I'm still using Blitz Basic 2D

I have written a fairly respectable game in terms of code and what it does, but it is using Blitz Basic 2D and I was wondering if I should be upgrading to Blitz Plus or something.

The game runs quite happily in Win XP, although it does eat CPU time and some of the particle effects are probably too slow for an older PIII to be worthwhile.

Think Laser Squad style game with some additional effects to make things look a little more interesting in places. But essentially a 2D area made up of tiles with line of sight and more emphasis on player attributes than cool graphics.

I am finally at a point where I can think about a demo - one known bug to go! So while I sort that out, I want to start thinking about what to compile it in. Blitz Basic 2D works ok, but should I think about upgrading - and why?

Thanks for your time.

A link to a picture, the guy at the bottom has fired a sawn off shotgun, hence the damage indicators. Sorry, I will figure out how to embed a picture into my post!!! In the meantime, please copy and paste the link into a browser.

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The only thing that I foresee being a problem with Blitzbasic (original 2d version) is that it has the DEP issue still, I think. Blitzplus has had this fixed. Blitzplus also will run on more machines as it uses Directx1 whereas Blitzbasic uses directx7. There are a few additional (excluding the gui) commands in blitzplus but I would think that your game would compile with no problems in both.

Differences I noticed BB2D/BP for 2D :

BP :
- imagecollide() works faster (no little slowdown when the 2 frames collides each time for the first time)
- use less vram : it seems to use the vram only when images are drawn on screen
- load media faster
- IDE debug show exact errors
- the loadfont and text are now anti-aliased :)
- ...

Thank you for your replies. I downloaded the BlitzPlus demo to run my code. Most things seemed the same to me, and I like the idea of an improved IDE.

However, I did find some of my GrabImage code stopped working?

Is there a link that will give me some ideas about what I should look out for if I choose this route?

Sorry torch I don't know why grabimage would cease working (I don't have my old blitzbasic 2d installed anymore only blitzplus and blitz3d).

However I just realised - you cannot draw to the frontbuffer anymore I think, everything is either drawn to an imagebuffer or the backbuffer. Probably not a major issue but it may be in one of the upgrades to blitzplus?

Really?!?! WOW, I wish B3D did that!

torch,

I would upgrade to Blitz3D because with it you can use the brilliant library SpriteCandy and ParticleCandy (www.x-pressive.com).

I use it and I'm really happy with.

Sergio.

Sorry I have not replied sooner, I have been busy tracking down a bug, making the game write a log for the enemy AI (which tracked down the bug, hooray!), writing some help and save and load functions to make the demo more accessible (fingers crossed).

Anyway, a couple more help screens needed then I can post it in the showcase.

To the replies,

Matty, I never draw to the frontbuffer. I need to check what I am doing with the grabimage that works and change the one that doesn't I think. Cheers!

semar, I went to www.x-pressive.com and I must say it does look pretty great over there. Thanks for the heads up - (why can't I download <Dead Chaos - Zombie within> yet?) Me wantee.

For now I need feedback on what I have done so far and then I can decide if I want to spend money on a better IDE it or not.

I can see myself updating to a later version if people think there is something there worth the additional effort and resource.

While I have your attention, could someone point me in the direction of where I can put the zipped game files so that people can download them please? Is there somewhere on this site that I can upload to?

Thank you all for your help so far.