Max3D only for BlitzMax?

Will the upcoming Max3D engine be exclusively for BlitzMax or will it be like Blitz3DSDK and also work on PureBasic, VisualBasic, and others?

Oh no not another bmax3d thread.

Mark has changed his mind alot with bmax3d, at one point he did say it would avalible as a sdk so you could use it with C#, purebasic etc. but he hasnt said anything of late in his worklog about it.

people here only know what he puts in his worklog, the chances of him answering a question about it here are almost zero.

I agree with Pete .. however, I wish Max3D when (if)appear, to be portable to PureBasic..im really wondering why noone build some decent engine for that language since support it has is outstanding and its multiplatform..

the current PureBasic 4.30 beta 2 does have more 3D features than the previous PureBasic 4.20 does, but it still lacks certain important features that Blitz3D has, and as much as I love Blitz3D I'm worried it may stop working in future editions of Direct X and thus have no future :-/

Read the last seven entries in Mark's Worklog.

In a way it would be good if blitz3d stopped working, because it would give mark more of a push to release a replacment, be it max3d or a upgraded engine version of blitz3d. ;O)

On the other hand, this would hurt Marks income which is not a good thing.

Pete

I'd imagine that Blitz3D won't just 'stop working' any time soon? It would be a pity if all the games written in it don't work anymore. In general I think that in bringing newer versions of Direct X they also take old software into account, it wouldn't be just about Blitz3D software.

In NO way would it be a good thing.... Just because a few people are hung up on waiting on a product that may never show it's face doesn't mean the rest of us who can/might use the product we purchased be robbed of the opportunity just because it has the potential of lighting a small fire under Mark's bum....

Bottom line is that if we must make excuses to ourselves why it hasn't manifested (max3d) then we really must re-evaluate our thought process on the subject as the short coming isn't from those who wish to buy said product, it's on the motivation of those creating said product.

Mark has done a really great job during his prime. Some of you must really come to grips with the possibility that he might be done. The man deserves the time off! Find something else and move on with your careers/hobbies.

I do believe that B3D will be okay at least 2 years more, having in mind that its working just fine on Vista..however, nice update will be welcome, but, for everyone who need something more , there is few available and nice packages out there so it should be fine...anyway..lets hope that max3d will be out soon, if not..well..then ride something else :)

"I do believe that B3D will be okay at least 2 years more, having in mind that its working just fine on Vista.."

We've already verified there is a major problem with DX7 on certain cards. HORRIBLE frame rates. Mainly newer cards. There is a reason for Mark to move up to DX9 right now, because B3D and 2DBlitzmax have MAJOR problems on some cards.

I dont think we'll ever see max3d.

And I don't think it's in the least relevant for the BRL customer base whether this product will ever be released or not. BlitzMax is doing quite well on its own and there are already plenty of 3D engines available for it, you only have to choose your poison and don't need to wait for BRL to ship their next big thing.

This isn't very good news for Blitz3D at all if it won't even work properly on the latest cards or latest computers... and yet there is no warning of this to potential new buyers on the product page? :-/

It works fine on latest cards and computers. While you would never have guessed from MGE's amateur dramatics which he SEEMS to do every time there's the SLIGHTEST problem with anything, the issue he refers to is a problem with one single, solitary model of card. The same card also shows massively reduced performance in DX9 and OpenGL too. So clearly it's nothing specific to Blitz3D or BlitzMax. It's probably a driver bug which causes severely reduced rendering under certain conditions. Since the Blitz3D and BlitzMax DX7 renderers do not automatically batch rendering, I would hazard a guess that it could well be state changes that the driver in question handles very badly.

Mark specifically stated in one of his more recent worklogs that it will officially be called Max3D.

Well, OK so even that is likely to change again in the future, but if it sticks, it suggests that it will only be usable in Max, otherwise it really has little to do with Max (except for the fact that BRL will undoubtedly write foolproof wrappers for it for Max).

From the first posts about Blitz3D v2.0, it was supposed to be 2 things:
- Blitz 3D updated to new heights (redone)
- Max 3D for BlitzMax

@Gabriel - "While you would never have guessed from MGE's amateur dramatics which he SEEMS to do every time there's the SLIGHTEST problem with anything, the issue he refers to is a problem with one single, solitary model of card."

Issue #1: Max2D exits the program with no error trapping if you try to create a graphics screen too large for VRAM surfaces. Typical error path would be if the end user is running the desktop in a very high resolution and a game defaults to desktop resolution, resulting in not enough vram for double buffered surfaces.

Issue #2: With all the tests recently posted by myself and GA, there is proof that on some ATI cards, DX7 rendering is pathetic.

If issue #1 is "amateur dramatics", perhaps you're not worried about a casual game not working on a potential very large installed user base. Especially when it's becoming common place for casual games to default to the desktop resolution.

If issue #2 is again "amateur dramatics" then you obviously think the ATI card in question would not impact end user installations, or sales, or you just don't care. While I tend to agree that particular ATI card probably doesn't have a wide installation base, the fact that a popular GPU vendor can release ANY card that has poor DX7 performance should be a concern for any Blitz DX7 developer. If it happens on a wider scale, (with an integrated installation) that would be very bad. And let's face it, a large percentage of casual developers never upgrade their gpu driver.

Incredibly, since the time I have posted those render benchmark tests, a stable DX9 driver for Blitzmax has been developed and I have tested and verified it on several different XP and Vista installations. So my "amateur dramatics" in regard to Blitzmax and DX7 are greatly reduced.

Im looking forward to marks next worklog entry - regardless of when the
engine released..and im sure it will be. - heh, im sad enough to check this almost every time i visit the site. There are plently of engines to
choose from at the moment...but i reckon bmax3d will be easier to use than
most - one of the strong points of b3d was rapid prototyping...its not always about shiny things...tho an updated rad engine cant be a bad thing
[we all like shiny stuff]. ;) :)

Mark has been changing direction on what Max3D will be ever since he announced BlitzMax. Nobody will know what it will be (even Mark I would hazard to guess) till it get's released.

I'm hoping it will work with C# and VB.NET myself but I'm not counting on it.