directx 9/10 Support

when do we get a new Blitz3D version with DirectX9/10 Support ?

DirectX7 is very old for our professional game projects.

here, here...

not everyone wants to move to blitzmax and then figure out how to integrate DX9/10...

Blitz could still be a global winner if it was ugraded to DX10 - even for an upgrade charge.

http://blitzmax.com/logs/userlog.php?user=1&log=1043

The best case scenario: after Christmas

@Barton: What is your current development platform?

@Moraldi: I use currently Blitz3D but I have bought Blitzmax and I think B3D is better as Blitzmax. Open GL is in future out and DirectX is the Standard.

I think, Mark must focus in the DirectX 9/10 Support and new Blitz3D Version.

This ist the best way for future.


I find it sad, that old DX7 technology sold it as new. The time has come already to bury DX7. Therefore I will not buy the B3D SDK.

Do not understand me wrong! : I'm great fan of Mark, but I would now see great Updates with DX9/10 Support.

Yeah. For 3D development I think that a Blitz3D SDK with a good C++ development environment is better by far than BlitzMax + Blitz3D SDK.
My first real application Unlimited Drop Pro is made with Blitz3D SDK and C++.
It is proven a very stable SDK. I found only one issue (I am not sure if this is a bug) that I managed to override.
I think that Mark's choice to provide in the near future a new SDK is in the right direction (I am not sure if there is another direction anyway).
The most difficult task in my opinion is to keep the stability of the old one.
What I mean: In the past 2 weeks I downloaded the trial version of DB Pro (Dark Basic Pro) in order to implement a DLL and make users able to load my UDrop Pro files from within the DB Pro environment. After too many tries I didn't manage to make my DLL work because the the DB Pro .exe was being crashed under unknown conditions. I decided to quit and most important not to buy the DB Pro (yap, I was thinking about that) because I was afraid that the whole product is unstable too and I couldn't complete a serious project. The same process with Blitz Basic was a matter of tow days to complete.
Every fancy ability of DX9.0 (or above) is not so much important than my nerves when I am trying to explain an unexplained bug...
@Barton: If you can spend some money I advise you to buy the current Blitz3D SDK because first you will gain experience working with an SDK and second I believe that the new SDK of Mark will delay much more (I hope to prove wrong :) ).

@Barton

What is it specifically you feel you need from the newest version of DirectX? Surely if you are just starting out, you dont need all the newest features, but use what is in DX7, if you cant do what it is you need with DX7 THEN look to a newer version,

And i really dont think OGL is out, i use it more than directx, its always going to be a personal preference

Seems to the 5000th post of requesting a DX9/10 version of Blitz3D... oh well take it easy.

Don't worry .. There are a few engines on the way that supports at least DX9..
I don't know if i am the only one, but my engine is going to be both a DX9 and a DX10 rendering engine..

So far TrueVision is the best game engine although I didn't test it extensively concerning its stability. It is well structured and is not focused to any specific approach like FPS etc. It gives you the freedom of choosing the way you want to implement your code regardless of your application type.

I just think that the TrueVision engine seems a little complex. But also, it seems a little "cheap in code", as some of the functions are a little hardcoded, like the water rendering for the landscapes. I'd better like the structure like Blitz3D, where you can custumize it all over, and "everything" is an entity. The structure of BLitz3D seems very easy to understand, and that is the reason, why i am using almost all the Blitz3D commands in my own engine.

BRL had better do something fast. The Game Creators are kicking BRL buttox at the moment. The have a much more advanced game engine, and are going to be comming out with Dark GDK.Net very soon *FOR FREE*.

Let's hope DarkGDK.Net is as bug free as their previous offerings. *rolls eyes*

Nothing is ever *FREE*.

You're right CodeGit. The C++ version of Dark GDK is free but for freeware use only. The DarkGDK.Net license is $30 USD.

So...

Let's see.

$100 USD for the B3D SDK which is out of date, and will *never* be brought up to speed.

~or~

$30 USD for DarkGDK.net wich encompasses all the latest technology and will continue to be developed and improved upon...

I realize I already made the mistake of spending the $100 for B3D SDK, but there was no DarkGDK.Net available at the time. I've already started planning the conversion of my game over to DarkGDK.Net.

Bye, then. Pity you couldn't just go and do it without the song and dance.

Look, If DarkGDK.net is so good, go and sodding well use it.

But for the love of Christ, stop it with the "DirectX 7 is very old for our professional games" and "BRL need to do something fast" nonsense.

Mark must be sick to the back bloody teeth of threads like this. I know I am. One day he's just going to go "screw the lot of you!".

I am shocked he hasn't done so already. The fact that he hasn't really speaks to the character and integrity of Mark.

Oh I'm singin' and dancin'.

I think you've missed my point completely.

I own every Blitz product ever made. Including the original Blitz Basic for the Commodore 64, *and* the Amiga versions (which I still use from time to time).

BRL has done great things. I think Blitz Basic, and BMAX are excellent versions of the BASIC programming language. But something has happened and they've just stagnated. BRL have decided to sit back and rely on their own customers to do most of the work for them. Look at the Blitz Max documentation! (or lack there-of). It's pathetic. Meanwhile TGC are pumping out one great product after another. They show a lot of support to their community of users, listen to feedback, and offer competative pricing on all of their products.

As to this little exchange:

That's the most rediculous thing I've ever read!!!

The "character and integrity of Mark"?!?

Who do you think he is?!? Do we owe him for writting Blitz Basic?!?

We paid him for writting Blitz Basic. If he wants us to continue paying him, he should be finding ways to keep us comming back for more. Perhaps take the time to write a comprehensive Blitz Max programming manual. I'd pay for that. Maybe create a killer new 3D engine for BMax or a new version Blitz 3D with the new 3D engine. I'd pay for that too. Possibly even publish a tutorial DVD, or other supporting products that boost the useability of the really great products he's already created.

It's all about marketing, and staying current.
BRL could learn a thing or two from TGC.

There's my song and dance.

I'm not leaving. As I said. I *LOVE* Blitz Basic (especially BMAX). I use BMax alot for developing on my Mac. What I would like to see is a BMax front end to that awesome 3D engine TGC has created. I can't stand Dark Basic.

No, you don't owe him, and he doesn't owe you the opportunity to complain about his products, and advertize competing products on his website either. It's a matter of respect. Specifically, him showing us lots, and you showing him very little.

I earned the right to complain about his products the instant he received my money. As did you and everyone else on the board.

No, you earned a licence to use the product and you bought it 'as is'.

Nowhere does it say that you have a legal entitlement to endless updates.

As I see it BlitzMax and Blitz3DSDK (the two Blitz products that I own myself) bring very good value for the price. Both the marketing and price of these products indicate that they are hobbyist tools. I guess if Mark would want to have it another (more professional) way he'd probably do something like:

1) Update to latest OpenGL/DirectX.
2) Hire more people (support team/dev team)
3) Start charging $2000 USD for licences.
4) Start charging 100$ for each support incident.
5) Start charging $750 for each "major version upgrade"

Instead we got a very low price, usually a very nice hobbyist community and a bit slower pacing on the technical updates.

But still we get updates. Newest big update that comes to mind is the BlitzMax threading, and existing customers just got to download it for free.

And besides that, maybe its just me, but I really think both BlitzMax and Blitz3DSDK are by far the easiest hobbyist-gaming-tools I've ever seen. You can still write a full game without even knowing about structured or object oriented programming. Impressive imho!

I'm not criticizing the BRL products. I don't know how many times I've had to say that. I go out of my way to say how great they are. I have criticized the documentation for Blitz Max for obvious reasons. But all of my critique (Constructive Critique I might add) are about BRL's marketing, and failure to stay current and competitive.

TGC are passing BRL by with a better graphics engine, and tons of supporting apps. Has anybody played around with First Person Shooter Creator? It's a blast! Regularly $49.99 USD, I got it for free by buying a different program for $20 USD via 'Trial Pay'.

But my real point is: If I have trouble figuring out how to use a feature in the FPSC... They have tutorial videos online!. What does BRL have for people who want to figure out the new BMax features? We have to sift through the cryptic documentation and pray that there's something descriptive enough. Or search the forums, again, hoping to find something close to being helpful.

A good example: Where in the documentation does it say anything about 'Threading'? I'm excited for it. I would like to learn how to use it in a BMax program. Where do I learn about it?


-

You can have a Puki Star of Merit.

Sounds like The Game Creators.

Where can these products be found? FPS Creator is so slow to be unusable. Not shocking it is too slow since it was written in DarkBasic Pro. The only saving grace for the products is the community writing third-party extensions to fill in missing features or work around bugs. The only reason DarkGDK is usable is because to meet the standards that MS set for the distribution/promotion deal, TGC had to fix many of the long-standing bugs in DarkDGK that had made it unusable. BTW, check out the latest version of DarkGDK which is not being distributed/promoted by MS, it is back to being so buggy its unusable.

Their forums are peer support. Very rarely do you see official support given.

I realize both of those traits are totally foreign to you.

The owner of this site that you keep bashing him on.

A user has already done that. I never bought it myself since Amazon USA doesn't carry it, but it does look to be very good.

It seems you are one of the few. Mark gave in to pressure and released an awesome 3D engine for use with BlitzMax and nobody uses it.

Other than the marketing mentality and lack of ethics that are behind used car salesmen, what could Mark learn? The majority of the products for sale on the TGC site are not made by TGC. They simply are reselling products made by others and trying to make a name for themselves off of the hard work of others.

Thats a shame. It seems you would be much happier over at TGC.

If you are unhappy with it, perhaps you could put your money where your mouth is and work on the documentation and show us how it should be done.

Competitive with who? Nobody gives any legitimacy to TGC. Their userbase are mostly adolescents. I have never seen a finished and playable game made with any version of a TGC language and I have never seen a game made with TGC languages on store shelves.

There are numerous sites explaining how to use threading. The principle is the same for most languages. No offense, but if you have to use a point and click game creator like FPSC, threading is probably above your current skill level.

CoderLaureate: Cool that you come from an C64 background, thats where i started long ago too, and I still am an fan owning about 15 c64/c128/vic20 computer, but to be truthful I haven't coded any 6502 code since 2003.

But lets talk documentation with this background: What book came with the C64 (and its built in Commodore basic 2.0)? There was a user manual with the (in)famous sprite ballon-demo remember? The demo itself worked but the documentation of what all these cryptic pokes did was very sparse if i recall correctly.

I eventually learned quite a bit about the c64 from excellent books like Mapping the c64 but what i learned by far the most from was through reading other peoples code (yes even in the machinecode monitor) updating some stuff, rerunning the program to see what happened if i changed something.

BlitzMax is very similar to the early c64 community in that matter: You will learn the most about it by checking out other peoples examples and see how they did things. There is no doubt a market for someone writing a book describing BlitzMax though, but like "Mapping the C64" this book does not have to be written by the developer of the computer/language.



Well first of all this functionality is beta, but there are already several threads in the blitzmax programming forums that contain small snippets with examples of thread usage. But then Threading is quite a large subject that you will never completely learn from an instruction video. Sure a video can show you some small examples, but thats pretty much equivalent to the code-snippets already available in the BlitzMax forums.

I've used threads since about 2000 (Delhi and Java) at work and I want to say it's very much a "Easy to grasp, hard to master" subject (like much other stuff in programming). I had to write ~3-4 real apps/modules and face different problems involved with threads and be forced to solve them in a satisfactory way before I myself felt that I really understood them. I still am no master though :)

Programming is a lot like mathematics in this way: The more you do it the better you get. And the better you get the more humble you become because your horizon widens and you start to understand how little you know and how much more there is to learn. There will never be a day in my life I'll feel that "I now know everything there is to know about programming".

So back on the documentation subject: I don't think the pricetag on Blitz*-products entitles us to get more docs than we got. If someone would write a book I'd buy it. But using the forums/code-archives is the primary way to learn BlitzMax right now, and that works pretty well imho.

And as GaryV said:



Also for other languages there are large books on the single subject threading. Example: http://www.amazon.com/Java-Threads-Scott-Oaks/dp/0596007825

If you want to learn threading well you could pick up this book or find a good website and install java6 + eclipse (both are free/OpenSource software) and try out some examples. Most of the things you'd learn (as GaryV said) is directly applicable on BlitzMax.