Blitzmax - which 3D?

Hello.

Was going to post this in General since its not *really* about programming, but I don't want everybody telling me to use Blitz3D. I've done my time with Blitz3D and I'm used to Max now and staying with it. So...

Which is the best out of MiniB3D and BB3D SDK?

From what I've seen of MiniB3D, its nice enough but I've never really established how 'complete' it is. The version number (0.51 or whatever its currently up to) says its way off. So what's the deal?

BB3D SDK seems to be the more 'official' of the two but a lot of people have warned off it but I can't give any specific reason why that should be. I haven't even had a chance to play with BB3D SDK.

On the other hand, am I backing a loser by taking on either of these when Max3D is allegedly just around the corner?

I'm dying to get back into 3D sometime very, very soon but I just don't know which way to go. I don't want to learn one SDK now, then have to drop it and move on when something [hopefully] much better comes along "by Christmas".

Everything I write, is done with a view to releasing it, so I don't want to work with, say, MiniB3D then find out it has a lot of compatibility problems. I have to get it right from the start.

I would recommend you going with minib3d. It has been deeply beta-tested, and Simonh has just released the mac version of his super gerball using it, and without any problem. Also Flow can be a very interesting engine and, for what I know, the flow team is just finishing some samples before releasing the windows version, so it should be out very very soon.

I don't know if that's been helpful to you. Just my 2 cent

Personally I would wait for Max3D, but that's because I'm not doing any 3D work atm.

minib3d probably has less compatibility issues then the Leadwerks engine, so imo it is the best free solution for the time being.

If I were making a game (with Bmax) for general release I'd go with miniB3D. The reason for this is that I would have the [easiest] option to port to other platforms at a later date. It's a shame no-one has wrapped both libraries (minib3d and bb3dsdk) so you can seemlessly switch between them.

The biggest issue (for me at least) with all these engines is the lack of existing helpful userbase code and libs/DLLs.

I'd like to wait Max3D, however I think it'll have many problems when just releasing to public.... and go stable at least need half an year or so....

What kind of system spec are you aiming at, GFK?

MiniB3D works as well as Blitz3D on my computers... The only thing I haven't compared is the collisions.

I dunno. I don't even have a game in mind yet (well, plenty of ideas but undecided what I'd actually do if the opportunity presented itself). I have to finish Magicville first.

I'm not totally convinced I want to use OpenGL.

I'll be looking at 3d as well in the future, and thought I would say screw opengl, since directx has a lot more robust engines to offer it seems. But lately it seems mac is creating a strong market for people. A market I wouldn't want to really miss on at the rate they are going. Just a thought.

I don't think OpenGL is a problem for higher end games, but if you're targeting the casual market, where some players wouldn't know how/be bothered to upgrade a graphics driver you need to default to DX.

I wonder what percentage of casual games use OpenGL? I know that quite a lot do.

Yeah maybe things have changed in the last couple of years. Perhaps new systems tend to have decent OGL drivers out of the box these days?

The laptop I bought in December didn't.

Although to be fair, it was only Blitzmax OpenGL stuff it didn't like. Driver updates have since fixed it (even though Mark deduced that it was something he was doing with Blitzmax that was directly causing it).

Anyhoo...

My laptop works with opengl but it has drivers and an ati chipset. I wouldn't think intel chipsets worked all that great.

Yep, I'm sticking with Max too. No more 3D for me until Max3D is released.

OpenGL is the choice to make, DirectX is only supported on 1 operating system. There is a large myth that people don't have support for OpenGL. This is not true.

> OpenGL is the choice to make, DirectX is only supported on 1 operating system.

True, but that one operating system accounts for at least 75% of the machines out there.

> There is a large myth that people don't have support for OpenGL. This is not true.

Correct as far as it goes, on windows DirectX is more universal then OpenGL.

Personally I don't care if a game is OpenGL or DirectX.