BlitzMax Speed

I've been away from BlitzMax for a while and now I've returned I really notice the amazing speed of BlitzMax.

I am constantly impressed with Mark's dismissal of features that would harm performance. Performance is everything as far as he's concerned and I totally agree.

Keep up the good work, we all have our moans now and again - but BRL really do come through with the goods.

Its generally fast but it has awful problems on certain systems, most notably Intel-based graphics chipsets.

Never really worked out if Blitzmax is the right language if you want to maximise compatibility.

Don't you mean 'OpenGL has awful problems on certain systems'? BlitzMax is hardly to blame for graphics driver problems.

I know about that (used to a have a 2nd slow computer for testing). But using square textures of 64 X 64 and above solved that (plus a graphics driver update).

I think BlitzMax (and computer systems) have really moved on since then.

[EDIT]
I agree with Simon - but there again BlitzMax was built on OpenGL. Therefore DirectX routines could do with an update or two.

Dunno. You'd have to ask the people that said it.

I've had an ATI card for a while and now an Nvidia - they both run better (by a mile) under BlitzMax using OpenGL.

In my experience BlitzMax is very fast, and Max2D is not so fast. But I don't use Max2D, so that doesn't bother me. The core language is very fast, and that's what I wanted.

Well, let's just say a really good tool also provides workarounds for systems which are common and were problems show up if possible. The ostrich's behaviour isn't the only solution.

Maybe we should have a thread where people post their computer specifications and run a set of blitzmax coded speed tests in various departments, e.g. a few opengl tests, a few directx tests, some array stuff, file handling, etc... and then we can draw up a pretty good performance comparison across the systems. I think that would be pretty useful. So all we need to do is for someone to code some simple but effective tests.

Here's a great thread from the "Indie Gamer Forums" with benchmarks of Blitzmax, VB, Delphi, C++, and many other languages/engines.

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=7551&highlight=sprite+test

AngelDaniel, the problem with that is we probably have better systems than the average user.

The only reliable way to test is to have your game collect statistics and send them back to you. The kind of people who play the casual games most people are developing in BlitzMax just won't be running test applications. They won't be looking in the right places to even see them.

it would be nice if some wrote an app that did a simple set of tests, collected system specs and then sent them to an html server... All the user would have to do is download and run the app.

if I wasn't working on something else I would do it. All the needed code is contained in these forums.

btw, was Indiepath's single surface module incorporated into an official update?