Curious VSvsBMX

Hi everyone... Ive not been around too much other than lurking from time to time while I work on mini-projects to amuse my 4 year old... Nothing tangeble yet of course... just "ooo, ahh" stuff that only a 4 year old and apparently me would appreciate.

I find myself in a bit of a canundrum...
I have been coding in Visual Studio C# 2005 for the last year at work and with being a new dad (from 0 to 2 kids in quick succession) ive not had much time for coding games. So ive been away from Blitz3D for quite some time.

I find when I go to develop a game using Blitz3D now I miss the advanced features available in C#... which seriously limits how much effort I am willing to put into a game. I constantly feel like I am trying to create an engine for many advanced language features not supported by Blitz3D rather than working on the game which was the point of having Blitz in the first place. Do you get what I mean?

Im just wondering if other people who use or have used VS for work or game development, still choose to develop games in BlitzMax?

BTW: My BlitzMax Demo expired ages ago... I never got a chance to really look at it.

Merry HoHo

Yes.

Im beating a stick between BlitzMax and C++. I kind of like Max better to be honest.

I'm not beating a stick... heehee :p
I'm using BlitzMax..

but then again... I'm just mostly messing with it..
I do hope I'll be able to code a few small games for my son when he gets a little older though... (he's 4.5 months old) ;)

I do. Not that I actually do all that much game coding.

There is also XNA from Microsoft.
But I still stays with BMax.

C# is great and the VS IDE is the best ever. The big downside is the 20MB framework if you ever want to sell to shareware markets.

I am using Max and I like it, but managed DX9 in .net is pretty nice!

Managed DX9 is great but I feel dirty when using it so I stick with OpenGL. Plus its portable...

Honestly 20MB's is nothing these days.

Ill check out that XNA... dont know how I missed it!

I like the cross platform nature of Max though... errrr!!!

Trying to decide where to spend some Christmas $

Holy crap, Skully lives! Hey maaaaan! Long time no see, I was wondering where you went off too. :)
Haha, remember your santa competition game? :) Am I nuts for remembering it? Anyway, talk to you later.

You know what, I swear I've done this before!

What?

"Skully" is amongst us?

I did not know that until now - I had recently been looking at his original "Skully" nick.

Makes me wonder now just how many 'old' people have come back to Blitz with a new nick.

I use both and flip back and forth regularly. Each dev environment has it's uses and strengths.

I'd certainly recommend Max over Visual Studio.

...and I'm leaning more towards VS and C# these days. Take a look at Garage Games' TorqueX too - It's free (well the binaries are). I much prefer coding in C# to BlitzMax and the VS IDE walks all over Max's (but I probably don't need to tell you that).

I use C# for work too.

PPL never stop asking silly questions.

I prefer development in BMax. Tried an application control GUI in VS (C+) which seemed to work well, however a brief attempt at using InnoSetup revealed the problem of the 20MB framework thats required on other computers. I've now reverted to VB6 for application control, developing the lion share of the app in BMax.