When will Max3D be available?

Hi all,

When will Max3D be available?

Thanks in advance

I suspect shortly before DukeNukem appears... ;O)

oooh.. it's been a long while since I saw any 'Max3d, when?' thread.. :P

..I have received copy already..with my PS3 :))

How long is a piece of string?

Before Christmas.

Oranges

sometime after mark releases "blitz max".

Sure... what year?

I can't believe BlitzMax is almost two years old already! I must admit that, when I purchased it, I didn't think it would take another two or three years before Max3D surfaced.

I hate these "where is Max3D???" threads, but let's be honest, this whole "we will not communicate until it's ready" attitude from BRL really sucks. Is Mark still working on it??? Seems to have gone quite.

Not looking for a delivery date, just some communication, thats all.

just my 2 cents.

well, with a statement from Mark, in his worklog, from May 2005:

You'd guess that it would be *that* long..
but,as we all know, perfection takes time.. ;)

Spoil sport. :o>

Well you're about to be profoundly disappointed.

mark's worklog:

http://www.blitzmax.com/logs/userlog.php?user=1&log=1043

Has anyone here ever met Mark?

> I suspect shortly before DukeNukem appears

Isn't DukeNukem being written in Max3D?

heh, when I bought bmax at launch I figured something would turn up 6 months later. Your probably better off using one of the wrappers for the time being, last I saw (maybe a month ago)they had just started looking at bones and skinning and it wasn't likely to be released this year at least.

It would be nice to see a worklog update with some kind of indication of what is LEFT to work on.

That said I'm sure they're all working hard to get things just right and that when it is finally done, and it will be, then everyone will be all relieved and thinking BRL is the more amazing thing. See how dependent we are on these external conditions for our own peace of mind? ;-)

Heh, Mark would hope, but it is doubtful...

I expect a max3d module by the end of this year. What i don't expect is that it'll be anything near to a ready for production useable product. So add some further months for bugfixing, workarounds and further feature implementation which won't make it into the first release and you might end up with a stable release sometime next year.

Then we have DirectX, we have Vista, ...

To quote SimonH; "No chance".

If this would be the case then they should officially confirm this as i suspect most of the users here expect that something is out before christmas this year.

You know what? I've pretty much given up on it, or at least stopped thinking about it.

I do want to do stuff in 3D, but I have a handful of ideas for games which I can easily do in Blitzmax as it stands.

While we're on the topic, what makes Max3D better than Blitz3D (other than an obviously improved title)?

The worklog seems to imply shadows support and gadgets, which I can say as a Blitz3D user I cry myself to sleep over. But what other improvements are there? Is it going to be faster?

No, but this is what he looked like in 1993, aparently:

That is, if you care.

My guess is that it will match B3D's speed, or even a bit slower.
(as from what I understand, it is a more massive engine, and requires a heftier graphics card to run)

I like what Taumel is onto though.. an early Christmas version, like an official beta, much the same they did with BlitzMax..
I'd be happy to play with, and get to know Max3D at Christmas time, even if it isn't 100% complete/stable.. It would ease my introduction to a 3D environment.. :)

B3D or slower, lets hope it has better scene management, culling and occlusion.

I'd love that. I have a 3d game I'm working on, and it would be nice to see the models running in BlitzMax instead of a modelling program.

Does Mark have a full-time job outside of BRL? Is BRL more of a side project? It would partly explain the length of time it's taken to develop Max3D.

I think it's more to do with the fact Mark's a perfectionist - I'm sure he's full time. Sometimes his priorities are misplaced though.

That's probably because Mark said 2 months for MaxGUI and 6 months for Max3D ;]

So, if MaxGUI ended up taking 12 months, we can expect Max3D either Xmas 07 or 08, depending when he started (after BlitzMax or after MaxGUI was released).


Vista still doesn't change anything.

Just use someone elses 3d engine

Well, i suspect a) testing if it really runs well, b) it depends on what you'are exactly doing and c) i don't know how much benefit you will get out of a 64bit version yet. Are there any x86 commands on the 64bit side beside of addressing larger memory which would make sense already?

Hmmm it will be interesting to see when max3d will take advantage of the new generation stuff like geomerty shaders. Will need rework on the openGL as well if it isn't in there yet.

And you can always work and improve driver issues, shader stuff and so on.

There is plenty of stuff to do...

Yup. There where drinks over at Simons place, he posted a public invitation on these forum.

Yes.

No.

No.

Would it? I suppose the complexity of an undertaking like Max3D wouldn't have anything to do with it? It's not exactly pong we're talking here.

In contrast it took John Carmack 14 years to develop the DOOM3 engine and he is (quite litterally) a rocket scientist, so I don't really think the odd year or so Max3D has taken so far, is a long time.

Well, he wasn't sitting all these years around just to develop the doom3 engine.

But yes these things take quite some time.

The only thing i'm wondering about is if he knew that already when he gave the ETA or not. So was it more meant in order not to put off the audience or did he really think he could do it in this time?

Afaik programmers, their ETA indications never work :)

Yep sure but the reality/ETA factor is quite huge in this case.

Which is probably why Mark often shies away from making 'ETA' type comments. He's learning as he works - he quite literally didnt have the knowledge to give a proper estimate in the beginning.

Maybe but didn't he wrote blitzmax and blitz3d already?

I do believe he really thought he could do it in the time-frame he said. However programmers in general, amd Mark Sibly in poarticular, are notorious for underestimating the time it takes to complete any given task. So notorious in fact, their are several extensive books on the subject.

It takes nine months for a woman to give birth, no matter how many woman help.

Yep but developing a 3d engine can be done quite well by different people if they work together nicely on different aspects which would speed up the process significantly. And yes i know about you all time favorite weapen and i disagree, not completely but to a certain degree... :O)

It still runs almost as fast as XP, OpenGL still runs exactly the same speed.

I am not talking about Max3D specifically, because I don't need to.


No it doesn't.


Same as you do on a XP64 bit system - none (or, slightly less due to 64bit data translations taking up more space in the 32bit environment).


No, because to do that you need the entire exectuable to be 64bit and Max does not have that capability.


Max3D won't support anything that isn't in OpenGL.

Taumel: Yes, he's done the Max2D and Blitz3D already, but he hasn't written a cross-platform 3D engine implementation in OpenGL before.

Just got of the phone with Mark. The answer is soon but not yet! hope that calms you all down :) ho ho ho

That would be an expensive call if you rang him from Sweden.

Yes it does in terms of that you can do certain stuff in different way.


Which would mean a special 64bit/vista version...
Weren't there some new commands/more registeres in the first 64bit AMD architecture in the 64Bit mode? I remember some reading about crytec who demonstarted this when AMD launched their cpus but i can't remember any details...mixing things up?


Ever noticed that openGL is evolving?

@xlsior
Hey no problem with that. It is how it is..

In a general i would say that personally if i've done a project of a certain range then i learn how to estimate things better out of the experience i got from the last one. It doesn't has to be the same project again to estimate the next one a bit better than the alst one. And as blitz3D is a 3d engine and blitzmax is crossplatform already i would have expected a better estimation. Nothing more, nothing less...

Knowing our luck Max3D public beta will first arrive for guinea pigs on the Mac, and a windows beta a couple of months later. Like what happened with Bmax originaly.

Oh cool i knew there were good news on the horizon! :O)

I wouldn't mind!! ;)

Maybe if you're using DX10 - but that's completely irrelevant to us now, isn't it?


Does it have geometry shaders before DX10 has even gone public, does it??!

Heh, just saw on the Ogre forums about the geometry shader extensions for GL that Nvidia have released.

I think the most useful thing initialy is having a unified pipeline rather than seperate vertex and pixel programs that have to swap date between the two and waiting a lot slowing everything down.

NOTE: As usual no comment from BRL. Not good. Skid used to be the only guy that took any interest and he no longer works for them. oops.

What is it exactly that you want BRL to say? It's not their fault you're impatient. Windows Vista is as of this writting more than 2 years delayed, despite the fact that it's just XP with a marginally different interface, and more draconian DRM.

Yes he does, and yes he does. However I'm sure that BRL, like all other technology companies, have an NDA of sorts, so even if Simon did want to tell you everything he knew, he wouldn't be legally allowed to do it.

I find the best way to get information on Max3D is getting Mark and Simon really drunk. Ofcourse even then information gathered only represents a snapshot of Max3D in it's current form, and information is subject to change. Like say the shader command tree thingy for instance.

Perhaps if people didn't treat anything MArk or Simon said, as if it where the word of God, we could get back to more innocent times when Mark almost made a point of telling everyone what he had just finished doing.

WOAH. Hold your horses FlamingDuck. What I want is an official comment from BRL, not you. You dont represent the company.

.hihihihih...

Well... http://appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~ymxie/Geometry_Shader/


Sounds like a bird egg problem...but it would be great if it would be this way instead of the current situation.

It'll be released on a Friday at 9:03am

> Perhaps if people didn't treat anything MArk or
> Simon said, as if it where the word of God

There are more stupid things in life to think are the word of god, such as ramblings out of a 2000 year old.

Yes. I understood that. I simply asked why, and offered up a method for doing just that which in my experience, is the best way to get information from BRL.

Of course we all know that as soon as anyone official says anything, the stalking commences.

I have thought for a long time that if you are at all serious about needing these kind of features for your project you should just bite the bullet and go with a tool that has them e.g. Visual Studio and C++/C#/VB. If you like the basic language then use VB (you will get the same results as C++), if you want more abundant support and examples C++.

By the time Max3D does come out DX 10 will be here and a whole slew of new features will be out for that.

Basically Blitz is useful as a RAD tool for either quick/simple stuff or prototyping things quickly. If you want to do something serious with all the current bells and whistles then trying to do it in Blitz or waiting for Blitz to have "x" feature is a waste of time.

This is the reason I've never bothered with BlitzMax, it lacks the simplicity of B3D and B+ and doesn't provide much in the way of additional features compared to what it lacks. TBH I've not seen anything done in BlitzMax that couldn't be done in B3D/B+.

Either live with the things BlitzMax can't do or use something that already has all the features that you want. Otherwise I'm pretty confidient you'll be posting another topic like this in 6 months time. You can download Visual Studio Express for free and if you get far enough for your game to be commercial then you can probably manage to stump up the cash for the Pro version. Also programming skills with Visual Studio are highly portable and therefore actually worth something if you decide to go pro as a programmer.

Darkheart

Try 6 days.

Hello.

If I remember correctly it was meant to be Christmas this year, though Mark did respond to Filax (I think) on the French Blitz site that it was unlikely to be done by then, though something might be available:

http://www.blitz3dfr.com/phpfrench/news.php

How about holding off the demands until such time has passed? If it doesn't appear you can be upset, if it does appear you can find something else to whinge about. Pretty simple really.

Goodbye.

Why not make a Irrlicht that supports all platforms, it's easier than wait.

you mean like the Coldsteel engine?

Yeah. Coldsteel is looking like a really good candidate right about now. Just needs Collada support.

I'm looking into Gman's Irrlicht one, which is very possible cross platform.