What FEATURES do we want to see in B3d 2.0?

This thread should only be used to state, in list form, what indie developers would like to see in a B3d 2.0 scenario.

Come on what's your wishlist?

IPete2.

I'm just cracking on with the tools that are available now.

I'll expect Blitz3D 2.0 when I see it.

(I hate to say it, but if people haven't managed to produce anything with Blitzbasic, Blitzplus, Blitz3D or Blitzmax, then I can't see Blitz3D 2.0 (whatever it turns out to be) will make any significant difference to productivity).

I'll bite, but I don't have the experience to say much more than...

- Decent docs (and some solid tutorials).

Yeah, I'll bite too:
Unified lighting
Cross platform
Increased performance with many entities
Unified LOD?
high performance large terrains
Integrated physics
Decent GUI
Multithreading? If not, some way of loading large textures/meshes etc not all in one go before the next refresh, but incrementally - to allow for things to be loaded in the background without performance slumps
Render to texture

All this from a worklog saying Mark might possibly think about going in a vague direction... :)

2D support as well as 3D is important to me which includes all the stuff already in BMax with regards to rotation, scaling alpha blending etc...
Some new effects would be cool too.

The compiling speed of Blitz3D would also be a welcome return, maybe Blitz3D 2.0 could trim the file of irrelevant stuff when compiling in release mode only this way you could have zippy compiling in debug mode. (Not sure if this is possible.)

The ability to change the exe`s icon and other small things that B3D has been missing for a while like the ability to turn off texture filtering of textures or change there settings like Toms .dll allowed.

Working antialias options?

Decent, stable IDE like the original IDE. I find the BMax one a tad shaky on my system. Maybe other people could work on these things but it would be nice to see them included in the official package. IDEal for example would be an execellent choice to include.

Decent docs are a must this time as this is what has put a lot of people off of BMax in my opinion. Also gather as many samples as possible from the forum members, maybe release a demo nearer the time and have a mini copetition or something?

No needless faffing with updating would be nice. Keep it simple for everyone.

Return of FMod maybe?

Jason.

Stereoscopic 3D is likely to become a boom in the next year or so (what with 3D monitors / Head Mounted Displays and 3D TVs being released / developed all over the place by Zalman, iZ3D, TdVision, Vuzix, Samsung and the like). So compatibility with Stereoscopic - 3D would be a stand out feature. The ability to do that natively would be preferable, but compatibilty with the drivers for the main types (Duel Monitor, Sequential Field) would be good also.

See the Stereoscopic 3D group 'Here' for more information.

Why not simply re-release & re-badge blitzmax with a better IDE, better docs and include both 3D + 2D modules and call that Blitz3D MAX instead as a single product?
That way the upgrades could apply to both products; to either the language itself, 2D lib or 3D lib (if present).

As for the 3D part, being modular would make it more futureproof and we would get it a lot quicker! as he wouldnt need to waste time making yet another language when a perfectly good and more than capable one (BlitzMax) already exists. (As its already been said many times that B3D if remade for >DX7 would need an almost from-scratch rewrite anyway due to its v7 dependence).

Eg:

Max + 2D & 3D libs ---------- > the new b3d v2.0 aka "Blitz3D MAX" complete with the powerful, easy language of bmax but with the 3D power of b3d (and then some)

Max + 2D lib------------------- > as it stands, the new blitzplus/2D aka "BlitzMAX" (same base language+2d, with possibility of later purchase of 3D module)


For me to be able to consider it worth re-learning, "B3Dv2" features would need to include:

-It must be an SDK/Module with seemless, uncomplicated intergration with blitzmax (but possible to use in c++ etc. would be great)
-It must be cross platform and support both OGL and DX like irrlicht and ogre do.
-Must be possible for the 3D engine to be excluded if desired (ie when writing a lightweight 2d app or when using another engine)
-It must do what b3d can do but support shaders, shadows etc.

Other than that any new features are a bonus, oh and proper IDE would be nice (something like "visualblitz" be perfect)

first and foremost more free time to learn from scratch b3d

full 360 joypad support (so far the dpad doesnt register unlike ps3 clone gets classed as hat in controll pannel)
exe-ico from image map as well as .ico

cant think of more as i dont have the free time (for now) to start over and find out what else i think is missing

i think it needs to keep object orientation, i coouldn't imagine writing a game without this now. and a mix of 2D and 3D as well.

Cheers
Charlie

Well since you asked, if Blitz3D2 had the following, I would consider overlooking my concerns :

- Properties.
- Method/Function Overloading
- Method Pointers
- Operator Overloading
- Access Modifiers ( Functional ones that can do more than just an entire class.)

I'm not very informed here, but I thought that the drivers should support any D3D game (at least the LCD glasses I bought years ago had a driver which worked with any D3D game, though they used LCD shutter technology).

- Dynamic and automatic FPS keep up system: You can specify which entitytypes will disappear first if someone with a slow PC runs the game and the FPS goes below a threshold you have defined.

- Unified Mesh loader system: Everything in the game should be a mesh, including maps, animated models, physics models, and static meshes. Only B3D format should be allowed.

- Unified Collision system: You can choose which collisions are done with mesh collisions and which one's are done with physics collisions. The physics engine should be a dll/so/dylib, which can be changed to another physics engine if wanted without changing any code in the game. Newton 2.0 and nvidia GPU PhysX.

- Unlimited number of dynamic lights: You can choose which lights should be drawn using hardware lights, and which can be drawn using software lights.

I don't want Blitz3D V2, I want a current-gen engine for use in C# and Max.

~ Improved 2d(scaling, alpha, and rotation);
~ Improved lighting(automatic lens flare and shadows);
~ Reflections;
~ Z radius in entityradius(); and
~ Built-in Physics.

I never liked lens flare, just a glowing super bright object looks way more realistic then lens flares.

Multi-core CPUs are the way of the future, and it has to support it fully and completely.

No silly restrictions, number of bones etc

I want Blitz3D 2.0 to be exactly like Blitz3D 1.0 (same commands, functionality, syntax, IDE, debugger etc) but with ability to do some shaders (particularly for shadows, lighting), and with some existing features switched from CPU to GPU (ie. skinned animation, lighting). Anything else that would improve graphics processing speed would be welcome.

AntiAlias would be nice.

I DON'T really want to see many of the other suggestions here, particularly language enhancements. This would stop it being Blitz3D. Bring the fun back to game making!

MakeGame() function.
CreateShaderEffect(<effect>,<object>)
The Debugger should have a "Fix Bugs" option.
There must be an editor supplied with it that enables even a relative novice to create "AAA" quailty art assets.
Feature Request Instant Messaging Service
GiveMoney(<amount>) function.
Cross Platform but must include DX and OGL support (for all platforms).
100% Stable.
Released on time with updates whenever I feel there should be one.
Built in: Phsics, Lighting, Ragdoll, Shadow and Particle Engines.
Must be incredibly simple to use with simple keywords but also incorporate: OOP/JIT/DLLs/Polymorphism/HLSL/Garbage Collection/Visual/No Garbage Collection.

;)

Darkheart

Ah, that's better. It wouldn't be a real Blitz request thread without someone explicitly requesting that other people's requests be left out. Heaven forbid we just not use features we don't want, we'd better cripple it to make sure that other people can't use them either.

I would love to see built in and managed loop timing, delta,tween or whatever, but have it built in with some simple functions to call to get it ticking over.

Funny thing is, that's not far off a normal request from people round here!

I think what Beaker is trying to say, without actually going to the lengths of saying it, is that a lot of people seem to want a MakeGame() function.

The request for built-in physics, for example - why? If you want physics, then write your own code to do that. Its not impossible or even unreasonable.

actually you can write crossplatform games with DX only.
Not even a need for wine, there is a library you can license for this purpose which was used for Eves Linux and OSX versions for example. (its Cedega technology)

Ability to interface with it from BlitzMax, pretty much as D4NM4N and Plash have suggested. That's all really as I'm sure all the other cool stuff will be in the new engine or arrive in the future.

Needs good art pipeline tools and compatibility with a wide range of apps. Assuming it gets its own format much like B3D. Some kind of converter from Collada might be a good start to help people get their graphics up and running fast.

A fancy next gen render engine is no use without good pipeline tools to make use of the fancy new features.

Certainly B3D2 should NOT have the same syntax as the old language. It needs to be OOP like BMax/C++ otherwise it would be a hideous fallback. I might even switch over to it after it's been tested for about a year (that's assuming it didn't interface with Bmax instead)

I agree to a certain extent with blitz3d having some proper OOP command, like OBJECT and HANDLE. However, it would put me off using it, if it was tied to the blitzmax syntax. I agree 10000% with Beaker. Blitz3d is so dam simple and great to work with.

And you don't NEED OOP to make a game with it. Some people here have made some great games, without OOP, so make it simple like blitz3d :o)

B3D V2 is currently only a possibility. I think most of you are missing the point that there is going to be a 3d engine that can interface with BMax.

I think its going to happen just like Blitz3D and the sdk.. only backwards.

EDIT: And I hope to God the engine is OOP.

seeing as lense flares only exist with camera lenses (hense the name) they dont exist IRL and are only added in cgi space to give the impression that a real camera was used to shoot the outsides of the starship enterprise or whatever ... the same way that sound doesnt travel in space yet hear that explosion?

physics side
seeing as there were meant to be physics cards and now gfx cards with physics librarys as long as it can access these why re invent the wheel?
leave it to the experts
i dont know the weight of a litre of water or mercury so if i was to do something my maths would be way off and wed have the earth weighing not much more than a bean bag
but as long as it can do 'pretend' other worldly physics like low gravity etc im not mithred (not that i personally need such stuff)

I would not want to see the Blitz3D command set. I think it should be a sucessor to BlitzMax like someone said, a `Blitz3D MAX`, with the BlitzMax language as a base.

Features? Well...

Safe threading (I agree everything is going to get more parallel in future and only being able to use half the cpu power of a dual core machine is very limiting). If you told someone with a single-core CPU machine that they are only allowed to use half of their CPU power they'd sure as heck want to know why.

A shading language based on BASIC/Blitz rather than C (I still don't like C syntax) - make shaders easy to write.

Top notch 3d features, the stuff people have talked about - lighting, shadows, level of detail, landscapes, bones, animation, physics, all that - must be OpenGL at least, DX optional.

Treat 2D graphics as a subset of normal 3D engine features, which is what they really are, allowing 3D stuff like rotating in X and Y, move sprites in perspective, some kind of texture polygon thing, wrap sprites onto 3d objects with all the shader gubbins etc.

Highly efficient massive advanced particle system (in 3D but also able to act as though 2D). I want to throw around 10's of thousands of particles at least - with physics/scripting/AI.

Ideally some game editing/production tools (looks like Mark is aiming to generate a solid `game library` at the code level and then branch out into making editors with it later?)

Various shadowing/lighting systems. Would be nice to see it include realtime radiosity in some form, decent soft shadows, various shadowing techniques - projected, stencil, etc, and some efficient special-case techniques for spot effects. Shadows should be either precalculated and/or realtime.

Advanced terrain system - multitexturing, bump mapping/normal maps, paged file data spooled from disk/ram, levels of detail, realtime landscape modification, good collision stuff, vegetation, etc.

Post-processing effects - various fullscreen filters.

Support for multiple texture/buffer formats - make use of buffer objects and rendering to textures, and let us use floating point HDR buffers easily.

Lots of cool animation commands, bones, morphing, tweening, physics-based, cloth simulation, key-framed, etc

I think it should be able to target mid-range machines with no shader support, and then also extra features which become activated if shaders are supported - or at least allow detection of what is supported so the developer can downgrade stuff.

I did like the `Blitz3D Max` name a lot, it's a good idea, and would like to see this new system named that. I think it should be packaged as a single system, including the BlitzMax language, MaxGUI, and the 3D/game engine module(s). As such MaxGUI should be updated to a better system - Mark was working on something faster/better. MaxGUI apps have access to the basic user interface stuff but certainly not the full diversity of what's available, like the use of core abilities on OSX.

Support for various file formats, anim/video formats, texture/model formats, compression etc.

Can you be more specific? Which BlitzMax syntax is different from B3D?

It seems many are hoping Mark is wrong and B3D 2 will be more than just a "possibility".

heh.

Thats actually a really good idea.

I don't understand why Mark would write a new language (or extend from max, just for this purpose). I personally think if people want B3D V2 they have to use the sdk hes writing and move to BlitzMax - all this 'Blitz3D Max' nonsense is ridiculous.

Should be easy enough to make a language translator from `MaxShader` to `GLSL` or whatever - if you do a direct mapping of every command and piece of syntax in the language then you're basically doing a search-replace kind of thing with maybe some minor structural changes. The MaxShader language would be sort of like a set of macros or what have you, with no significant `parsing` needed in order to convert between them.

You could convert non-destructively from GLSL to MaxShader and back the other way and get perfect code each time. There doesn't have to be a major leap in features implemented or special language abilities - so long as MaxShader can do everything that GLSL or similar can do but with the appearance/structure of something BASIC/Blitz-like, that would be preferable to me. I don't like the appearance of C or the technicality of the language. I know some people love it though. But if to write a shader means learning C coding that's quite a put-off especially for less experienced developers. It would be like having to learn LUA.

Also if you have a standard MaxShader language then you only need one language to learn and it could easily translate directly to/from various shader languages, which presumably are mostly quite similar, to allow shaders to work in GLSL HLSL Cg etc?

Agreed 100% - This is not being a 'spoil-sport' for people who want a more advanced module based Object Orientated language. There are many of these currently available - BlitzMax for one, c++, c# etc ,etc - all with perfectly feasible 3d libraries/solutions available.
If someone is already using with C++ with Ogre,C# with Truevision3d or BlitzMax with MiniB3D etc they would gain nothing from going back to Blitz3D albeit version 2.
What there isn't is an all-in-one, simple to use, and intuitive program with next(current) gen graphic capabilities - Blitz3d with shader options ,hardware skinning and lighting would fill the gap and be an enormous revenue generator for BRL.
Keep it simple and it may just happen - the more bells and whistles people ask for increases the possibility of this never seeing the light of day.

Gabriel (and GfK) - what I'm saying is this:
1) If it is mostly compatable with existing userlibs, then you won't need any new Physics libs (for example) builtin or otherwise.
2) If lots of new language features are added then we may as well stick with BlitzMax (plus BRLs 3D engine - which we are getting anyway).

I don't see why people think Blitz3D is a hideous language, and many people would disagree (if you don't like then use something else - BlitzMax, Python, c++ etc).

I never used Blitz3D. BlitzMax was the `successor` language to Blitz3D. It came after it. It's the most recent BRL language product. I like it. Why would I want to go to a different language especially older?

Depends on the userlibs. different userlibs hack the underlying structure to work at high performance as the B3D Runtime (unlike the one of DBP for example) does not expose any functionality to Userlibs. All those userlibs will not work anymore logically.
That indeed would be a basic requirement to me on a potentially advanced Blitz3D version, that they finally start to expose functionality to the "plugins" (-> userlibs) from the runtime to work with the different aspects without having to do it in an unstable way. That would expand its future drastically as 3rd party developers finally can start develop 3rd party capabilities which expand its own features with new instead of just "layering them only on top of them"

hmm, I'd want industry standard shader language support with some simple max native template system avaliable for those that want it.

Shaders are complicated enough as it is. Support for standard .fx and cg would make the engine compatible with popular shader editors, plus collada I mentioned earlier has colladafx.

You really need artists to be able to get surface type shader materials out of their native modeling tools, so they can work on their models WYSIWYG fashion. 3D apps are never going to support BRL's shaders directly, whilst they all pretty much support .fx these days. (OpenGL doesn't seem to get much of a look in with shaders in professional apps these days which is a problem, what with Bmax being GL).

Who says you have to go back to anything - If you're a BlitzMax user carry on with BlitzMax - Blitz3d 2.0 would be more for current Blitz3D users of which there are still many !
By the way if you look at the products page Blitz3D is still down as the flagship product ! BlitzMax was not a successor to Blitz3D - it was a different product aimed at a different audience i.e OO and roll your own 3D solution.

First of all "existence". Secondly, collada support.

Graphics processing is already 'multithreaded', since graphics are rendered on a GPU.

Dreamora - I agree that some userlibs would malfunction (specifically those that hack or extend DX7 features), but many others could continue to work (physics, networking, & bb3d coded libs: particle systems etc). Of course I wouldn't complain if some of the hacks were added or at least exposed in a nicer (futureproof) fashion.

I agree with Evak, that allowing existing tools to be used to help with shaders would be a boon. Many other tools should continue to work as normal (b3dpipeline, gile[s], fragmotion, pacemaker etc).

I'm all for keeping Mark's (expected?) workload down to a minimum to make this a reality. Let's try and be realistic.

Did someone mention asynchronous file loading?

Not wanting it to be OOP seems crazy and backwards (imho).

-CountMonitors() and SelectMonitor()
-support for SLI/CrossFireX/Hybrid commands (eg: EnableSLI() )- I know this is something due to the drivers...but should be interesting to interact with these technologies directly from the engine
- for the language (I prefer BlitzMax) I agree a sort of multi-threading support will be nice


Great idea. It could be even a separate product for BRL for who don't need a 3d engine but want a tool like this.

and of course MakeMeRichEvenMoreRich() function...

I want to see better docs, tutorials and more sample code.

I would be happy for Blitz3d 2.0 to be a module for BlitzMax AND with the ability to use it with C++, C# etc. This is what I think Mark is going to work on anyway and not simply a Blitz3D with shaders.

Graham K's ION2D/3D is what I was waiting for but it has not materialised and essentially if the new Blitz3D 2.0 is a Module and can be used with BlitzMax then I'll certainly buy it.

Like I said, I very much doubt the Mark is going to create a new Language for a 3D Engine when he already has a more robust and advanced BlitzMax core language to use with any 3d Engine he makes.

Now, this may be too much to ask but it would be nice if Mark could post in one of these threads to give more clarification instead of having everyone speculate.

Hi,

Ok, to clarify things a bit:

* Priority 1 is writing a new 3d lib, with an underlying 'b3d-like' design.

* Priority 2 is wrapping it up as a Max module.

* Priority 3 is wrapping it up for other languages.

When I mentioned 'Blitz3D2' in the worklog, I was thinking about swapping out the current 3d engine in Blitz3D for the new one - language/IDE remain the same. Haven't given this much serious thought (and probably shouldn't have mentioned it) as Max/3D kind of renders the idea redundant. Still, there may be people who prefer the simpler b3d language and ide?

And...there is definitely NOT a new language coming!

That should keep the BlitzMaxers and the Blitz3Ders happy. Thanks for the clarification, Mark. :)

It's really nice that you are more responsive to the community, and clearing things up again, Mark..

What on earth for? Thats like saying "i want to stay with a pentium II because i like the shape of the CPU, but i want a GT9800!", or "i still have a black and white TV because i like black and white, but i want a remote!", or how about "im not going to use a basic program without line numbers and gotos, it confuses me, but i want an event system!".

Its called progress, its a good thing. When i moved to blitxmax from b3d it took less than a week to familiarise myself with the bmax equivalents of my b3d "habits".

We (most of us) dont dislike b3d at ll, its a great language but is dated and has many many limitations like expandability, windows only, no stricts, etc etc etc...

If anything its the otherway round, we have been given a new modernized blitz-on-steroids language and some seem to have this weird fear & loathing of it!.
Its powerful, futureproof, expandable, simple to learn, very similar commands & syntax, OOP-if-you-want-or-not-if-you-don't, multi-purpose, optional "strict" programming, multi platform, has extern...
What more does the b3d diehard want!?!? :O
(except better ide, docs and examples... oh and native 3D! which is what this is all about! :)

Thats another thing i dont get, Blitzmax can be used in exactly the same way/style as b3d if you want to program like that, you dont have to get into all the oop stuff if you dont want, just use it like b3d!, i have straight converted many lines of b3d into bmax (with a few search and replaces, some list additions to type stuff and other minor corrections) and it really isnt THAT different at all (at least at a basic, "straight conversion" level of use).

Nobody's put convex hull collision yet?! Why? And speaking of collisions, make them solid as something very solid.

FMOD support, but more so, allowing you more low level access to the nuts and bolts of sounds.

Built in packer / zip / encryption for external files - Or ability to load any file format from a bank. ie LoadImage ([bankhandle]), LoadAnimMesh([bankhandle])... Don't really mind, but of course if the zip thing is done for you it would be nice!

Multi-Screen support - Personally I don't need it, but it could be fun to play with!

There's a whole bunch of Decls that people have come up with that are really handy, like windows alert boxes, file selectors, clipboard etc, just roll these into the standard commandset please. Not asking for full on GUI just a few of the standard widgets.

Built in HUD camera thing. IE a special camera that has it's own space, so you can place objects in that view and it will never show up in the main camera. Could probably be done as a parent to hud camera or something, would just mean that the end user doesn't have to worry or manage it.

Single surface particle engine (or something)... There's plenty of examples of these people have written so rip off / borrow someones idea and have it as part of the basic command set. Can I recommend Noels Lotus system? Don't worry about an editor as soon as you do it they'll be at least 17 editors written by the community within 4 days.

Personally I don't give a toss about any of these things, I just want a play thing that allows me to make pretty stuff when I'm bored. I do 'proper' programming during the week at work, Blitz for me is a nice fall back to lazy procedural programming which is fun. So to have an expanded command set (blitz3d 2.0) would be great. If you want to take it seriously then you're already using the wrong family of programming languages in my opinion.

That said, if Mark's going to release this as a 'the official blitz max 3D module' then I'll most probably move to blitzmax as that is what I've been waiting for.

D4NM4N - I think you are confused about my stance on this. I really like BlitzMax, & use both BlitzMax and Blitz3D depending on what exactly I'm creating and who/what it is aimed at. I am perfectly comfortable using classes, reflection etc (and usually do in most other languages), but sometimes I don't need 'advanced features', I just want to get the job done.

Blitz3D also helps in this respect because it has a lot of useful code already written for it. Also, Blitz3D has much better support for generic IDEs (because of its seperate debugger).

I don't really code as a hobby any more, so all these things really matter to me. I don't fear & loath BlitzMax. I agree that Blitz3D has its limitations, but then so do all languages, it depends on the context.

BlitzMax rocks, Blitz3d rocks harder.

personally (to get back 2 topic) i would be perfectly happy with a dx8.1 base with the new engine. nothing fancy like shaders and such stuff...this is all nice to have! but a newer generation of dx would give us (or at least me) the sense of security in terms of future compatibility with the most hardware out there. of course dx9 would be even better, but support for dx8.1 will last at least say...for the next 5 years or something.
this is good enough to be sure games you begin today and sell tomorrow are still working on the day after tomorrow.


blitz3d never stood for bleeding edge technology, but for utterly wide spread compatibility and stability and i hope this philosophy will survive this decade :)

= Blitzmax+3d mod, not using the advanced features.
Thanks. exactly my point. I wouldn't have classified it as a "Toy" myself though, some take it seriously and want it to develop to be as good as it can get.

All blitzmax needs is "packaging" and a face-lift! ie. b3d friendliness as far as the help, better ide, examples and other general "niceness" & aesthetics that b3d has.
The language itself is not the issue as it can be used simply like b3d (its -almost- the same at this level!) or in a more advanced way for those of us that want it.

@ Beaker, i was talking about the "proverbial them/you", not you personally, I know you use max. (& i apologize for how that read).

Agreed and blitzmax + modernized b3d commandset would rock harder still ;P

Absolutely, yet, the language has it's limits, so does the IDE. Blitz3D pumpin' iron is neato! Let's call it the A1200 of BRL :P

This should appease people as this should work with B3D and B+ since those languages appear to be able to use external DLLs?

Thank you for the clarification Mark and I wish you good luck and a lot of motivation and fun developing it and "toying" with it to test the implementations :)

I seriously hope you implement an already existing physics engine.. like Newton.

Thanks for the clarity Mark. To summarise it sounds like you're basically making a Max3D module and will later make it available for other languages, which may or may not include Blitz3D to replace its existing 3D stuff and maybe add a few commands.

I'm glad to hear you are keeping BlitzMax and that the new 3D will be available for it first and foremost. Keeping my fingers crossed for that pre-Christmas release. :-)

Will you be marketing your Max2D lib as a separate product add-on to BlitzMax, or wrapping it up with BlitzMax as a combination product?

The most important thing for me is an encrypted virtual money function, connected with a paypal button.
So I can give away my games for free and the people have
to pay for activating shadows, particles, shaders etc.
This is the future.
Challenge everything.

- Z sorting of alpha entities

- Dx8/Dx9 or OpenGL, specially to allow hardware shadows (I just love for ex. how shadows are so easy to make in Irrlicht) and keep B3D from stop working on newer OSs/graphics cards.

- If Linux/Mac portability is possible, then yes, of course!

And I DO CARE about Blitz3D, and do like how simple it is. I have at least 2 or 3 games in progress being made with it... So I would love a B3D with a improved engine, whatever those improvements are.

I think you have chosen a wiser path to follow here mark. Develop a good and reliable 3D engine, something you are very good at.

Put it in max

rename the b3d syntax to blitzlite and bind the same engine to that too (thus making b3d2)

so basically blitzmax and blitzlite will use the same 3d engine, just one language has more advanced syntax.

then work on bindings for other languages.

of course, once you have all 3 products (engine, max and lite) ticking over you can then use the same engine to develop a game creator on top of.

Both of those would be silly.

Come to think of it.. I wonder how you could use the upcoming engine with Max2D.

Sorry that's a typo and should say Max3D. In light of that, what is your response?

If your referring to the engine hes working on now as 'Max3D' then as he said "with bindings for multiple languages", if anyone is to use it in Max they will just have to write the wrapper.. he'll probably include a wrapper though.

I'm not sure about the combination thing, they didn't do that with maxgui, but had a discount thing, maybe a discount for 'Max3d' for Blitz3D owners?

Did they do that for the current 3D engine for BMax?

You mean b3dsdk? No.

Yay! I already have too much to learn :D

Dunno if you all noticed but Mark just posted another worklog entry with more details. :-)

A very valuable feature to me is CSG. Dark Basic Pro has it since 2005. I can't see why we can't use that. It would simplify building props.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're after CSG operations why not just use 3D World Studio, or something similar? CSG editors can be quite flakey, but there are a few out there which export to the right formats.

_33 Darkbasic Pro has had CSG for a while but it's slow and very buggy (so it fits in weel for DBP). IMHO it's very difficult to do realtime CSG particularly with enough flexibility to be useful. Hell even big professional 3D modelling packages still have some issues with CSG and it's not quick. Exepecting Blitz to do this...well you might as well ask for the rest of the features in my previous ironic post.

Darkheart

Good news, it appears Max3D is to be the next step, (thank goodness)
http://www.blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=78026

Unified light and shadow system.
Easy to use shaders.
Integrated physics.
Improved 2d (with alpha and scaling)
Compiling speed like Blitz3d.(The 3d engines I have tried with BlitzMax had very long compiling times).

http://freehunter.iespana.es/
http://sandracers.iespana.es/

..actually, since mark already did mention it will be next gen stuff, i will not be concerned much about such wish..instead, i would like to see integrated some kind of Ai system(pathfinding,finite state..), easy to use..rest of logic will be pleasure to code...

Fast animation
ode included
blitz3d syntax or very close
entity system stays the same
basic FSAA and filtering
GUI, shadow and particle system would be a plus.

Im not bothered about shaders or fancy effects, I like making simple games and i think the only thing that limits what i can do with blitz3d is the rendering of animated meshes is to slow for a project i started. saying that i havent found a better option for me yet.

A Blitz3d 2.

Where you type in a single line like.

Make Game (FPS) and it builds it for me.

With all the bangs and whistles. :)

Nice_But_Dim, That's Impossible.
Can you imagine all the code??!!
Picture 5000 lines, all filled up.
It would be cool, but that would be piling too much pressure on him.

??

5,000 lines isn't much. Most of my games have been way past that.

It was a joke Cp.:)

Sorry :)
My bad.

What is it about csg that makes it slow?

Why do people want CSG so bad?

Actually I'd like it because I want to do a DecoratorMAX where you can make the level as you paint it. ;)

Realtime CSG?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIDwEOp_0d0

More efficient animated meshes.

I started to make a Roller Coaster Tycoon style game a while back but had to abandon it as just 200 low poly people made my above averaged spec'd PC run at a maximum of 50 FPS.

Makepool, for that sort of crowd, usually, the games I seen use LOD models for close, and bitmaps for far. Then again, 200 animated people, depends on how the code is efficient too.

Stereoscopic 3D can be done with Blitz3D right now.

When I say low poly I mean a 6 sided box body and no elbows or knee joints. I looked at Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 extensively and am 99% sure that when zoomed out and 500+ people are on screen that they are still 3D. Blitz3D comparatively inefficient animation handling has been flagged up before and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't forgotten about in the call for ultimate pixel shaders and perfected digital eyelash rendering etc.

Greater range of import options - I'd love to be able to import a dotXSI format file created in Softimage XSI which at present is extremely difficult in Blitz3d (don't know about max). I'm occasionally tempted to create my own importer of dotXSI format but it is a bit beyond my capabilities.

@ Jeremy Alessi



Depends on what you mean. If you mean the Nvidia Stereo Drivers, that's true, but they don't work with anything more recent that a GF7x (and not with ATI at all of course!)

The newer Nvidia stereo drivers are tied to Zalman monitors (and Vista-32). All the drivers for Vuzix, iZ3D etc. are DX8 and upward only (iZ3D seem the most promising).

To make Stereo Support a special feature of Max3D, it would need to be an option in the renderer to output to either two screens or sequenial fields etc. Parameters like Convergence, Separation etc. would need to be part of the Camera Entity or Global Parameters.

Drivers are fine for this kind of thing, until they're not supported or newer hardware comes out, then it all goes west.