4 years on and things are good

So 4 years ago today(ish) I bought blitz plus and began to learn how to use it with the help of forum members. I started a game called Iron Fist and after a while realized that it was going to take way too long to finish on my own. So I made a few mini games and then decided to make a match-3 game. I then realized that I wanted to make games full time and quit my job in business software - this was a big gamble, but I believed in myself and it paid off.

Indiepath published my first two blitz plus games and then I bought BlitzMax because I realized that casual games needed to look good to succeed, plus I wanted to use OOP. Bmax is flipping great btw.

So I made two more games and got hired as a contractor for Big Fish Games and made Fairway Solitaire, which was a good success. Now I'm making another game for them that is nearly complete and I'll be working with a team in Vancouver to make a new one in Jan 2009.

Currently I'm sitting on a wi-fi bus between Seattle and Vancouver writing this on my new iPhone. Things have gone pretty well for me and this is a testament to the power of Blitz and to the usefullness of this great forum.

So thanks loads BRL and to all my friends and helpers over these last years.

So tell me your Blitz story! :-)

Are you still writing in bmax?

Okay, so I first was dabbling in Amos and Amos Pro on the Amiga, back in the early 90's, and heard about this new thing called BlitzBasic, but for some reason at first I didn't like the look and feel of it. Amos had a different personality and focussed on simple 2D games, fruit machines, paint programs and the like, while the Blitz games I'd seen were in different niches. The two systems were quite different and I did not take to Blitz at first. It was for me a matter of Scorched Tanks (amos) versus Charr (blitz). However, Amos became a big fat slow out-of-date system and Blitz started to look more appealing.

The first thing I tried to do with it was convert my Amos fruit machine game over. I got the game converted but without any sound effects and I was having some troubles with color palettes being messed up. I wasn't so keen on the command set back then, but it had in-line 68k assembly which I did like.

That is when I started to develop Mildred, the chunky graphics library, since Blitz's chip-memory based blitter-based planar graphics were a significant bottleneck. That grew into a nice popular library of functionality, with lots of commands and faster graphics taking advantage of the CPU. I even made my first basic website. Then I hooked up with a small development team Pagan Games who were working on an RPG game. I convinced them to switch to using Mildred for graphics and it allowed their engine to run 3 times faster with much more animation and particle effects. Eventually the game went nowhere although I did squeeze some money out of them for the library.

Shortly after that I immigrated to the USA to start a new life with my wife, whom I met online. That meant not taking the Amiga with me - too big, too heavy, too much stuff, so I sold it all for much too little money. That was the end of an era in 2000, and the start of a new one. I gave up on all software development and became a software `user`. My wife owned a Mac desktop computer and there was no Amiga in sight, so I didn't want to re-learn the o/s or API's or some new language.

About 5 years passed when suddenly I stumbled upon BlitzMax, which lo and behold just happened to be released on the Mac first, right around christmas that year. I had to get it. The proposition of diving back into programming in a totally familiar (ish) language was irresistable, bypassing any need to learn o/s API's or something horrible like Objective C.

Since then I've been dabbling in gradually putting together an engine/environment with various stages of refinement so far. Took a detour down blobby objects lane for a while, wrote a mini game for some cousins, and that's about it so far. I am disappointed that I did not get anything product-like produced or for sale this year, I was hoping to have something before christmas but it's not to be. Probably more likely later next year. I am still working on my mega bells and whistles does-everything engine at the moment but I am very much looking forward to being donn with lower level stuff, and getting down to higher level game design. I have too many ideas for my own good!

@smilertoo: yes

Welcoming to Greater Cascadia, infidel friend :)

the intro to Fairway Solitaire is really good ! - did you do the music yourself ?

dont have a success story of my own - so perhaps ill borrow yours..
- been coding + artwoking on/off since the speccy 1980something..
- have partially written several games/projects - completed none, this
in itself is quite impressive considering how long ive had :p

oh wait.. i have a son - thats my success story :p ;)

goodluck + dont get too smug or ill hunt you down + kick your slimy grey
ass all the way back to your own hairy eyed galaxy ;)

um... this post appears to be spamerfic - please delete me :)

Well you said blitz story and not success story! So...

After playing FF9 in August 2003 I decided I wanted to write my own FF style game. A friend showed me B3D and I snapped it up after building a basic battle engine from the dragon demo.

- Released an unsuccessfull game in 2004 called Magnablock which was a kind of tetris clone (soon to be freeware when I get round to it)

- Release a freebee shootemup in 2005 called One Gun, about 1000 downloads to date...

- Released another game in 2006 called "Pushy and the Magic Blocks" which only sold a handfull of copies.

- Released a fairly popular freeware game in 2007 called "Clickbeat" of which I've had well over 20,000 downloads of. So I must be improving a bit...

Although none of these projects have made me any money, the programming experience helped me get my current job. I've also met some cool people by getting involved in different projects. And you never know, maybe my next project will be more succesfull!

Well done to you though Jake, I'm sure your success is an inspiration to many blitzers! ;)

Good to hear about your success story GA
There are lots of "It'll never work" attitudes floating around but sometimes, it does work

As you mentioned the iPhone, what is your opinion on developing for mobile phones?
Especially now that they are becoming more powerful and accessible (Android, S60, Apple SDK)

There are some terrific Blitz games out there which proves the language is easily capable of producing AAA's

Erm, bought BlitzBasic, bought Blitz3D, dabbled...
Bought Visual C# 2002... dabbled...
Bought Visual C++ 2002... dabbled..
Bought BlitzMax, dabbled... Completed about 95% of a game.. lost source due to plugging wrong adaptor into my external HD.

Still, the years dabbling wasnt a waste, as I'm now pretty confident in programming in any language in the list above... More notably C++, I love working in that, more so than Blitz if I'm honest.

Dabz

Note to developers: If you can learn anything from GA, learn the fact that he quickly realized "presenation" of the game is as important if not more so, than the game itself. I think that reason alone is why you see a huge spike in the quality of both his own creations and his contracted work. ;)

95 - 98 :: Klik'n'Play
I made a lot of platform games with this, copied to disks and distributed to my friends. It was just for fun.

98 - 2001 :: Half Life SDK (Modding)
I'm glad I've worked on HL modding and map design. It really pays off now.

01 - 2002 :: Visual Basic 6
It was such a waste of time. I though it would be a better starting point as I thought it was easier. Yep it's easy but slow and I really hated the syntax. And support to DX7 and OGL was so limited.

02 - 2003 :: C++ 6
Worked 6 months at that time. Made a small text-rpg. Not an Ascii RPG though, it was a roguelike game but much more simplified.

2004... :: Blitz3D
Now, this is my turning point. I spent 2 years piling experience. Then last year I made a 3D platform game for a kids TV show. The income was enough for me to buy the libraries and some programs I needed for further game dev. Started a shooter project with a 3D artist. It took longer than we thought and artist had to leave for his compulsory military service. Halted that project and right now I'm working on a hidden object game independently. I hope I'll finish it and some of the better portals will accept it.

Mortiss: VB6 "It was such a waste of time. "
Here's a game I coded with it: ;)
http://jgoware.com/retroblast.php

VB6 was where I started doing business applications, I prefer it over the .NET version.

Hey great to hear everyone's stories, thx!

Actually my story above is only my "current" blitz story because years ago I was using assembly on the Amiga and then I read reviews of BlitzBasic 2 (I'd already seen AMOS and dismissed it as not powerful enough) and then I got BlitzBasic 2 and love every minute of coding with it which I did for a couple of years before I got a PC and started using C++.

Thanks! No the music was made by Somatone who make the music and sound effects for many top casual games (like the latest Mystery Case Files game which is out today)

Funnily enough about 7 years ago I nearly got into mobile game development but I found the tools really clunky and horrible and also the thought of having games where you could only press one button at once depressed me. So I put that on the backburner and got into Blitz a couple of years later. Now it's a LOT better from what I've seen. I actually went to am iPhone developers meeting last week (and bought an iPhone too). It seems a really easy platform to develop on and it's also massive, there are more iPhones sold than any other phone, so if you were going to do mobile games, this is the best platform in my opinion - don't forget that the iTouch can play iPhone games too. Only thing is your games should make use of the new touchscreen technology and that may mean that loads of "classic" genres don't work well (or at all), or at least need rethinking. Actually BFG wants iPhone developers. Of course Android could become very big too, but right now it's iPhone.

Thanks. Yeah I made this post because I suddenly realised that 4 years had passed and that I had made good progress and was pleased + grateful to Blitz and this forum, so thought I'd share my story as a "feel good" story and to hear other peoples' too.

Basically, yes skill and hard work plays a part, but it's all about your attitude imho - so having a positive attitude (can't stress that enough) and believing in yourself + being able to see/create opportunities that you then take. Oh and adaptability, so as MGE said, I changed style from Blitz Plus and pixel-art to BlitzMax and pre-rendered/painted art because I realised that the market wanted really nice looking (and sounding) games - I think it's pretty important to hire a real musician too! I had to get out loans to pay people because I was broke - don't let no money be a barrier to success. Also, after each of my last 4 games I received multiple job offers and was able to pick what I felt was the best one - that's a great position to be in.

Maybe change your name to Dabblehand? ;)

- Dabblehand

I didn't mean that VB6 is crap. It was such a waste of time for me. Creating a great game is generally language independent.