Introduction / First Post

Hey All,

I am new to the Blitz community and was recently turned on to Blitz by one of my contracted programmers.

My name is Brian Clark and I am the President of Enigmatic Games, a new game production company I have spun off from an online poker business I also own. I am a network engineer by profession, but I can hold my own in the programming arena as well. I, however, leave the real programming to the software engineers hired to work on my projects.

I must say that I was a little apprehensive about using BASIC for game creation, but after playing with BlitzMax myself I was quite impressed.

My company (Enigmatic Games) is currently producing a multiplayer puzzle game (think Puzzle Quest except all the bugs are fixed, lame storyline removed, hyper competitive, more strategy involved, tournaments, etc..). We are writing the game client in BlitzMax which will operate on win32/linux/OSX and the server is written in C#. We also plan to release the client in multiple languages.

I will try, to the best of my ability, to provide a step by step worklog to chronicle the development of the game.

While I have the programming covered, I will probably need someone with graphic expertise to assist with the development of the graphics. If you feel up to the task let me know (you would be compensated/paid for the work). I always try to support local forums before I post things to places like guru.com or rentacoder.com

I am already quite impressed with some of the work that has been done with Blitz (namely Eschalon book 1) and look forward to seeing what it will bring to my current project.

I already hate you. You sound like a billboard advertisement or get-rich-quick scam.

BlitzMax, an excellent choice. Welcome and good luck with your endeavours.

Thanks, Nomen

Yeah, i mind that other guy that was doing casino games from brazil. Didn't he rip some blitzers off?

Anyway, clean slate for everyone :o) Welcome to blitz, and i hope you enjoy!

post left for context, but I removed the part of my original post that people were not reading correctly.

------
I am not a scammer. My name is John Brian Clark (just google it, there are a few results for "John Brian Clark" and or "Kewlb" (although not all the Kewlb entries are me, a portion of them are) and own MDP Enterprises, LLC.

I did not run online casino games, I created a unique way to interface many online poker forums into what would seem like individual forums, yet they were all part of the same forum. I then launched a home game posting site for each U.S. state (xx-poker.com where xx = the U.S. State) and marketed directly to each state. I then just ran online advertising / affiliate deals for online casino's for revenue. This was shut down after the Safe Port Act and only www.md-poker.com remains (I still own all the other domains, but I do not believe I have them running), however it still does over $2,000/month in net revenue and I have not even touched it in over 2 years. It is time for me to seek another venture and this is what I have chosen.

I wouldn't "rip" anyone off and anything done with me would have to be done via legal agreements (I have a laywer on retainer).

I can already tell that people have, obviously, been quite mistreated on this forum and that is a damn shame.

This isn't Belro related, is it?

what is belro? -- ok I just did a quick google search and came up with some kinda blitz post that had belro in it. No idea who that is -- but it certainly is not me.

TBH its not a good idea to do a sales pitch as your first post on the forum, a simple introduction would suffice. Unfortunately you have been tarred with the sales-pitch brush that many blitzers have been burned by in the past, this makes us a very wary bunch about signing up to things now.

Anyways I hope you enjoy BlitzMax :)

I did not say that you were.



I did not say that your name wasn't John Brian Clack either.



Again, i didn't say you did...



Try at least 15 threads and 1000 posts later?

Anyway, about Xylvan. No-one hates him and he definetly isn't getting mistreated. He posts his games on a forum. Now the whole point of a forum is for discussion and feedback. He accepted no feedback from anyone, yet kept posting his game, each version slightly different (dog instead of human). The gameplay was exactly the same.

His threads were a joke for the simple reason he simply did not listen to anyone's feedback, then nastily insulting people's own creations blindly "My stuff is the best stuff. Much better than you can make".

Cue next week, a new version with more bones to collect. So perhaps you should read more of those threads, if you have that much time on your hands that is.

Now that's out the way, as i said before, welcome to blitz and enjoy. No one's accusing you of anything.

hello :)

Possibly, but you can see why if you think about it. You're the President of a company whose domain name goes nowhere. You dress your email up with all manner of brackets, which I've certainly never seen a professional person do before. Your very first post talks about bankrolling other projects, and you alternate back and forth between "we" and "I" in your introduction.

I agree, I put way too much info into a single post. I always get too excited about things and as such do not always think my posts 100% through -- at least in this case. I can certainly see where my original post might come off as a sales pitch more than an introduction. I am sorry for that as that was not my intent.

Gabriel:

The domains do go somewhere (my server farm), but I do not have anything created for them. I really need the game to be in the middle stages of development before I do.

I always do my e-mail in a way that is hard for it to be parsed -- I am very tired of spam and I am too lazy to implement a hardware based spam filter on my mail server. I had to write a ton of regular expressions today so they were on my mind, hince I was being needlessly cute and posted it in a regex format.

We/I is because I am not going to take credit for work that I did not do. *I* own the company, but *we* as a company are creating the game (the already hired programmers / future hired graphics artist). Hence it would not be correct to simply use *I* for everything as I am not the only one involved in this.

original post was edited to remove the part people were getting all uptight about.

If anything I should be more wary about posting game details to a bunch of freelance developers than people should be of me asking if anyone wants to be paid to do work.

<Removed by moderator>

Welcome to Blitz and good luck with your game Brian.

Sorry Brian you may be getting some undeserved backlash on account of the Belro affair. Basically, some fool came here with big promises, got people putting in a lot of effort to produce software for him, and disappeared. I am not implying you would do the same.

thanks markcw -- I was already throwing my hands up over my head halfway through the post -- quite amusing.

P.S. 'HitMyBalls' sounds like a game straight out of the movie Idiocracy -- which is a rather amusing/romanticized look at the grim future of america if we do not make vast improvements in our education system.

markcw: I think he get's the point.

Anyway, welcome to the Blitz forums!

That is fine Nomen -- honestly I made an error even stating some things in my opening post. I am too use to posting on forums that I own.

The Belro issue is why services like rentacoder are good (the escrow feature), but they rip the heck out of the coders/artists to a tune of nearly 20% of the project price -- but 80% is better than 0%

Hi and welcome to the forum. BlitzMax is a great language. Good luck with your games and just ignore any idiots.

Thanks grey Alien -- We were actually looking at using your framework until we decided that, for our needs, it might be best to create our own -- mostly due to lack of linux support.

Your solitaire game is innovative and addictive :)

Wow. You may want to rethink maintaining essentially the same code, in 2 different languages. Seems like a waste of resources to me.

Anyway best of luck to you.

FlameDuck: Thanks for the advice, that was a very discussed issue and it took us a long time to decide on what we did.

@EnigmaticGames: Thanks! You may find some useful stuff in the framework anyway, plus one of my customer converted it to Linux very easily.

@EnigmaticGames

Welcome.

@EnigmaticGames
Welcome man and i wish you all best with Puki on your media, soon as its possible :)

Welcome to the worrrrld of paaaiiin!!

I must say you took your primary roasting quite well. Can't you just tell we have some 'real tough guys' around here?

ello

aye the xlvian threads started off good but when you dont listen like he wasnt it became a broken record
but some times good for a laugh

i know a guy who asks for advice all the time and does the exact opposite of what i tell him if he does anything about it at all

no one could make up their minds on his age
some were quoting teenager and others had seen something that implied an extra 10 years or more on top
so if he was in his 20's then the whole situation is even more bizarre

edit:
http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=74551

A primary roasting? Do you live in the real world man? You've obviously not had anyone give you abuse before ;o)

Always reminds me of a swarm of vultures when somebody introduces themselves around here. It's like a bitch magnet!...well apart from those who reserve judgement and remain polite.

One person said a bad comment :o)

Welcome to the land of Blitz, Brian :-)

Bit of a tough crowd around here... plenty of opinions and the like.
Looks like Hostility is up around DEFCON 2 at the moment... must be something in the water.

:o)

Welcome on board!

Thanks for all the replies. This was actually a pretty tame introduction. I post on a lot of forums and I am pretty desensitized to posts designed to rile me up.

can you mentor xyvian then ;)

i actually found 3 unlocked threads started by him looking for his 'real' age

I doubt it Ginger -- but based on what I have read I would have to guess that he is either young -- or has had no one in his life to correct him (or maybe everyone corrects him and he uses the internet as a place where he can ignore that). Whatever it is he will eventually have to listen to the collective advice of others if he wishes to succeed.

hmm, blitzmax is your choice? Perhaps you don't have this as thought out as you thought you did :-/

enigmatic - welcome to the forums!

Welcome.. :)

Ignore him, Enigmatic. BlitzMax is a good choice.

Welcome.

I am "puki" - I see things I shouldn't.

Mother is watching.

You from Mississippi?

I bet he is here to head-hunt me.

He is you know - he's after me media.

/me buries vast media hard-drive in garden.

Yes, I am from Mississippi -- at least until my wife finishes medical school.

So you do graphics? What is your going rate for custom work?

no,no,no he steals graphics. he's the graphics vampire. you don't want his stuff its all copyright:)
btw welcome to blitz!!

If by "do" you mean "steal" then, yes, Puki most certainly does do graphics... ;)

He probably wants me to steal them for him, then he can pay me half the money he would have paid - then everyone is a winner.

I prefer my graphics not stolen, however if you have any public domain gem graphics id be happy to use those during the development phase as place holders for the future graphics :)

Puki just entered the door. Sanity just went out the window.

least yours wasnt like WERDNA's intro thread ;)

It's early days yet.

what kind of graphics are you looking? cause i might be able to help.

mayaman101

For starters I would need the following:

Ruby
Sapphire
Emerald
Diamond
Gold Coin
Prism (can do a faint multi color diamond)
Potion
Crossed Swords
Skull & Crossbones
Red Potion

The graphics themseves should be in PNG format with 9 sprites per image file (different angles and transition from whole to exploded/particles) in a 3x3 grid (150x150 total image size).

ie: each image file needs the sprite shown from 3-4 angles (so we can create an animation that looks like it is spinning) and the graphic itself as it explodes (transition should be 4 to 5 images) so we can create an explosion effect.

The images (quality wise) will need to be as good if not better than the following:

why did you decide to use blitzmax over c# for the entire project?

because I can not afford to leave any consumers behind and it was more cost effective to use a language which supported multiple OS platforms rather than maintain 3-4 sets of code. We decided mono and wxWidgets did not have the capability we were looking for thus we decided on this solution.

hows something like this i can render from many angles and can have as many colors as you want. plus i suppose i could do explosions
[edit] i can do more cartoony graphics too.

mayaman101: that is actually quite nice looking -- but yes it would probably need to be a tad bit more cartoony.

what would be your charge?

free i just like to keep busy

mayaman101 -- send me an e-mail (should be on my profile) and we will discuss this more. You should at least let me paypal you something for the work, if you decide to do it.

Yeah, Ignore me! And ignore those who told you Betamax was going to be obsolete. And ignore those who said the two Cory's wouldn't ever work together again. And then... Ignore the money everyone else is making instead of you!

That's right. Ignore those who make products, those who make money making products, and listen to those who don't :-)

Because our opinion means nothing when it comes to productivity

hello :)

:)

Surely Grey Alien's had the most commercial success with this type of game. He's using BMax, isn't he?

Feldman and Haim? Happy days...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLZdCsP1kT4&feature=related

i sent you the email. hope this works out.

And why do you feel that BlitzMax is an incorrect choice for the multiplatform client code? You have repeated this two times now, yet offer no real data to prove your point.

This is wierd, why are people being hostile to someone wanting to use blitzmax to program games with, multiplatform? Thats what its designed to do, and has a very good track record at doing so...

EnigmaticGames has posted nothing but mature and friedly posts, I don't understand the hostility?

It's just Darkheart, he's being a dumb dumb.

John: I am new to BlitzMax, too, but I think you made a good choice. I have been pretty impressed with it so far. I can only speak for the Windows version, though.

I wish I knew what these huge issues are surrounding Blitzmax. For my next game I'm hoping to make the leap up to Bmax...so spill the beans please!

I wish I knew what these huge issues are surrounding Blitzmax. For my next game I'm hoping to make the leap up to Bmax...so spill the beans please!

I'm a lone coder so I don't know from experience, but from what I've read about other's experience:

Blitzmax is easier and quicker to maintain when working with teams, compared to c++ and c#. That means you'll finish projects faster, which also means they'll have nothing to do afterwards.
Also, since you do not need to maintain three different versions of the code for three different platforms, you'll have the need for fewer coders.
So you have fewer programmers and the programmers you have work fewer hours. This is a very unacceptable practice for the Programmer's Union (PU), and can result in PU relations problems.
I just read in the newspaper last week that the PU at a huge gaming company was on strike because management refused to replace the coffee holders with better ones. The current ones would break often, and when they didn't break, they'd sometimes slide back into the computer spilling coffee everywhere. The strike was ended when management finally agreed to new cup holders, but in exchange that they stopped the practice of putting comments in all their code, that was marketing's job.

So if you don't want all the Union headaches, you are better off dropping BlitzMAX in favor of a less efficient language that better supports job security.

In case you haven't figured it out, the above was intended to be taken tongue-in-cheek.

Actually I'm just being a pain.

Outside of poor documentation and a complete lack of communication from BRL, Blitzmax is ok....

You can have my copy if you want it.

Hi there EnigmaticGames, and welcome into the wonderous world of Blitz Development.

(BMax is an excellent choice btw.)

My name is Peter Caddock - (my Blitz forum handle is IPete2).

My company 'SmartScreen Digital Media Limited' - http://www.smartscreenuk.com has recently been embedded into this company http://www.studioliddell.com. I have done work for Grey Alien amongst others on this forum, so if you need pro-graphics and are prepared to pay the going rate then please feel free to contact me. You can judge from the two websites the quality and breadth of our work. Although we are based in the UK we do have clients in many countries around the world.

Good luck with your project and best regards,

IPete2.

@EnigmaticGames Yeah I can personally recommend IPete2 for gfx and CS_TBL for music. Checkout my Holiday Bonus game to see/hear their work in action. Also I recommend Cygnus for music, he did some of the music for Easter Bonus back in the days when I also used some free library music for games, but I prefer not to do that now as it can sound inconsistent.

Wow. Bipolar maybe? :P

Hand it over then!

He didn't mean to anyone, he meant Hujukilo, or whatever way you spell that name.

EnigmaticGames, BlitzMax is not BASIC at all.

The "huge" issues surrounding BM are mainly stuff that people would like to have and that are not present or stuff that people would need to do on their own.

- Threading / true child processes
- Asyncron Filehandling
- DX9 driver for Max2D
- Ugly pointers instead of safe references
...

stuff like that.
So simply said: nothing that is of importance if you want to be productive as Grey Alien surely would agree (he sold and sells several BM games, Win/OSX PPC-X86)

First off, no offense is meant to Grey Alien here, however him and GFK are merely big fish in a little pond. having two people out of 3118 registered users (a few being BRL accounts, Banned accounts, and general users that never visit or even use any BRL products anymore) is in no way stating that the products are capable of producing GREAT results.

Secondly the fact that Grey has found that little niche of merely adding more content and repackaging a product with a different name speaks a lot. This is in no way representative of his skills, just his marketing ability, and in that I give him kudos, but to merely make "<insert name here> Bonus" with new content or a slight variation of gameplay from the previous "<insert holdiay name here> Bonus" also says nothing about a language's greatness.

Again, Great job Grey and GFK with your abilities and how you have done for yourselves. But two people taking something mediocre and molding something good out of it doesn't mean everyone will or can or even should. I really enjoyed B3D, and I really dont want this to turn into a B3D vs <insert language here> debate, and I really don't want to hold onto the past. B3D was a fun experiment, moving on now....

So I revert back to what I said. Blitzmax is ok..... I wouldn't choose it professionally, and even then I would only use it for quick and dirty testing if need be, however outside of that I just don't trust it and the very unstable future it seems to have (or the lack of what Mark really wants it to be as he keeps changing his mind).

Eschalon: Book 1 is written in BMax. I think it devalues your argument somewhat.

I agree, blitzmax is OK. it's not Great, in that whilst looking for solutions I picked up C# well enough to be able to make small 3d games out of it with the help of some libraries. I only spent a couple of days with it.

Blitzmax misses alot of features, some people will argue for, some people will argue against.

HOWEVER,My thoughts on max right now is that Max seems to be heading nowhere- the 3D module with no release date. We got fed up of waiting and started developing Flow to address this.

Personaly I love BlitzMax, and I have noticed that a lot of the negative against mentioned against it in the numerous threads on the subject don't hold water. However, the couple of points mentioned in this thread are valid...

-Some useful features missing (though bar the lack of a dedicated 3D module, it has more features than B3D which so many praise)

-Never-ending wait for said 3D module. I know these things take time, but when the change of direction was announced after a couple of years, it was a blow. I think it will be many years before we see something now.

Sooooo......any release date for Flow?

/duck

I was wondering that too :o)

EDIT < Sorry for the bump. I didn't check the date of the date. It's erm, Chromas fault ^_^ >

Trust me, thats a question nagging us as much as anything else haha. We're going as fast as we can!

I believe we've got a few things to do- docs, a few missing features, debugging.

Basically because of the size of trying to Wrap ogre *well* and 1:1, we may need to release a little before it's "complete".

Details to be confirmed on that.

Cool, thanks for the info.