What happened to Blitzbasic

Started by Amanda Dearheart, August 02, 2017, 00:49:08

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Steve Elliott

Blitz3D is a dead language, and ever more tricks are required to even get it running.

AGK 2 is basically Blitz BASIC2 and is updated regularly.
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LineOf7s

I have no issue with AGK2 at all - it's very exciting and I'm keen to see what comes of it - but to say Blitz3D is dead is to deny its usefulness to anybody.  The "tricks" are minor at worst, and vanilla Blitz3D is still very capable of producing a vast array of significant projects, not least of which is the recently released Polymaniacs.

Blitz3D may not be being developed by Mark anymore, but it's got many more years of life left in it before it's by any means "dead".
"Life's biggest obstacles are your greatest opportunities to excel"

RobFarley

Funnily enough, I was just looking for the site today, I'm looking at rehashing some of the stuff I did back in Blitz3D to phone apps and just felt the urge go get all nostalgic about stuff and read back the epic Alien Breed CP threads! Nice to see some familiar names here!
Cheers, Rob

Steve Elliott

Indeed the Alien Breed Collaboration Threads were epic :)
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Rick Nasher

Let's Alien Breed in AGK(which is multiplatform) and make it 3D with LAN/multiplayer!  8)
_______________________________________
B3D + physics + shaders + X-platform = AGK!
:D ..ALIENBREED *LIVES* (thanks to Qube).. :D
_______________________________________

Rooster

What were the Alien Breed Threads?

Steve Elliott

#51
Where the old Blitz Community worked together to produce a re-make of the Amiga classic game - Alien Breed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfZtX8Vj4s0
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Rooster


Rick Nasher

I think I somewhere have some 3D models lurking around in the lair of my harddrive..
_______________________________________
B3D + physics + shaders + X-platform = AGK!
:D ..ALIENBREED *LIVES* (thanks to Qube).. :D
_______________________________________

RobFarley

Goodness me I remember downloading those, they were quake 2 models I think and then rigging and animating them... I didn't spend too long getting them very accurate as they were only going to be seen from above and quite small on screen... I'm sure I've probably still got the source code somewhere!
Cheers, Rob

Rick Nasher

They would actually do well in a non-top down 3D Alien game too, hehehe.
Never know what's behind the corner in sector Delta-2, but the proximity checker says "bliep-bliep-bliep", so better hold on to your flamethrower..  ;D
_______________________________________
B3D + physics + shaders + X-platform = AGK!
:D ..ALIENBREED *LIVES* (thanks to Qube).. :D
_______________________________________

meems

#56
>What happened to bb?
wow nice to read the consensus here, same thought I had, but I thought I was alone while all u lot were busy on Monkey. I agree Mark lost the plot. But for me the 1st step down the wrong path came with BlitzMax. Why? Because it had object orientation. OO is too involved for hobbyists. Hobby programming is the main source\gateway of people in games programming. A good BASIC can convert a non-programmer to a skilled amateur and prime him to learn harder language paradigms, such as OO. By shifting to OO, Mark stonewalled this source of people and revenue. Now noobs are starting with glBasic & freeBasic. So where was Mark's monkey userbase coming from? The oldmen? Anyone good enough & willing to invest time in monkey is good enough to write C++ and any other industry language, find libraries and bindings and do platform conversions themselves. So he's not going to convert a single punter from the established games industry. So where's his userbase? The only userbase he had were his loyal fans that he'd won over from his Blitz days. But as others said ; he didn't cater to their requests, he did what he wanted. This was fine for years, but he went astray. But why did he go astray?!?!

Part 2 wtf did Mark go astray?
Not long after it was written the B3D library became obsolete by newer DirectX. It would have been clear to Mark that there were now 2 paths to take in his game language writing job

a.) Keep endlessly writing Blitz libraries that get made obsolete every 18-24months due to newer openGL and DirectX etc
b.) Try write a language that has some inherent ability to auto-update as better hardware and software platforms become available


As a far-sighted ideas man, Mark would have found the 2nd option irresistible. The compromise was the language would have to be more abstract and difficult. He made the wrong choice. But with BlitzMax the mistake was not yet apparent and not too far gone, so he kept on with it, until it broke his business.

Ideally Mark should have stuck with improving BlitzPlus and Blitz3D. He was the best programmer, he could have cornered the the BASIC community and we'd all be happy. Without Mark, the BASIC community has spread to other BASICs. The community of old blitzmen and youngsters would have been very powerful.

Makes me question why I prefer BASIC over industry languages :
>Its much easier and faster to write.
> at the hobby and medium level : There's nothing to be gained from object orientation \ abstract programming over a well written and up to date BASIC
> functional BASIC is fine for anything below about 50,000 lines of code or 500 functions. which is more than 99% of hobby \ medium level games and apps


and really we should have known. Uni lecturers were saying 30 years ago : The main reason for OO was for enormous 1,000,000 line programs. It was Java that really screwed the entire programming community into thinking that OO is for all programming. " Your using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut " was how my lecturer put it in 1998 while I made a 300 line OO program to move a few lines around the display.

meems


Xaron

Very well written, meems. I do OOP day in / day out mainly with C++/C# for two decades now. And yet I'd love to use BB3D and still love it's simplicity. I don't need OOP for games, procedural is sometimes way easier to handle and even more "human" friendly due to its sequential nature. I even think about to teach my son (11) with BASIC first.

Actually I'm in the process of doing something like BB3D but cross platform. Still needs time.

MikeHart

Quote from: Xaron on September 15, 2017, 13:52:41
Actually I'm in the process of doing something like BB3D but cross platform. Still needs time.

Cat out of the bag!  :D