Newbie Questions

After spending a couple of months looking at different languages I have decided to go with BlitzMax. I am in the process of starting my own Indy Company and was hoping I can bounce some things off of the group.

I have just finished the Sloan Kelly book and give it a 8 out of 10. It really did not cover layers in any detail. So are there any good resources to learn about layers?

Are there anymore books out about blitzmax?

Is there a Graphics editor that hooks into blitzmax. I am looking into making a Time Management game. Something similar but unique to Turbo Pizza or Diner Dash. But first I plan on completing a small shooter. Need to crawl before I can run.

As far as Music goes I am going to purchase something from the many sites listed on the forum. But as far as Sound effects go how do you go about making them. I was thinking of just recording them off of my mic and cleaning them using Audacity.

I have purchased the Grey Alien Framework which should also make life easier once I get comfortable with it.


Art scares the bejeebes out of me but I was thinking of just taking pictures and using a program to convert them to vector graphics. Not all artwork but quite a bit. I feel that for the last 5-10 years everthing is about the Art and not about game play. I am hoping to change that.

I almost went with Garage Games but it seemed overwhelming.

If you know of any great tools or would like to share any tips I would greatly appreciate it.

http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/hp/project_sfxr.html

Very cool Tool. Thanks!!!

Many programmers choose to make 3d models instead of drawing their art in 2d because its easier to make one model, animate it and get infinite number of camera angles that to make every frame by hand.

I say, why not learn to draw?, heres an awesome site i visit often, www.conceptart.org

Making sounds is for me one of the funnest parts in game development :) since you get to try lots of objects and try to get different sounds for them, its like playing all the time.

Instead of making a small shooter, why not make a very small dine dash clone?, that way if you decide to go comercial, you can use the code you have written and build on top of that.

Here are some tools i use, all free:
Artweaver (art)
Gimp photo (art)
Inkscape (art)
Blide PLus (ide for blitzmax)

And here are some mods i use:
bmfont by wiering (bitmap fonts)
http://brucey.net/programming/blitz/index.php

Good luck.

Hey RJ - welcome. :)

Check out the stickied newbie thread that I've got in this (Beginner's) forum. I've tried to put a lot of the common questions in there. There are a couple links in there that are worth their weight in gold, IMO.

Blitz can be a relatively unfriendly language if you are looking for really well-documented examples and tutorials... a lot of the Blitz documentation doesn't explain itself well, and it's not searchable via the IDE. Also, a lot of the tutorials that you find can be out of date. But! If you stick with it, you will gain a great skill - the ability to ferret out the meaning of code by just reading it. Blitz certainly taught me to be able to find the clues in code to figure out what it does, and to keep attacking a problem from all sides until you figure it out.

Unless you're planning on selling your startup project, I would recommend just throwing in whatever stuff you have lying around. Don't spend too much time making sounds and art for a game you don't plan to spread around - your main goal is to get better at programming in Blitz.

The Framework is a great tool to start learning this stuff - definitely check out the Framework forums, since questions specific to it get answered there. Digging into how the Framework works will really make you a better programmer. Well - at least it did for me. :)

Best of luck!

There are just as many commercial shooters as there are diner dash clones.

I think your idea of using photos and turning them into vectorgraphics is pretty good. However, these days people are using vector graphics mainly because it gives a cleaner look and also because people don't have time to spend drawing art. The move has been towards computer-generated graphics in order to cut out the need to create any art assets.

I don't really understand what is being asked here. What do you mean by layers and how do they relate to Bmax?