Article: A 2D game engine in Visual Basic

I have mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, we could use more alternative language articles. However this guy is only a step above voodoo programming, and doesn't really present a complete 2D game engine. It's more like a bunch of helper code to make 2D games that doesn't quite rise to the engine level.

Do we have anyone with Visual Basic 6 installed who can look over the code?

I'm not convinced we want to be accepting new articles that use VB6, when VB.NET has been around for three years.

There's still a VB6 development community, and it doesn't hurt us to edit or publish the content - even if we elect not to feature it due to VB6 having been superseded by .NET. While both VB6 and VB.NET are, for all practical purposes, Windows-only languages (Mono Basic, Schmono Basic), the one simply requires a VB runtime while the other requires the CLR.

I say that we not reject it on the basis of language.

Ok, then sometime this weekend I'll try to find my VB6 discs and look at the code again. Unless we have a reviewer that has VB6 installed already.

No joy here. We might need to scrap this if we can't find someone to look over the code.

Still no joy with respect to finding my VB 6 disc. If we can't get anyone to review it, I'll write up a rejection.

Ok rejection sent based on my initial non-language concerns. Bcc'd to Dave and Oluseyi. Contents as follows:

Quote:

Dear Justin Meza, We greatly appreciate your submission of "A 2D Game Engine in Visual Basic" for publication consideration. Unfortunately we are not able to accept this submission for publication. The primary issue with the article is that the code presented lacks an appropriate level of abstraction to truly qualify as a game engine. While the code is organized around large macro block level constructs, the classes suffer a lack of encapsulation both in data protection as well as isolation of logical lower level functionality. Additionally, the tone of the article is overly informal. Should it be possible to resolve any of these outstanding considerations, we would be happy to review your content again. For a more detailed explanation of the aforementioned reasons, or to answer any of your questions in general, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at oluseyi@gamedev.net. Thank you for your submission, and we hope that you will again choose GameDev.Net for future content you wish to share with the game development community. As you might know, GameDev.Net receives a large number of article submissions and I do apologize for any delay in getting back to you. Howard Jeng, GDERB Editor