Jewel Match was Bmax!

I just saw on the front page that Jewel Match was made in Bmax. Cool. I thought that it had the look of a BMax game. It's done very well that game on lots of portals, despite the generic name, so well done to the developers. They even made a Christmas version too which I checked out a while back. Plus Jewel Match is on Real which is great as they wouldn't take my Holiday Bonus game because it's seasonal :-( /jealous

Amazing how much goes on in BMax and other Blitz languages that we don't hear about on these forums or the showcase like M Dickie's games for example.

In fact I was thinking that the showcase has been a bit slow/boring recently (sorry just my opinion) - I'd love to see more games on it that we can all try out.

IT's cool to see BlitzMax getting out there.

You raise a question though. Is there now such a thing as `the look of a blitzmax game`, a stereotype to fight against, such as `the way all Blitz3D games look` based on a technology limitation?

Pretty much any current 2d game out there could have been made in BlitzMax... the fact that it is DX7 doesn't really limit its 2d capabilities.

I don't think there is a certain look that BlitzMax games have. I have seen a lot of different-looking games written in BlitzMax... it just so happens that the majority of commercial Max games have been similar-looking Match-3s.

The thing that gave most B3d products away though was the little 400x300'ish blank window that displayed for a split-second upon execution.....

There be any similar tells that give a BMax product away such as the above-described B3d trait Grey Alien?
(besides opening the exe in notepad and looking for specific strings that come with all exe's created by said product)

There are no specific BMax giveaways, but basically when a game shows transparency/anti-aliasing on sprites, lush particle effects, smooth sliding/scrolling, zooming in/out etc it's clearly "next gen" and therefore a good chance that it's a Bmax game. Many games haven't caught up with that yet and look dated by comparison, if you know what you are looking for - I think consumers can spot the difference too :-)

Perhaps its the `ease of use` of blitzmax that is testament to games being able to have this showy features quite easily.

yeah you can make cool effects with a simple change of alpha, scale or zoom, oh and rotate. However, it's what you do with the effects that's important I guess. But certainly it's way easier than coding that stuff yourself. For example with my first two games, Xmas Bonusand Easter Bonus, which are made in BPlus, I had to code the anti-aliasing of text and logos/sprites etc myself and it wasn't easy and it was slow. Same for transparent tiles and screen fades etc.

Grey Alien, you should remake Xmas and EB in BMax.

Chroma: Well I did sorta (or are you joking?). I remade Xmas Bonus as Holiday Bonus and it rocked. I considered remaking Easter Bonus but felt it was better to move onto new projects and avoid seasonal titles.