise, and so very disappointing. End of an era, and the only enjoyable programming community I've ever been a member of. +1 |
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| @ skidracer As I do not know how spontaneous Mark will pull the plug ("rm -rf" ;-)) I would suggest to dump the SQL databases on a more or less regular basis. Regarding "new homes" I hope the new community could reuse the existing domains (blitzmax.com, blitzbasic.com) while I would understand that Mark would like to see the incoming traffic (as low as it might be) gets redirected to the mx2 forums. But for a certain period of time you should consider having a landing page then (on the index page) - with links to mx2 and the new community home/boards. Requests to the old board URI (they are searching for something specific) should be redirected to the new board URI. As I am not reading much on the monkey-forums people should share "information" between the forums, so that the monkey/b3d/bmax community can grow together again. bye Ron |
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| Hosting should not cost much if there are only texts / html codes to store, i am not worried, if blitzbasic is still used by enough people, a new blitzbasic forum will probably be created somewhere... (there is still an english forum here : http://socoder.net/?forum=2 ) |
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| Just read the 'news' on the mx2 forum. Not very happy... (just a copy & paste) Anyway, before desperation will take control over, what are the problems and the solutions? 1. maintain too much website costs too much. Good, just a reason to join in ONE single website everything (instead of have blitzbasic,blitzmax,monkey,monkey2) This *should* reduce the costs too. 2. How much costs a website? 3. What features are most important? 4. Are other ‘economic’ solutions available? Just the code-base and the posts on BlitzMax.com are so much important, that a solution – before the final shut down – must be find. Keep calm, and breath deep… there’s always a solution. I would like to know the current cost of maintain that websites. In any case I suppose the domain (www.blitzbasic.com, www.blitzmax.com, monkey-x.com) have a very little cost (about 10/15 USD at year). A little replacement can be done without too much trouble and costs (forum is a big beast I suppose, so a separate solution it's needed!) edit: I just checked with whois the domain's expire dates www.blitzbasic.com 25-apr-2019 www.blitzmax.com 18-jan-2018 www.monkey-x.com 04-nov-2017 BlitzBasic has more 'value' than monkey-x so it seems logic (to me at least!) keep that. In any case, what's is the 'EXIT PLAN'? edit 2: I looked for the NETWORK SOLUTIONS LLC (I suppose they are the hoster) but I didn't found any info about the costs (montly or not). edit 3: Ok, maybe I found it. https://www.networksolutions.com/web-hosting/hosting-package-comparison.jsp I have a doubt about the MySQL database size... but in the worst case (supposing the info displayed are what actually applied to BRL) it means (for a single website I suppose) USD 26,16 x 12 = USD 313,92 + taxes for a single year. |
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| @ degac They might have run it on an older device (contracted years ago to worse conditions). But what you linked seems a bit expensive for what they offer - without knowing the "hardware behind", of course. You linked to "web hosting" - so no VPS, no dedicated server, ... As Blitz-/monkey-/... sites are offline altogether when the "mysql connection error" happens, I assume all of them run on the same host. But I think they run on a server, no "webhosting package" (localhost connection to mysql) as the webhost packages often have dedicated mysql-servers to use (db1234567.hostprovider.tld). Also I think skidracer was writing about "migrating to a new host" a while ago. If that happened, website should be split. Dunno why blitzmax.com _and_ monkey-x.com were down at the same time some weeks ago. @ costs of a website I wont fund Mark to keep that website alive - as I would not be able to check what costs are really coming in and are required to run the whole thing. He is doing his monkey2-stuff now and wasn't posting here (except posts like above) for years. And as Mark wants to draw a line from "past software" to his current project I think it would be okay to split off the whole thing. bye Ron |
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| Bummer. This is Marks baby, I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision, so if it's not a profitable site then it's also an understandable decision. I would like the see the code archives saved in a readable format if possible please, preferably one that does not require a web server. If the MX2 3D engine lives up to it promise, I'll probably see some of you on the MX2 forum. No matter what, good luck to all, it's been a pleasure. |
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| Gah, please please please ensure a static copy remains available! Even if just as an offline download/torrent! So much knowledge and information here, it would be a terrible loss! My number one site still! |
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| James, there is some more discussion in the Dev Team forum in case you missed it. |
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| such a shame, I recall when the unofficial blitzcoder forums shut down, I hope there will be a place for Max and B3D posting on the monkey2 site? I just hope an archive can be made available for a while. |
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| @Derron How likely do you think keeping the forums going is? GW said: I Hope that includes you starting a Patreon account so we can support NG development. Please do. |
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| The chance is almost NIL that the forums will be continued even with read only access. Not from the official site. So we either move to another place (I could setup something professional with a domain) or we all flood the Monkey 2 forums which probably will lead to another split. ;) |
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| Damn shame. Where am I going to post my bugfixes for BlitzMax now? |
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| Anyone know if there is a tool to download the web-forum to my hard drive? |
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| @Yue: GoodlookingGuy is exactly doing that now: http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/posts.php?topic=12934 (go to post 25 and take some popcorn, there started quite some war) |
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| @Yue This software can do this. httrack |
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| @Xaron I'm more concerned with "write" access to the forums, It would be the least complicated transition. or we all flood the Monkey 2 forums which probably will lead to another split. ;) lol |
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| +1000 for making sure the topics and code archives are all stored somewhere safe online for searching. I'm still using BlitzMax commercially and search the forums and ask the odd question every few months. I know the language itself isn't officially supported any more but the community support is invaluable. Anyway, it's completely understandable not to want to pay for an unprofitable website and one thay may drain mental energy. I just hope a solution to the archiving can be found. I've enjoyed using Blitz since the Amiga days, then had a hiatus until 2004 when I got Blitz Plus, then BlitzMax in 2006. I've been making games in Blitz for 12 years full time now, which has basically been a dream come true (with a few nightmares in there too, ha). So big thanks for Mark, and the BRL team, and the community. It's been an amazing ride and I look forward to it continuing in some form or another. |
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| Mark decides he can't afford the server, and the first thing you do is overstress the server by making a crawler.. .. even though Skid said he's got the database, and is working with it. I hope you've a sizeable donation to Mark on the horizon. |
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| Maybe if someone already has a copy of the site could offer a torrent of it? Maybe there are dozens of people downloading the the entire thing already. |
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| I think there will be one soon. :) |
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| If anyone is interested I've re-creeated SyntaxBomb forums ( if anyone still remembers ). Everyone welcome to join and build it up :) http://www.syntaxbomb.com or https://www.syntaxbomb.com if you prefer an SSL connection. |
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| Thanks for the great Blitz journey Mark and associates. Even when BlitzMax, MaxGUI, etc. cost some money, it was a wonderful bargain! As a Basic only guy, I won't be following down Monkey Lane. Best of everything in the future. John G (perpetual grump) |
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| Sad, sad news.. :-( Pretty drastic. Mark could have first asked to see how many users were interested in paying a small fee or even put google adds on it so perhaps would make some money. I've been visiting this site many years and like to check it in every few days to see what's going on(if not every day). It will leave a void if not moved as a whole to another host. Unity forums don't compare to this community, so if Skid or anyone else can pull it off would be great. I wonder how large the entire Blitz site archive is? Blitz related stuff on my drives is already giving me a storage juggle. |
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| @Rick Nasher I am downloading the website, it goes for about 300 megs and in the 85% |
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| Really really grim news!! I appreciate that there are nowhere near as many active users as we used to have 14 years ago but I've still checked in a few times every day. As most folk say, I hope all the excellent code examples and questions/discussions can be saved somehow. Many of them have been invaluable to me. On a personal note, it seems like the closure of the site will coincide with the completion of my labour of love POLYwhatsitsface.. All coding completed so it WILL be released this month :) Sad times :( |
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| sad news many good people here many good code, discussions, information, knowledge... long list just thank´s to any of you helped me here and mark for this great site and software. cheers Juan Ignacio Odriozola |
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This is like everyone's favorite (virtual) pub closing.. |
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| I am also working on a mirror of the website. The archive and help from the community has been a real treasure over the years. I would hate to lose this awesome resource. It will take a little while to set back up the Forums. If he would setup a fundraiser I would gladly donate to keep the website running a bit longer. |
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| This is not legal advice http://www.blitzbasic.com/faq/faq_entry.php?id=1 [...] All information and articles contributed to the Blitz Research Ltd by outside parties are under the copyrights of those parties. [...] Terms and Conditions You agree not to reprint, redistribute or copy any content on this site without the explicit written consent from Blitz Research Ltd. Although permission is not guaranteed, you may request permission to reprint material by sending an email to marksibly@.... [...] These terms and conditions may be altered or appended by the owner of Blitz Research Ltd at any time, without warning. [...] Without a swift change in terms and conditions, it will be at least a grey area to host the content somewhere else. |
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| All of the code is considered Public Domain and I believe for archiving purposes it would be considered "fair use" as no one here is trying to profit off of Blitz and its authors content. If the software is free and open sourced, I fail to see any issue here. But it would be nice if we got Marks blessing. |
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| Richard Betson got his wish. |
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| Yes, I see what you mean. |
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| As someone who's been coming here (and the sites before it) multiple times a day every day for the best part of twenty years (don't judge me), this is... disappointing. I won't get my knickers in too much of a twist until I see what comes out the other side - I'm sure many people are working on things - but this is a sad day for anybody that's ever enjoyed playing with Blitz products and the community that grew up around them. |
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| you kill me ..... |
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