Giving away my BlitzPlus Source Code!

Hi All,

As I've moved onto Max I'm giving away all my Blitz Plus libraries that I used to make Easter Bonus for FREE (for home and commercial use). I'm not giving away the actual Easter Bonus source code but there is tons of cool stuff in the libraries such as:

- Loading and freeing resources with error messages
- Mirroring images and anim images
- String handling (lots)
- Super-fast scaling
- Fixed Rate Logic supporting functions
- Bitmap font functions
- Loading Bar
- Sine Wave images
- Grabbing Images to arrays of pixels for super-fast manipulation
- Super-fast fade screens (inc. fade sound/music)
- Graphical dialogs
- Flashing functions
- Gradient Fill
- Text Input (for highscores etc)
- Shadow Text and Rectangles
- Various wait for input functions
- Windows API calls
- Super-fast Fade/Brighten Image
- FPS Counter
- Loads of drawing images with alphablending functions!
- A dirty rectangle system
- Get environment variable

plus ...

- Ini File management
- Cool menu code (using types)
- Player profiles (using types)
- Hi-score loading/saving/entering code

- and much more!

Note that lots of this source should work on Blitz3D and other bits of it may still be relevent to BlitzMax users.

Most of the source is mine, some was made by, or influenced by other people. Thanks to everyone who helped me over the last year and a bit to build up these libraries.

Actually "libraries" may be too grand a word, it's just a load of useful stuff I made, some cool, some a bit naff, with some useful comments in places :-) Hopefully you'll find something useful! Remember I used these functions to make Xmas Bonus and Easter Bonus and they were pretty good, all things considered ;-)

There aren't any examples of how it works, but you ought to be able to figure out most of it. I can't give private support on this but I'm happy to help on the forums. Just post in this thread and I'll try to answer as best I can.

Enjoy!

http://www.greyaliengames.com/misc/greyaliensource.zip (24k)

P.S. If you really find this code useful (or use it in a commercial project), please make a donation (any size!) here: http://www.greyaliengames.com/contact.php (use the Paypal donate button). I'd really appreciate anything as things are a bit tight at the moment - thanks in advance!

P.P.S. I shouldn't really say this (no one report me please ;-)) but if you appreciate this code but can't afford to donate, why not go and um look at a few of my google ads on www.greyaliengames.com ...

hey thats very nice. i'll have a look at your libs. sounds good so far.

THanks for sharing, but wouldn't it be better if you broke it up and stuck it in the code archives?

how nice of you.. I'll have a look and see if I can find something useful in my projects.
(ps. I clicked a few googles as thanks)

thanks guys. Some of it is already in the code archives. I don't really have time to split it all up, maybe later ... Thanks for the googles too, works wonders!

Nice :) Heh, get ready for the millions of support emails :D

well, I did say no private support, but I'll answer in the forums. Also if enough people uh explore my google ads, it'll be worth it ;-)

Well, make sure to convert it to BlitzMax code for the multiplatformer, it won't be fair to the Apple or Linux communities. Then again, I have Blitz 3D for Windows AND BlitzMax for Linux, so I sort of gained some diversity myself with that alone.

I'm already rewriting portions of it for my next BlitzMax game.

Grey, I'd be interested to see you graphics functions converted to BMAX! Not using 3D but Direct Pixel access to the BackBuffer ala Pixmaps and cross platform.

Well admittedly lots of the graphics functions I made were merely duplicating the 3D card effects (because Blitz Plus doesn't use them) but were CPU-based instead. They worked well but have to be used sparingly if you want you game to still run at a decent speed. Like don' try to alphablend the entire screen each frame etc!

Anyhow, you'll no doubt see the Max code when we work on our next project.

Yeah that's exactly what I was looking for, a simple way of software fallback.

Oh I see, well I'll see what I can do ...

Hey thanks dude! I don't have Blitzplus, but....thanks anyways!

You are welcome, hope you find some use for it! It'll run (mostly I think) in Blitz3D. Your space harrier demo was one of the first things I played when I found this forum :-)

Right, Blitz 3D is backwards compatible to BlitzPlus. I only wish that BlitzMax would have that capability. However, with some modified code, BMax should run it just fine.

Yeah, when types are used all the \ needs to be turned into dots . plus all the separate functions would be best as methods of the Types (objects) now. Also a lot of my code was using buffers and lockbuffer etc. This would need to be converted to PixMap stuff although there is not much point because the 3D card does most of it. However, tons of the functions, such as the string handling, are totally generic and the menus, ini files, profiles etc are all good examples of how to make useful reuseable stuff (I hope).