Yasmina’s Quest – adventure game engine in PHP and DHTML (November 2005)

“Yasmina’s Quest” is an open source adventure game engine that comes with one adventure game as example (in Spanish) totally written using PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It was created on 17th November 2005 (approximately).

Screenshot

The games created with this engine can be played either as a point-and-click adventure (using mouse, pointer or your finger) or as a text adventure (using keyboard or any other text input method) and they are totally cross-browser and cross-platform.

Although it uses JavaScript in order to improve user interface, it is not mandatory and it works with any web browser without JavaScript support. Similarly, CSS is an advantage but not actually necessary. Even images are not necessary!

The characteristics of this engine are unique, letting developers create adventures that work in all web browsers and taking advantage of JavaScript and CSS to improve the user experience only if it is available. You will be able to play the game even in text-based web browsers such as Links and Lynx.

So far, I don’t know any other engine that works in all web browsers which let users play the same adventure in both modes, point-and-click adventure and text adventure.

It has been tested under BeOS, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X, QNX, BlackBerry Tablet OS, Android, iOS and others.

This engine has been used by some other people to create their own adventure.

Play online: http://yquest.tuxfamily.org/yq_spanish/

Play online (mirror): http://www.dhtmlgames.com/yquest/yq_spanish/

Official web site: http://yquest.tuxfamily.org/ (mirror at http://www.dhtmlgames.com/yquest/).

It can also be found on GitHub: https://github.com/jalbam/yquest

GüebZine – old webzine (1998 to 2000 or 2001)

“GüebZine” was a webzine which I started in 1998 (third and last official issue was released in 1999), creating it with HTML and a little bit of JavaScript. It was hosted on EmuM@nia (emumania.com) which was one of the most famous Spanish emulation web sites before it disappeared in 2002. It had different contributors (DaTaR, Erterks, ARROW, [Lolo], CHIP, Scumnok, [[[ALX]]]…) who wrote some sections and/or helped in some way.

Screenshot of them

Only three issues where released (all using Spanish as the main language). The fourth issue, which I was doing until 2000 or 2001 (I cannot remember), was never neither finished nor released but the last version I could found is included in this repository.

First three issues contained sections about software, emulation (including another older e-zine called Emu Mania by DaTaR), games, pastimes, programming (with a C course), hacking and cracking, music, web design course (by Erterks), contests (games contest, animations contest, images contest, music contests, homepages contest), a puzzle story (collaborative fiction) made by different contributors which was updated in every issue, news, interviews, links, chat, guestbook, etc.

The fourth version was going to contain many more things, as for example sections about IRC, ICQ, body piercing and tattoos, Pokémon, humour, patchwork, Star Wars, Macintosh, Amiga, overclocking, abandonware, retrocomputing, retrogaming (with an article by Scumnok), parapsychology, ASCII art, poems, sayings and proverbs, TV and radio, infographics, 3D, ecology, drugs, rankings, art gallery, point-and-click adventures, interactive fiction, game mods and maps, gastronomy and recipes, mobile phones and GSM, Visual Basic course (by CHIP), JavaScript course (by [Lolo]), Java applets development, underground culture and many many more.

This repository also contains installers and launchers (one of them was made by CHIP) and different versions of the official website where people could download this webzine.

Found on Internet Archive (Archive.org):
http://web.archive.org/web/20010604023337/http://emumania.com:80/guebzine/
http://web.archive.org/web/20010818152248/http://emumania.com:80/guebzine/

The repository can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/jalbam/guebzine

Some old mIRC add-ons (1998 to 2001)

Here there is a list of different add-ons I made for mIRC (very old versions), the most famous IRC client. They were made from 1998 to 2001.

mNotify 0.96b (3rd June 2001): improves and enhances the “notify” function. Configurable.

Nickah 0.05 (13th January 2001): configurable nick completion.

PolishKill 1.00b (11th January 2001): lets you configure actions for users who uses some server-assigned names.

FastMSG 0.20b (9th January 2001): reproduces a sound and opens a window with a message that can be sent to you through CTCP. Configurable

AwaYeah 0.25b (19th May 2001): improves and enhances the “away” function with different things including sending an SMS to your phone. Includes FastMSG 0.20b. Needs SmS CoNTRoLeR (with SmS Sender 2.2 by hPm) by |-FaiR-| (not included). Configurable.

aXpect 0.10b (16th December 2001): improves mIRC visual aspect and also reacts to desired words by performing chosen actions. Configurable.

FileInfo 0.25b (29th November 2000): shows and stores information about the computer where it is executed.

mHTML 0.01b (10th December 2001): offline HTML browser for mIRC. Not functional.

MasterPubli 0.05b (24th March 2001): simple add-on to advertise anything you want.

Enteo-Psiquers AddOn 0.10b (17th June 2001): showed news about Enteo-Psiquers on-line shop by using sockets.

Emu (7th August 1998): informative and educative add-on that shows information about emulators. It also sent information about an emulation CD as well as the steps to follow to join a software development team (called Honor Software) which I tried to create.

Distance AddOn 0.05 (8th July 2001): script to remote control someone’s computer (it could be considered a trojan if the user did not know what is the script for).

PubliBOT 0.01b/0.001b (21st December 2001): an advertisement bot (spambot) made for mIRC with different options.

They can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/jalbam/mirc_addons

Pruebas – QBasic game (1996 or 1997)

“Pruebas” is an open source game combination of text adventure and RPG written in Microsoft QBasic (under MS-DOS 6.22).

Screenshot

It is one of my first games that I created in 1996 or 1997 (I can’t remember), when I was about 12 years old (my birthday is in November). It is in Spanish language.

Runs natively under MS-DOS and compatible operating systems like Windows (you can use emulators like DosBox to run it under BeOS, Linux, *BSD, etc.).

Official site: http://dhtmlgames.com/pruebas/

Mirror at TuxFamily (sometimes down): http://pruebas.tuxfamily.org/

It can also be found on GitHub: https://github.com/jalbam/pruebas

Hello, World!

Hello everyone,

I just started this new personal blog in English language using WordPress.

Hopefully, I will have free time every now and then to publish about programming, retrocomputing, retrogaming, BeOS / Haiku OS, antique collecting, handicrafts, cinema, survivalism and some other hobbies I have, about personal experiences and opinions, etc.

Previously, many years ago, I also had two blogs which are now quite abandoned: Codéala otra vez, Sam (in Spanish) and La Mussi per sempre (in Catalan). I will try not to abandon this one… yet! 😉

If there is anyone reading this out there, thank you very much and feel free to drop a comment if you want, please.

Cheers,

Joan