Max3D news or I buy TV3D Multi.

I want an update as to what's happening with Max3D otherwise I will buy a MultiProduct-Commercial License for TV3D which will cost me $350 and, I will consider Max3D the greatest of the vapourwares.

I need to know what the dillo.

:)

Unban Antony also.

In response to your first request: hear, hear!
And in response to your second: no, no, no, no, no, and, err, no.

Buy TV3D, then.


No.

Ok, forget the antony thing.

TV3D is a top quality product and well worth the license purchase. I already have a SingleProduct commercial license and was told by DarqShadow that I could upgrade to the multi-license for $350.

I think I'm going to do that. I'll use BlitzMax for 2D games and use TV3D as my main 3D Engine.

Have any of you two got TV3D?

Well I'm sure the TV3D guys are going to be happy about that.

If you start insulting our products please refer to the use of the word permanent in our last email exchange.

Which product did I insult?

[edit]Oh I see. So what is Max3D then? Is there a pysical product we can download? Are there any screenshots available? Is it even in development.

I don't want to start an argument. And don't threaten me.

The one that doesn't exist.

Ok. If something doesn't exist, and it's hyped to the extreme and it never shows itself to the world, what will people call it?

Keep digging, Amon. ;)

I know how you feel, Amon (well, except the Antony thing - glad to see the back of him, personally). But issuing ultimatums rarely gets you anywhere. I hope you're prepared to shell out $350 on TV3D because I think that's what you're going to have to do to follow this 'threat' through.

Hyped to the extreme? Yes Blitz Research have been spending far too large amount of their marketing budget on max3d. Oh wait, what marketing budget?

I'd like this thread locked.

I'll take my gripe to email. That way skidracer can't ban me from the forum.

Father Christmas? God? The tooth fairy? My innate genious?

you spelt 'genius' wrong :p

It's becoming impossible as a customer of BRL to expect to speak freely about what you think of BRL, to ask about certain products, to ask for answers as to why we wait so long for things without putting your entire account on the line.

I'm sorry I started this thread.

Well of course. Spelling things correctly would be an outward display of my innate genious, which contradicts my response and creates a paradox which would cause the world to implode. Or something.

Well, I have requested an upgrade coupon from DarqShadow. It's something I've really been meaning to decide on.

I think my best bet would be to buy the Multi Commercial License for TV3D and consider Max3D in the future.

Obviously I have offended skidracer, so I will depart from this thread.

I think calling Max3D vapourware killed it - it's clearly not, and will be released at some point. :)

Mark has said to pretend it DOESN'T exist right now.

What hype? Isn't people main complaint that there is no information forthcomming about Max3D? Do you even know what hype means?

I wouldn't bet on it.

Which should probably be fairly easy to do, considering it doesn't.

The worklogs, the demo way back and the constant new decisions on Max3D.



It's ok for you though. I'll point to this thread. http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=66805

I'll let others know also. FlameDuck is part of BRL Special Club. He can swear on the forum whenever he wants and not get a ban. The reason for this is because of where FlameDucks head is buried. And it goes really far up, also.

So yeah, He probably can ban me for sending him bad emails. That's ok.

And just in case you go back to that thread and edit your post, I'll quote what you posted here.

FlameDuck wrote:



Now, I know I'm not part of special club and I wouldn't want to be. I just like to point out that Flameduck Swears on the forum, dissing minib3D and Blitz3D and gets away with it while I say the word vapourware and have my entire account threatened with a ban.

I think the great thing about there being no Max3D is the fact that there is Blitz3D.

There is a god and he gave us Blitz3D.

Everyone loves Blitz3D. Life is great when there is still Blitz3D.

I think you should go to TV3D. No one should assume max3d is about to be released. And blitz3D is still free to use.

I don't get what tha argument with 3D is. Max is capable of it. We've seen proof of that. Fair enough, some of the best have been dropped but there are wraps available- Irrlicht? MiniB3D is pretty neat- Max gives you the ability to do what you want.

Blitz3D conquers all - it is Large.

It's so funny when programmers start acting like teenage girls.

It's so astonishing when they stop.

Haha. Touche.

Lol, This thread isn't the first Train wreck I've started over the last 5 years. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1SJr_x0Qp8

Blitz3D.

Woof - woof.

What's wrong with trying out bmax with minib3d?

Seems like it's becoming quite a complete product...

Hopefully there will be a decent Ogre addon for Bmax in the not too distant future. It seems well suited to Blitzmax, and the version that is pending release only requires ogremain.dll and one of the 3D api dll's in order to run.

It's also faster than Irrlicht and TV3D (judging by all the comparrisons on their respective forums.

Shhhh! ;)

no no no, don't listen to Cygnus... speak up!!
I know someone's sitting on some juicy info... spill it!! ;)

Back to the original topic - TV3D is a pretty complete product , very powerful and so on. I have a single licence for 6.5 to play around with it. Unfortunately I haven't spent much time actually using it - Blitz3d is just so quick and easy to prototype stuff that it's more fun to play with. The biggest stumbling block I have with Blitz3D is when programs become quite large, I have trouble organising all the code.

I still wonder why so many indie developers aspire to using such complex and high powered 3D engines. On a daily basis I read the indie games websites, and only a tiny proportion of the games are 3D, let alone powered by stuff like TV3D.

> But issuing ultimatums rarely gets you anywhere.

I've just been to your website Amon, it's quite a big irony that whilst you keep moaning about Max3D. I click on your "Project News and releases" page and the page is empty.
Clearly, you've been spending the last 5 years here in this forum to good use.

Take kleptos miniB3D version, add Newton physics (it's cross plattform compatible) and you've got Max3D. For free..

The website isn't updated with content yet. I only got SubDreamer installed last week.

I suppose you've released 100's of games the way you keep telling everyone that they're not putting their time to good use. I suppose also that you're a professional, well paid, well known Games Developer who has the right to keep bashing everyone for not finishing anything.

It's funny that whenever there is a thread like this you turn up to tell people that they're wasting their time. It's also funny that you always seem to grace the forum with your presence whenever anyone asks about Max3D and see fit to be the authority on what people should do with their time.

Hey, Carrry on. I'm not the fool here. I just asked about Max3D, called it vapourware and got threatened again by skidracer.

Not only that but the Special Club members aka FLameDuck, troll the forum, insulting BRL products, swearing and don't get banned.

I hope you can understand why I'm feeling a little p***d off.

Then I'd suggest you take a long walk outside, to vent it out / calm down...
Venting out on this forum, is in my opinion, not the best way to go about it..
You should, of course, express your concern on subjects, but I'm sure being p*ssed off, surely doesn't make for reasonable arguments?!

well, that's what I think anyway..

What is so limiting about Blitz3D? Sure the whole 'surfaces' thing is an issue, but other than that, it still has excellent art pipelines, stability, compatability and so on.

In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but the only things you can't do with Blitz3d are fancy DX9 trickery like shaders. Oh and the language is a little clunky compared to Bmax / C# et al.

its just slow lacking a lot of rendering optimizations. The surface count thing is a biggy, and the fixed function (non shader) pipeline materials are pretty limited compared to something like ogre.

On top of that, LOD, culling, occlusion, limited dynamic shadow support, and a whole bunch of other things make it outdated before you even start talking about shaders.

No Mac support. That's EXTREMELY limiting -.-

I don't really trust Ogre - it's been a few months since I tried it, having tried several ports and versions of it previously. I tested demos and code on various spec systems and the compatibility just seemed terrible.

Its also funny when teenage girls start acting like programmers but then again, what are the odds of that? :D

I would like to see some more teenage girls picking up programming actually.

havent tried ogre on Mac or linux, but compatibility seems good on windows. And it supports custom fallback materials and material LOD so you can create should your GPU not support the right level of shaders.

I have run it on GF2, GF3, ATI x300, integrated geforce 6100, 6600GT and an older integrated intel chipset without problems outside of shaders. The one problem we had in the past was with an old ati mobo with integrated x1200 that required later drivers in order to run in DX9.

I know Cygnus as run it on other systems with some other video card configs too.

Ogre generaly gets a Bi monthly public release and non stable CVS. Plus there's new non LGPL licencing for commercial projects that will allow you to port to consoles and staticly link your libs etc.

It's a great engine and shares a lot in common with how Blitz3D works.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes max3D to get into a stable and productive state as the shader world can be really annoying if you're facing a real world scenario with all the different hardware, drivers and not only relying on newer hardware and up to date or working drivers and this even not only on one platform.

Hehe, and I'm sure that is said with no ulterior motives , too. ;P

My prediction is this:

Max3D will arrive only after DX10 is established. Given the headache of DX9 and all of the cards that "claim" full support, I wouldn't blame Mark for holding off.

The unified shader model of DX10 and the HW requirements make it much easier. Mark would be able to make MAX3D into anything he wants with whatever feature set he wants and it would be compatible, require less support and be dang fast.

It's what I'd do ...

Allan

I thought mark dismissed DX support for Max3D?

If i remember right max3D should be a crossplatform solution with a directX driver for windows coming out later on, at least that's what i remember...

Anyway if you're seriously interested in a more up to date 3d engine than blitz3d now, i suggest looking for alternatives, may it be a) a third party 3d engine for blitzmax or b) another proofen product. I only would keep on waiting if you don't need it now and do some nice 2d work in the meantime.

Amon, you went about it totally the wrong way. You don't insult the product, then threaten to buy something else if it's not released asap. What you should have done was ask the question...

Hey guys, any word on when Max3D is gonna be released?

You'd have probably gotten a better response from skidracer.

Given Vista's lack of official support for OpenGl and the issue of opengl running on the new DX10 cards aand the fact that shaders are just as big of a pain on Gl as on DX9; I'd say that would be a terrible shame and an unwise decision on Marks part.

Embracing new technology today is the smart thing to do. In six months it'll be old tech.

Anyone who says Mark needs to keep the third world happy by making it Win98 compatible need to give up their buggy whips. That may sound elitist, however we are all in the "tech" business and that is the nature of this game. Catering to old tech, I mean years old, platforms just doesn't make sense.

I would rather have an awesome Max3D with all the bells and whistles than not. This way it is my decision of whether or not to go after the high end or low end by the features I choose to implement.

Take Oblivion for example; it runs on even the gimpiest DX9 capable PC, at low res, no eye candy and poorly, I'll give you. It will also bring the best PC to it's knees with everything cranked and the eye candy mods installed.

Allan

Oh well, it's done now. Did you guys honestly believe that I could start a proper thread? 20 licenses and 400 bannings later and I still can't get it right.

I know that Max3D is not vapourware. It's going to be released eventually and that to get it right it will take a lot of effort on Marks part.


I've noticed that the Special Club member has decided not to come back and post in this thread.

What I believe is that Max3d *exists* on the BRL computers; the only problem is that it is not 'easy as Blitz3d' (in syntax) and Mark & Co want to release a *stable&easy* product as the real successor for Blitz3d: so we need to wait until that moment...
Of course this is only my opinion...
And if you have a commercial project - with a dead line - you are free to decide to buy other solutions: claiming about Max3d will not accelerate its production/creation process
BRL is *honest*: they have in the main page ONLY real products...there are no mention of any other future-mod, even they don't mention that Bmax CAN do 3d via Open-GL!!!

Every time I see a thread about Max3d I have the terror that Mark could close-down everything and going to vacancy!!!
Byez

@Hambone: You should take into account that BlitzMax is a multiplattform programming language. If you want an DX10-unified shader-bells-and-whistles engine solution you're in the wrong place. MaxGUI was long time not released due to incopatibilities with Linux/Mac but to support those OS is extremely important. And with DX10 providing a totally different way of shader handling than OpenGL I really, really doubt the Windows version of Max3D will be build upon DX10. Another reason is that DX10 will simply not run on XP systems and I can't see Vista spread that much in the next 12 months. It will take a few years before the majority of the Windows users will have switched (look at all those 98 and 2k users that are still out there). Plus a "not so small" part of the current Windows users (like me) will switch to Linux or Mac.
From an technology-freak point of view a DX10 Max3D would sure be nice. From an programmers point of view that wants to sell a 3D module to a userbase that consists of Win, Lin and Mac users it wouldn't be reasonable.
If you want a DX10 programming language you should go for that new DarkBasicProX10 thing.

That's probably a good thing, because so can almost any language. I mean I haven't looked so feel free to go look and correct me, but I don't expect the official Python or Lua sites make a big deal about the fact that there are OpenGL bindings available.

It sort of surprises me that the OpenGL 3d support isn't touted more. I realize that the API for it isn't `BRL-style` and for the beginner can be a bit low-level and perhaps daunting to get to grips with, but it is a full 3D-supporting API. You could quite rightly claim that BlitzMax already has a full native 3d-api, it's juist that in its current form it isn't everybody's cup of tea and you don't have the simplicity/ease-of-use that you have with Blitz3D. I think because they wanted Max to be *at least* a step up from Blitz3D, to be better than Blitz3D, they therefore held off on focussing on the OpenGL capabilities for when they have a `laymans 3d-engine` api layer to put on top of it called Max3D, simple enough for your average joe to get to grips with. But then, if you are okay with OpenGL programming and getting to know how all that works, you can quite happily consider that Max already is 3D and there is nothing missing other than a higher-level api - and then you might think about writing your own, if only to simplify your own GL coding.

You could, but since you could make an equally valid claim about almost any programming language, it would be a gross misrepresentation of the facts. Along the same lines as saying that a Chef's hat has the full native ability for you to cook a three course meal. As does any other hat.

@KudosCry

Yeah I see a huge market in the Linux camps and Mac camps, not. I would be willing to bet that the numbers of Ms users VS linux/MAc users is very lopsided.

If I were mark I would NEVER make Max3D for those platforms. OpenGl and BMax should be enough to satisfy the "I hate MS" crowd.

I would never cripple Triple A software on MS to appeal to the Linux Mac crowd.

Face it, BMAX and indie game development, whether you like or not, is a mostly Windows world.

It has been my experience that the Linux crowd want all SW to be free and therefore rarely pay for anything.

The Mac crowd are generally not the same type of geeks PC enthusiasts tend to be. To them "indie" means a filmmaker of some sort.

I believe if most programmers spent as much time thinking about their market and users as they do about code/graphics tool choice yaddaa, yaddaa they'd probably make a lot more money for the same or less effort.

I bet Mark knows this and is continually pondering his vision for Blitz in all it's variants. And like the rest of us, trying to decide on a road map that doesn't lead to obsolescence.

Allan

Actually Macs are very important for the indie market. They buy stuff. Most Windows users don't care about Indie games because they have their AAA game titles and whatnot. Mac users have a few titles like Doom 3, Quake 4 and of course the Blizzard games. And that's about it.
There is actually a cause that Mark made BlitzMax cross-plattform compatible. If you know it better: go ahead and create a Vista-only DX10 killer-gamedev programming language and stop ranting about users you obviously don't know (because what you wrote about the Mac users is just plain wrong). It is true that most Linux users want as most SW as possible to be free (free as in free beer, not free speech although most Linux users will tell you it's the other way round but one of the most called argument when trying to convert you is: "and it's all free, man!") but there are many Mac users interested in playing games. To be honest: I'd rather release a game for Mac only than for Windows only. The profit would still be higher.

> The website isn't updated with content yet.

Another unfinished project huh? Why not go and add content over there instead of making unneeded content over here? 5 years later and still a lot to learn I guess.

Don't worry, you'll understand it one day.

Somehow ENAY is right...

Besides the absurdity of segmenting your market into "Windows" and "Everyone else", consider World of Warcraft (WoW). With supposedly 8 million concurrent subscribers, it has set a new record for percieved market of the MMOG genre (previous record was the roughly 3.5 million players who played Lineage). The new expansion pack for WoW, Burning Crusade additionally set a record for fastest selling videogame. Significant differences between Lineage and WoW? You can play WoW on a Mac.

It is. Otherwise they would just be pirating Windows (and whatever games they wanted to play) much the same as most other Windows users do.

By the way for the Jedis who don't know which 3d path to follow unity 1.6.1 has been released today... http://unity3d.com/whatsnew-1.6.html

I somewhat disagree with Hambone's point of view, not that he/she is wrong but becuase it's a perspective focussing on profit, on popularity, and on numbers - ie a qualitative point of view. I am sure Mark really loves the Mac and loves the idea of his dream unfolding on the Mac. You might want and wish for him to put his own personal preferences aside and look at it in an entirely cold business standpoint, but he's only human and is entitled to his preferences. Like someone else said, if you think everything should be targetted at the biggest market and that nothing else makes sense, go make your own, because quite clearly this is not Mark's main focus. No amount of wishing that he be different or that he comply with your vision of how things should be done will change that. It comes down to a matter of your personal preference versus his.

@AngelDaniel

I respect your point of view. It is true, Mark can and should do whatever the heck he wants with his products. I would point out that he does sell them so they are products. In which case standard business rules must surely enter the equation. In literary terms, for those who like to creatively write, sometimes it is necessary to "kill your darlings" to move the plot along.

If Mark was doing all of this and offering up gratis, for his own education and gratification, say, like FreeBasic, I would say do whatever. No business concerns there.

However, has been selling Blitz products. It does not appear to be just a hobby for Mark. Perhaps, just perhaps BRL would sell more if their efforts were focused.

Righting off the Mac may have been a bit rash on my part. However, I firmly believe that any development on the Mac side should be done after the Windows side is out of beta.

Blizzard makes close to a billion USD a year, literally. They could afford to develop on every platform out there. They still released the Mac version of WOW after the windows version was out. Even so I would like to see how much of their install subscriber base is Mac compared to Windows.

Anyways, we are packing up and moving to Arizona today and my wife is giving me dirty looks. Boxes to move and all.

Back later,

Allan

No this - again - is just plain wrong. WoW was released from the start as hybrid CD to be installed on Windows and Mac. As are all patches and the Burning Crusade expansion pack. Blizzard doesn't support the Mac out of sympathy but because the Mac is not so uncommon in USA and Asia as you might think. In fact: the Mac userbase is growing every day now and will become a more important market than it is so far.


Unity is really cool. If I'd just enough money :-/

Yep, compared to BlitzMax almost anything is expensive, even more if you need unity for windows but if you compare it to other tools in this area (especially for web development) the price isn't expensive anymore as it's equal or even below it's competitors (director, virtools,...).

I never said Unity is expensive. I just said I don't have enough money ;-)

hahahahahaha. Thats Net addiction

@KudosCry
Okay... :O)