Can use BlitzMax for develop Games ? (Blitz3D)

Hi,

my Question is... "Can i develop Games with BlitzMax?" Now i have Blitz3D. Last Product is BlitzMax, i want upgrade btw Buy BlitzMax and use them to coding my Games. Or must i use Blitz3D for this? Can BlitzMax all this what Blitz3D can?

Sorry for my very bad english ;( :)

MfG Dr.Hyde (Sascha)

BlitzMax is in no way dependent on Blitz3D, when you get BlitzMax you're getting a new language.

Also note that BlitzMax is quite different from Blitz3D (Object-Oriented - but most official modules are both OO and procedural), and does not have a 3D engine built in.

BlitzMax can do what Blitz3D can do (you have to find your 3D engine though if you want to use 3D - probably something like MiniB3D or Irrlicht), and so much more.

Hi,

thanks for the very fast answer.

MfG Dr.Hyde (Sascha)

What plash said.

Minib3d being the blitzmax version of B3D, except it supports multiple platforms and it's open source. You won't regret getting blitzmax....but you might regret having bought b3d =p

Edit: I take that back, apparently he released the source for the sdk - nice.

I recommend Leadwerks for an engine :) Costs a bit but it's really great and cand do so much and so easy.

You might want to include the requirements and market aim for Leadwerks if you're going to suggest it to someone..

Dude... if he really makes a game (a real one) it will take him at least one year. That's from when he starts, learns and till he actually completes it. So by then everyone will have better hardware.
I really don't get it why people complain about this... if you want something to look great you have to have good hardware.
And really now all it needs is a shader model 3 graphics card. So basically from around 6000-7000 gt you can run leadwerks and those video cards are actually old. I bought a 9400gt now for like 45$...

Leadwerks looks nice but i havn't seen a decent demo run at a usable speed yet.

I've written commercial games in three months, and I know other developers who write all their commercial games in three months. What constitutes a "real" one exactly?


He didn't actually say he needed to learn. He has Blitz3D, he might very


No, by then most people will have a new Intel onboard videocard which still isn't powerful and has very poor SM 3.0 compatibility instead of very poor SM 2.0 compatibility.


No you can't, Leadwerks himself says that anything less than an 8800 GTX is pathetically old and not worth bothering with. Or words to that effect. I can confirm than a 8600 GTS won't run even the very low poly demo indoor demo at a playable framerate.


No, if you want things to look great, you have to have good artwork. There are plenty of Blitz3D games using DX7 which look as good or better than anything I've seen of the Leadwerks engine, or indeed any of the other advanced engines. Which includes mine. No matter how great the engine or the shaders, they don't make the artwork any better, and if you've got great artwork, the difference is still relatively small.

I couldn't agree more. The fun me and my wife are having with Master of Defense (an addictive game made with Blitz3D) is beyond the fun we have with such newer games full of T&L effects.

The graphics are so polished and the game play is superb.

So IMHO it's not the tools you have.
It's what you do with them.

Yeah... right..
Take Assassin's Creed and remove the specular the normal and the displacement maps out and congratulations you have a horrible game.

I mean all this for games that go closer to realism than some small 3d games made in 3 months.
Every real gamer has good videocards these days so this isn't a problem.

Gabriel said it but since it was basically in response,



How well did Crysis do again?

Apparently there are still a lot of 'fake' gamers...and I wasn't aware you had to be a 'real gamer' to play the majority of games made in blitzmax/blitz3d. Well, I better update my 9800 gtx drivers so I can play grey alien's Fairway Solitaire...

And the issue I raised with



is that, he may not have the necessary hardware himself to develop using his engine. While leadwerks is an amazing engine, its market aim and requirements of use are a lot different than the average engine. It seems like a good thing to point out, because a lot of people jump the gun before looking into things more.

You can make great professional 2D games in Blitmax without any extra modules, but it sounds like you like 3D.

Wow, I'm obviously very misinformed on the subject. I had no idea that removing the specular, normal and displacement maps from a game actually affected the gameplay. I'll have to read up some more on shaders to learn how they do that. Unless you can help me out with that?


Well now I haven't even got my head around the concept of real games and now you're telling me there are such things as "real gamers" too. You never did tell me how they're defined though.

I thought they might be defined as, for example, people who buy and play games on Steam, but from their hardware survey, between 45% and 65% ( depending on where the 20% of "others" fall ) of Steam users don't have a graphics card which meets the recommended specs of the engine you're advocating, so I'm thinking that must not be the right definition.

Might be that every real gamer has a good card. but every real gamer also expects a great looking game or he won't bother using his 600W+ box. If you have massive requirements always be aware that you also better have the required quality or you are dead targetting your game. And HD AA+ content isn't exactly cheap ... 10+ artists 1+ year ... so take that 1M++ into your consideration when comparing to "real games" because shit games with high requirements just sell shit as Crysis has proofen once and for all.
And as a small indie you are not in the position to cut 90% - 98% of the potential userbase.

And if you went for higher end tech pure OpenGL, you would use the C4 engine, it at least has crysis comparable features with its visual shader editor and the voxel 3d terrain system.
Otherwise take TGEA or Unity3D (soon on Windows)

but back on topic: BM is a great language if you don't want to spent forever learning highly complex languages and all of their core libraries.
It might not have direct 3D support but something like Flow3D or Xors3D definitely compensate for that and in both cases they are easy to use and run on a large amount of systems while still offering you higher end features for the more powerfull systems.