SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Here are some 2-cents from one of the guys who is maintain a basically free tool that some of you and others use... to some it up.... everybody drop your coding tools and move to Unity or UE4 if you like C++. 

This way us support devs can use our time better to work on our own stuff. Has a nice ring to it, right Martin?  You did the right thing when you dropped CX.

But keep in mind folks that a free tool like Unity only gets you that far when they need to pay they investors. The other day I was visiting the Unity website again after a year or so.
Looks more now like a business page than something that is used for games. And I can smell that it won't be free much longer.

Imho the middleware market of game dev tools is about to change in the next 1-2 years.

Who knows what will happen to UE when the case Apple vs Epic runs through the court finally. Without the Macos platform, they will become way unattractive to the folks who think cross platform is the shizzz, who dream of the golden nugget in the app stores.

Unity needs to rake cash in for its new investors and stock holders. And so a lot.

Godot's funding will run out, I am 100% sure they won't win the lottery again when they got the grant from Epic.

Purebasic is more a love project for Fred than a commercial endevour these days. And you can see that in its updates. He moved to the east out of love and supports his life with a day job.
AGK is only supported further because TGC's Car driving instruction apps depend on it. And that is where they make their money. Not with AGK nor GG. AGK is currently threaded like a second cousin. Wonder how much longer they will support it. And how much longer it will support they payroll.
From all these commercial tools, GameMaker seems to the be only one I can see a good standing in the next year or 2. It's company has a gaming background (Casino apps) and quite some staff to support all the platforms they are targeting.

Then you have the free tools...

Raylib, that small funding he secured will run out next year. It is basically windows only, it won't get vulkan or metal support.

SDL2, I never know if Valve will drop it or not.

Urho3D, BFGX, OGRE3D and the likes... way over bloated with features. Sure open source but who seriously can dig into this and modify it without frying they brains out.

Sokol... recently got a lot of updates and imho sometimes your code breaks. Flooh told me that it is only a hobby project that he uses for his emulators. He would hate it if he was bound to watch out if his changes break anything. It also lacks on the input section big time. But I still cosider it for our new backend to get Metal working. Unless I get MetalAngle running. So far no luck here.

FNA... now its dev is full of himself. I was considering this as a backend for CX but there is no support imho, only a bunch of self loving elitest on their Discord.

Blitz3D-NG, its developer told me that is only a pure hobby project and he only works on it when he wants to, so no motivation. He told me not to use it for commercial projects.

BlitzMax-NG I can't say much about it. Didn't follow it. Only know that it uses the Monkey methology to support cross platform. Not sure how motivated Brucey still is.

Cerberus X, I won't say much about it for obvious reasons. Only that as long as there a some devs using it, I think I will continue with its development. When I see what I need to work on in the next year (Metal support, 3D, GUI, Macos support for IOS apps, Android app bundles, updated SDKs, making the IDE run on Silicon, new examples, etc. etc) I would love to drop it and run away.
But and that is a big one... I have a hard time letting people down!!!

Again just my 2 cents. It always amazes me how much you guys spent time to discuss about which tool is the best and which is crap. When did you work on your last game again? Did you release something into the stores yet? Ever? Use the fricking tools that are there NOW and use the one that fits your needs the best. Support their developers! If you keep searching for the next best tool, you will do just that. And keep ranting about how shitty some tools are because you can't use them they way you think it should work.

Have a save jump into 2021 and stay healthy everyone.
Michael

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It always amazes me how much you guys spent time to discuss about which tool is the best and which is crap. When did you work on your last game again? Did you release something into the stores yet? Ever? Use the fricking tools that are there NOW and use the one that fits your needs the best. Support their developers! If you keep searching for the next best tool, you will do just that.

i totaly agree ! i posted a similar thing some years ago on blitzbasic.com lol

i am happy to have continued to use Blitz3d (even if i have experimented a little with dark basic, blizmax+minib3d, unity, ...)
now i manage to achieve results quite fast, compared to have to relearn everything again and again
(however i have lost the desire to make games a while ago, this is another issue )


personaly i don't think that shaders are necessary to make a good game (or a good app), the graphics style / consistancy, and the gameplay / ease of use are more important.

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I don't want to use a visual editor, I want to code.

yes

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Why try and complete with something like that? Different customer base

and yes

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what made Blitz3D successful was the community that loved to experiment, and created a large code archive: there were thousands of fascinating examples, from neural nets to procedural cities, that encouraged people to learn more, and to try to make even better. Now, that community has shattered: and most important, what remains of it is shrinking. So I think we need something that could attract new people, just like Blitz3D did in the old times. Something that offers the ability to make people say "Wow! You did it yourself?", to a proud newbie who is showing their first 3d game.

totaly agree!


in 2021 i am going to have more free time, i am willing to create a few demos for Blitz3d and convert it to Blitzmax+OpenB3D, (if somebody cares lol )

Quote from: MikeHart on December 30, 2020, 17:33:30
SDL2, I never know if Valve will drop it or not.
Urho3D, BFGX, OGRE3D and the likes... way over bloated with features. Sure open source but who seriously can dig into this and modify it without frying they brains out.

Some how I cannot see Valve dropping SDL2 in the near future, especially after Valve's Sam Lantinga recently adding support for XBox X and PS5 controllers.
Plus it's possibly the best cross platform HAL library set out their, with the exception of SDL2 Mixer audio issues.

As for Urho3D etc. They are trying to be a more all-in-one solution engine library. Writing a language binding API would be a bit of a task without everything being well documented.
Speaking of BFGX, any news from Ferdi?

Well, it is horses for courses, and opinions do differ wildly!

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So, if MaxIDE (or similar) had that element, that would do it for you ?

If MaxIDE had the same quality as say, B4x's IDE then, maybe would be handy, but I'm using MaxGUI as an example, its not just about a visual editor, B4x has a hosted Mac option where you can build for iOS without owning a Mac, and you can even submit it to the app store from the IDE as well.

So already, in my eyes, a MaxIDE with a visual designer is already not in spec with what other IDE's out there can do!

So in this sense... For me, and not to sound selfish or spiteful, but for me, it still wouldnt be a tempting offer to move my project I have now over (Which to be honest, is a little plaything, with a decent amount of potential) from B4x!

And this is my point, IDE's are moving forward with features that are, well, bloody handy, theres a lot of catching up to do, granted the Mac thing is tied to a service, but it still is a service that I may use, and I dont have to jump arse over tit to use it.

Dabz

Well said Mike, so in other words, elgol takes over.

Quote from: Steve Elliott on December 31, 2020, 02:26:30
Well said Mike, so in other words, elgol takes over.

Whatever fits your needs.

Quote from: dawlaneSpeaking of BFGX, any news from Ferdi?

I had contacted Ferdi a few months ago. He was to busy with other things to continue his port and mentioned that it would need a rewrite to a native solution. His use of databuffers was a bigger hit on the performance.

Quote. Have a save jump into 2021 and stay healthy everyone.
Michael     

Ditto, jump carefully if you're out and about folks, it's slippy here in the U of K.

Have a great 2021 folks, whatever tool you choose - Happy coding. For the record, my current No. 1 tool this year has been AGK Studio And they've got some great offers on at the moment if you fancy taking the plunge.

As I think it was Mike said, support your tool of choice. The great thing Blitzb. Co. UK had was oodles of examples from the community. Thanks to Qube we can still access them, cheers Qube

Back on the question, seriously, what happened to Mark?

I'm quite sure he has a Twitter account (but I can't find it anymore).
Nothing on Patreon (it seems).

@degac: https://twitter.com/blitzmunter

lol "Cagey Kiwi Coder".  Seems apt.   

Plus he has a website with a blog: http://www.marksibly.com/

@Xaron: Thanks!

Sorry about my language skills. That is what I ment.

Quote from: GfK on January 03, 2021, 15:32:21

Quoteeverybody drop your coding tools and move to Unity or UE4 if you like C++. 

Don't move to Unity if you like C++.  It uses C#.

Quote from: Xaron on January 03, 2021, 12:23:26
Plus he has a website with a blog: http://www.marksibly.com/

well this is something new

so... he switched to Manjaro.. and playing games on PC and PS4... not good news... blitz research is probably died.

Quote from: fielder on January 06, 2021, 10:31:55

Quote from: Xaron on January 03, 2021, 12:23:26
Plus he has a website with a blog: http://www.marksibly.com/

well this is something new

so... he switched to Manjaro.. and playing games on PC and PS4... not good news... blitz research is probably died.

Well... some post above people claiming that Mac and Linux version of BlitzMax were bugged and not well supported.
Now he posts to be switched to Linux and this is a bad news!?!?... mah...

about playing games: I'm quite sure this is not a news at all... he played always games.