Further Bloitzmax

Just came across thread regarding Torque 2D and Blitzmax on the indiegamer forums.

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=4924

One of the Authors of T2D gives his own impressions. Would be cool if BRL and more mature knowledgeable people would voice their own opinions in decent manner. Not that the reply on the thread actualy says a lot.

If anyone is going to post on there, make it a reasonable debate and not a Galloway V's Hitchens debacle lol.

Does GG refuse to communicate with thier custormers?
Do they leave critical compiler bugs unfixed for 4 months and basically f**k up customers development schedules?

If the answer is no, then you have a clear winner. ;)

Which bugs are you referring to?

I have been keeping an eye on Torque2D myself, without yet going to the trouble of researching it properly. Any comments as to the Pros / Cons of it would make interesting reading for me. The comment by GW certainly could do with elaboration...

Not another Bloitzmax thread!

blitz is darth vadar during his face transision phase. it'll be back, and it will conequer the universe. luke or no luke.

Robert: Since the latest update, my project will only work in debug mode on the Mac. Works any way on the PC. I reported this months ago.

I'm a massive fan of Max, but this is very disappointing.

Nomen is correct.
For some reason only known to Mark, once a project reaches a certain size, it will no longer run in release mode. (i'm using win32) But it will work in debug mode. I believe that Mark or Skidracer has mentioned that they have found the bug and fixed it but not released the fix.
The reason for his refusing to release the fix is also only known to him. I'm neither interested in the GUI module or the 3D module. I am however interested in keeping my publisher from canceling my game.

>Not another Bloitzmax thread!

Well technically this is the first. The other thread was about Bliotzmax.


Andy

LOL

I posted over at indiegamer why I preferred bmax over t2d and josh williams replied.

I felt josh's reply was a bit long, but he is a developer of t2d and probably is passionate about it, bear that in mind and have an open mind.

T2D is a great product - I do own it - but it isn't suitable for me any more. I think it is suitable for a lot of people, but it's a taste/need thing.

One Eyed Jack, I understand that it might not be everyone's "cup of tea", but what would you say are the strengths of T2D?

This isn't related to an "out of memory" error message, is it? Apparently the older FASM, 1.5x, had problems with large projects that are fixed by using version 1.64, which the latest development versions of BlitzMax use.

This wouldn't explain the Mac problem (wasn't aware of this myself), but may perhaps be the cause of whatever you're getting on Windows.

If that doesn't solve it, I'd suggest posting another bug report (with details), as I don't remember ever reading about any similar problems, and I've heard no mention of it privately, so it could possibly have been overlooked with the current focus on MaxGUI.

If either you or Nomen want me to try your projects (in confidence) in the latest version, just send me an email.

Thanks for that, James.

I had no response to my original post but I know Mark is aware of a later report. I don't have the code to my project with me but I can give you a copy probably next week.

Strengths and weaknesses of T2D

Strengths
* Built in editors with more on the way. Tilemaps, particles, collisions etc...

* Very good physics and collisions. Swept collisions means you can never get 2 objects pass through each other.

* Quickly prototype and quickly set up physics and begin playing.

* Good all round feature set, strong engine with cross platform compatiblity and AFAIK it actually does work under dx7 despite dx8 being used. Opengl is preferred though

Weaknesses
* Poor programming environment. It doesn't come close to blitzmax on any level whatsoever. As it isn't compiled but interpreted (script) you will find it very slow for A* or any number crunching.

* No strict: it will be a nightmare tracking down bugs. You don't know if your latest changes have even worked because it'll run the last working build anyway. Will not throw a visible warning, you will need to open the console and check.

* Easy to create variables and fields and mess up with typos.

* Some annoying engine 'gotchas' and a sprite-based engine as opposed to a draw-each-frame based engine. This is personal preference though.

Conclusion
Good to use, poor coding environment. Think of it as modding rather than creating a whole new game. It is a little bit tricky but I am sure improving all the time. It does not come with an IDE.

Thanks for taking the time to type that up One Eyed Jack, it was interesting reading and has given me food for thought.

Captain... our long range sensors are picking up two distinct vessels out there...

The Klingons, those bloody bastages!!!

Calm down Mr. Scott... these vessels appear to be from a two entirely different sectors of the galaxy... one from the Bloitz nebula... the other from the sparesly explored Torque sector...

Spock... i need positive information on those two ships... i need to know which one is friendly, what kinda engines they have... what programming language they use... what are their weakness, their strengths...

Uhura... engage the universal compiler...


Jim... Jim, your pushing it... your people know their jobs... give them time to do it...

dammit Bones... we're running out of time... if we don't...

RED ALERT... RED ALERT... a new vessel has entered the sector sir... strange markings... and this one appears to be an even more deadly threat than the other two...

oh my god, it's a pyramid cruiser from The Game Creators Continuum... one of their mind destroyers!!!

Shields!!! SHIELDS!!!!


da dadaaa da da da da daaaaaaaaaaaaaa

--Mike

/me wheels Red Ocktober off to the local nut house for trekkies

Long live Blake's 7! ;)

you mean... like they did to Captain Christopher Pike in the episode 'Where No Man Has Gone Before'....

and these big headed aliens tried to use illusions to get the crew of the Enterprise as breeding stock...

wow... i can't wait to relive that episode... wheel me... wheeeeeel meeeeeeee....


---Mike

Woah! How big is your game?

Red - more! more!

Mike, you are only allowed to answer in forums posts by flashing a light once or twice for yes and no OK. (Now I've proved I'm an elite trekkie fan with deep knowledge I might get some more respect around here ;-))

btw Red: you need to change your name today to Red November OK.

blink once red...

--Mike

OK, maybe we'd better allow you more than binary comms. Do you mean to say I got the yes and no the wrong way round? Does this mean I'm a trekkie failure, a mere "red suit" on the away team?

two blinks... and fix my stick shift, will ya :)

Spock... i dunno how you can stand it amongst all these humans... get me back down to the planet, will ya...


--Mike

*appears with a cheesy fizzly effect, hefts funny-looking weapon and vaporises Grey Alien*

Yeah, you're a red suit.

but wait, I was only a CLONE!

BlutzMax is far superior to all three products mentioned in this thread.

Vanilla, You mean BlutzMax is better than BloitzMax, Dark Basic Pro, and Torque?

By the by, I'm sticking with BMax for sure. It was I who posted the thread over at indiegamer when I was unsure and felt that I should have got me Torque. I've also witnessed this guy make a bunch of games at a very fast rate using PTK. So while we're mentioning engines.. Lets mention PTK too. Anyone here that use BMax and PTK compare those two yet? I'd be interested to see the pros and cons.

PS: Dark Basic PRO __SUCKS__ *sorry had to get that off my chest*

PTK has a great reputation and if I were making a 2d game I would seriously consider it.

However, im making a 3d game and am hanging out for the 3d moduel. (and pub.ode and host of other user made mods comming on line soon).

ptk?

So many engines, so few games.

>You mean BlutzMax is better than...

Anyone remember the game 'Blue Max' on the C64... Those were the days!


Andy

PTK

Hey thanks,

I haven't ever heard of PTK - but I'm a BlitzMax fan myself!

IPete2.

Max would be my language of choice, and probrably will be when it settles down more- My projects reach the tens-of-thousands of lines. I sure dont want to go back to the Qbasic days when i had to distribute the compiler for it to run, because the compiler couldn't hack its size.

Yeah, Max is definitely looking to be a winner.

Hi Everybody! I'll be home in a couple days. Long year in Iraq.

Andy: I remember, was hard.

drop out of warp Mr. Sulu...

Mr. Spock... it seems... as if... we've just entered a strange... 2 dimensional... section of the galaxy...

the inhabitants here... appear to be... flat... as are the worlds on which they live... they talk many different languages... Torque, Blitz, PTK... but they all have one thing in common... they're all 2D


fascinating... (/Spock raises one eyebrow in a perplexed expression)


da da daaaa daa da da da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

the journey continues...

--Mike

>Hi Everybody! I'll be home in a couple days. Long year in
>Iraq.

Yachting get's boring after a while:)


Andy

[EDIT] Picture removed because I'm apparently not allowed to link to it. At least it made me look stupid. :)

"High traffic costs
have forced me
to disable hotlinks.

The EAS webmaster"


nice.. ;)

"That'll teach you Avon... how dare you hotlink from EAS!?"

lol! It was only a 38k picture... I checked! Oh well. *grins sheepishly*

Actually Torque does 3D.

so does Blitz...

--Mike

Hey Mike, what is your favourite Star Trek series? I would have to say Next Generation for me, followed by the original, then Voyager. I just couldn't get into Deep Space Nine or Enterprise (even though I am a fan of Scott Bakula).

Second question - favourite Star Trek movie? For me it's First Contact, followed by Wrath of Khan.

oh boy... i'm gonna get in trouble here... discussing Trek is like talking religion...

ok... be gentle with me after i say this...

there is really only one Star Trek... the first TV series...

even the worst episodes (the Harry Mudd ones), from the TV series, were a hundred times more entertaining than being bored to unconsciousness with Jean Luc continuous babbling...

i can count how many episodes he talked the Klingons to death... Kirk would've blasted em to the other side of the galaxy in a fraction of the time, and would've gotten the girl by then as well...

and if we really wanted a bar in space, a hangout for aliens, we just had to pop in the StarWars dvd... and watch that... without the commercials... the only thing that ever came outta that dissapointment was the Ferengi characters... a worthy species of greedy lil fu... err, alien life if i ever saw one :)

then it really started to get bad... and Scott Bakula got lost on his time tripping and wound up on the bridge of an Enterprise... hahahahahahaaaaaaaa...

the only reason i even watched it past the first one was that the Vulcan chick might slip outta that skin tight thing they amusingly called 'her uniform', and prance around in the buff for a few precious prime time seconds...


as for the best Trek movie... that's a hard one... i enjoyed the one with Christopher Loyd as the Kligon commander... the one where they find Spock's casket, tube, whatever...

but there were some moments in a few of the others... Sulu racing to the aid of his old friends near the end of Undiscovered Country... driven past all restraint... 'Let er blow apart!!'... that was cool...

Piccard and a love interest experiencing a 'perfect moment', and Piccard's single most notable piece of work in a Trek segment, his speech to Anthony Zerbe (starfleet commander) when he makes it clear to him that 'this is an attack on the very soul of The Federation'...

that was the only time i ever saw Patrick Stewart's character ever show some resolve... and the only time he was ever challenged to show his considerable presence in a Trek...

also... Spock's forcing Kirk... and the rest of us to face up to our own humanity... 'the Klingons are dying'... he made it coldly and logically clear to us that if we were indeed 'human' we had to do something...


you have to forgive me on this one Avon... i grew up with these people... these characters...

they are indeed 'friends'... not only the characters, but i'm sure the people behind them would be nice to know as well...

they all became larger than life... and they all had one admiral quality that raised them above the pack... they kew what friendship meant... undying, unquestionable friendship...

they'd never let each other down...

i felt it when i heard that 'Doctor McCoy' had passed away... and then 'Scotty' went to that great engineroom in the sky...

this was a once in a lifetime thing... like the 1964 NY World's Fair... like the original Mustang... like your first romantic interlude...

if you missed it... your the worse for that... i can only try an impart what it was about... nothing that followed the original, no matter what hi tech state of the art special effects it had... has ever equalled it...


da da daaaaaaaa daa da da da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....


:)

--Mike

Nothing to forgive - I agree with most of what you said! I just happen to like Next Generation as well. To clarify though - the first two seasons of NG were a bit iffy to me, I didn't like Wesley Crusher or the second season doctor woman. Season three onwards were great for the most part (apart from annoying "Klingon" themed episodes).


lol... but that would be highly illogical, Captain!

I grew up with the original series, and found it entertaining as a wee kid. Next Gen was good entertainment on TV around dinner time when I didn't feel like hanging ut after school with my mates.

I never got around to collecting the videos and learning all the dialogue by heart, and barely remember the names of the characters. So I don't think I was ever what you may call a fan.

Much prefered next gen to babylon 5 and battle star galactica though.

Remember when I first moved to the states and I wondered who would give a coffee shop a name like starbucks, and kept thinking of face from the Ateam dressed up in his battle star pilot outfit lol.

I think the worst thing that happened to me as a kid was going to watch starwars when I lived in egypt, and being stuck with Battle Star Galactica because the cinema messed up. First Starwars film I saw was Jedi.

It was very frustrating wondering what the skywalker thing, lightsabers and all the nonsense about wookies was. When we first moved back to england, they had starwars on the telly, only problem was that after having been not turned on for 4 years, the tube was broke. So I listened to the entire film instead :(

This thread has gone way off-topic, and in acordance with the rules on goes the lock.