First impressions of BM

lol..that could be ugly if you think about it!

ANYWAY, I'm still at work so no major testing. I downloaded the demo and I will do the same at home. If I can take BM and replace my C++ engine so that I can actually get stuff done, then...well you get the picture.

So, here are the pros and cons based on 20 minutes of play:

CONS:
$80. And no, not that BM isn't worth $80. That's only a con to me because I am poor...lol

Still not convinced that BM is as fast as my ID3DXSprite-based engine. But, is it *fast enough* for my projects??


PROS:
I took a small demo provided and within 5 minutes, had giant sprites rotating with color tinting. Not bad. Took me much longer than 5 minutes to learn how to do that in C++.

Very active community. Gamedev.net is great for C++ coders. But those guys don't really get involved with 2D stuff. Plus, a lot of them are by THEIR definition "gods of code" so unless you use C++ with DirectX/OGL, you're an idiot. I don't like that mentality.

Easy easy easy. Like I said before. Using BlitzBasic (the original for PC), I did in 2 weeks what it took me months to do in C++ w/DirectX. And I only got marginal increases in speed. (not counting the alpha stuff).

Anyway, just some random thoughts for some of you newbies...I will get into some serious testing tonight.

cbmeeks

Welcome on board. Suggest you download this chm version of the helpfile to make it easier to search through the commands and functions. There's also a resource link here

Good luck and enjoy BlitzMax.

Thanks. I'm actually a long time member... :-)

I can't wait to get home and see what this thing can do

Welcome to the jungle.

So we will see a metroid clone written in bmx, will we? :)

hehehe.

Well, I am thinking about it. I actually have a very nice Metroid clone (not done yet) written in BlitzPlus.

I did it in two weeks working only after work.

I am thinking about doing it in bmx...first impressions are pretty good.

Hey Dude, glad to see you back!

Thanks. Good to be back.

I've been out of the loop for a while. I was so impressed with what BlitzPlus could do with my Metroid Classic engine but I got disappointed that it couldn't do the alpha/rotation stuff I wanted (in hardware).

bmx looks to be pretty good but I will know more this weekend. I tinkered with it some last night but with a 2-year old, it's hard to code sometimes.

What could help me is to find some really good scrolling routines for tiles. I monkeyed with the TileImage command it it seemed to work pretty well for simple backgrounds.

It would probably be good for parallax layers.

The BMax loading & routines for Tile Studio should help you.

There's Scott Shavers Scrolling Tile Map Example. Also gman's mappy module

Thanks guys! I will check those out tonight!

Nice to see you again, cbmeeks :)

Hey, thanks. Feels good to be remembered. :-)

Yeah, I will keep you guys informed as to what my status is this weekend. Granted, I am using a demo so I can't send you all an exe if I get something going but maybe I can send some source or something.