Imagine your favorite board and tile-based wordgame, and you've got a mediocre start. It's got the full alphabet, naturally...and blank tiles that act as wildcards.

Now add two more "blank" tiles: the bomb tile, and the poison tile. They play just like a blank, and can also represent any letter. But when your opponent plays off of a bomb tile, it explodes...and takes any adjacent enemy tiles with it. If your enemy has a lot of contiguous tiles, the effect can sweep across the entire game board with frightening results for them. You see, each explosion hurts your opponent, which leads us to a fundamental difference between WordWars and those "other" word games. There is no score...it's a fight to the death. You play until somebody dies.

Poison, if triggered, will spread the same way, doing damage to your opponent each turn as long as the poisoned tiles exist.

As if that wasn't violent enough, certain words cause unique mayhem. Spell "BOMB", and a bombing run drops blockbusters on your enemy. Spell "ABDUCT", and aliens steal their tiles to perform sick experiments. These are two of the dozens of words that await your strategic use, once you discover them. 

Oh, and did we mention that it supports skins? WordWars has five skins initially, and making more is easy!

Awards

Honorable Mention award in the VB Gamer Christmas Contest 2002. (An early version of WordWars placed fourth overall.)

More information, downloads, and purchase available at TotalGaming Network.

Ogg Vorbis is a good alternative to MP3 for sound effects and music, offering compression and quality that is just as good, but without the royalty costs. The DLLs are not bad to work with, but really leave VB developers out in the cold. It's not a simple task to pass a FILE object from VB to C++, for example.

The VBOgg.dll addresses this. We came across a small C++ clas that encapsulates much of the tedium of playing an Ogg file. We also have no idea who wrote the oggplayer class on which this dll is based, so if you know, please inform us so we can assign appropriate credit. With a little cleanup, the oggplayer class did a good job of loading and playing streaming Ogg data (IE: the entire file is not loaded all at once, but rather bits at a time).

VBOgg adds one more layer of encapsulation to provide a clean interface to Visual Basic. Here are the supported function declarations:

    Private Declare Function InitOgg Lib "vbogg.dll" _
        (ByVal HWND As Long, ByVal IsGlobal As Long) As Long
    Private Declare Function PlayOggFile Lib "vbogg.dll" _
        (ByVal FileName As String) As Long
    Private Declare Function OggIsPlaying Lib "vbogg.dll" _
        () As Long
    Private Declare Function StopOgg Lib "vbogg.dll" _
        () As Long
    Private Declare Function UpdateOgg Lib "vbogg.dll" _
        () As Long
    Private Declare Function CloseOgg Lib "vbogg.dll" _
        () As Long
    Private Declare Function SetOggVolume Lib "vbogg.dll" _
        (ByVal Volume As Long) As Long
    Private Declare Function SetOggPan Lib "vbogg.dll" _
        (ByVal Position As Long) As Long

They're pretty straightforward, except possibly for UpdateOgg. You see, since this is streaming the file, every now and then it needs to check to see if it's time to load the next chunk into one of its buffers. (It actually has two buffers, and alternates between them.) So, you need to make this call occasionally from VB to make the streaming work. The example code does that from a Timer interval of 1000, which seems to work well enough.

The C++ source code is included, but you'll need the Vorbis SDK to compile it. vorbisfile_static.lib, vorbis_static.lib, ogg_static, and dsound.lib will have to be linked to your project to successfully compile. (It uses DirectSound for access to the sound card.)

VBOgg will load and play a single Ogg file. There are no multiple channels, and the sound doesn't any other "tricks." The included VB project does pretty much everything the DLL supports. In other words, if you want it to do more, you'll have to do the code yourself (and let us have a copy to play with, of course).

Download

VBOgg is available here. The download includes the source code, so have a crack at it. And, it's utterly FREE.

Support

You can ask a question in the Freebies section of our Forums. Requests for enhancements go there also, as well as general help on using it in your VB program.

Alternatively, you can support US. We aren't charging anyone for VBOgg, but it does take time to answer questions and add features...and money to provide the hosting. If you are grateful for VBOgg, please feel free to donate to its continued use and development.

Please read this before downloading or using Atomic GUI for NSIS! At a bare minimum, read the NOTES.

We at Atomic Monks have used Nullsoft install packages exclusively since the beginning, but got tired of manually piecing together the scripts for the more complex test installs by hand. We looked for a suitable GUI that would do what we needed, but met with little success. There were a very few admirable efforts out there. Some were the first program the person had attempted to write (kudos to them for the effort), and others were simply unwieldy (to put it politely). We made this one to satisfy our needs. It's done well for us, and we thought others might get some use out of it.

Note that this DOES require NSIS2.0b, but does NOT support the "modern UI" interface. It supports the classic interface, with and without a background gradiant screen.

Features of version 1.0 include:

    * Drag & drop of files into the install package
    * Folder tree structure for arranging files
    * Unlimited sections
    * Project save and load
    * License file support
    * Automatic uninstaller creation
    * Background color pickers
    * A nifty little shortcut creation gizmo
    * Script save and compiler link

Download

Atomic GUI for NSIS requires the VB6 SP6 runtimes. If you need them, you can download them here if you need them.

Atomic GUI for NSIS comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under the terms of the GNU GPL. You may view the GNU GPL here.

Again, this software is free and comes with no guarantees, but we hope you find it nifty and useful. Use it at your own risk. If you agree to these terms, you can download the source code here, or the full package here.

Support

There are bugs in this software! While this is decidedly a "use at your own risk, no warranty" piece of software, we will try to answer questions about this program. Come visit the forums to ask them.

Alternatively, you can support US. We aren't charging anyone for Atomic GUI for NSIS, but it does take time to answer questions and add features...and money to provide the hosting. If you are grateful for Atomic GUI for NSIS, please feel free to donate.

Requirements: Requires .NET Framework 1.1

ATOM Trance is a program to provide drumming tracks for those attempting Shamanic Trance Journeys without the benefit of an apprentice shaman or drummer. With ATOM Trance you can set up a track however you like, including tracks much longer than are possible with a CD (an unpleasant limitation of that medium).

The purpose of a trance journey varies greatly by the individual, as do explanations of how it works. To some people, it's just another form of meditation. For others, it's a journey to other dimensions...to the astral or spirit realms.

Whatever you believe, it has been scientifically demonstrated that our brains do respond to drumming. Certain patterns of beats trigger particular brainwave patterns, and thus different states of minds. This is why drumming has been a long-used tool in shamanism for entering trance states.

A "real" shaman has an apprentice or helper to manage the drumming for him or her. This person intuitively knows when it's time to alter the beat to bring the shaman back to normal consciousness, something that no software can really provide. What ATOM Trance does is provide a drummer that will never get tired. You can set up rhythms that vary in rhythm over time, and have slight variations in pace, pitch, and volume...adjustments that make the drumming sound more natural. While not a complete substitution for a real drummer, it can do in a pinch. Also, ATOM Trance can deliver beats for hours without fatigue.

Downloads (and a Disclaimer)

This software is free and AS-IS. While we'll be happy to make fixes, consider changes, and provide additional rhythms, there are no promises since you're not paying for it. It's a simple install that shouldn't cause any problems on your system, but on the off chance that it does, you're on your own. Use at your own risk.

Also, please don't download this thing and set yourself up for a four hour trance journey if you're not prepared for it. It takes most people months or years to reach a level of skill to do so. If you have any sort of medical condition that makes deep meditation a bad idea, please stay away. Some people with epilepsy could potentially have problems.

Bottom line: we make no promises, offer no guarantees, and take no responsibility for what happens with this download, if anything. We're not trying to scare you off, just protect ourselves. So if this is all ok with you:

Rhythms

Atom Trance supports the loading and saving of custom rhythm tracks. They are saved as XML files in the same directory as the software. If you have a rhythm you think others might enjoy, feel free to post it in the forums.

Support

You can ask a question in the Freebies section of our Forums. Requests for enhancements go there also, as well as shared rhythms.
Alternatively, you can support US. We aren't charging anyone for Atom Trance, but it does take time to answer questions and add features...and money to provide the hosting. If you are grateful for Atom Trance, please feel free to donate to its continued use and development.

I Agree...Gimme!