What happened to Mark Sibly?

Started by fielder, December 22, 2020, 09:00:07

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angros47

About the "listen at what your user ask", I have a doubt.
I think we all agree that the best product made by Mark Sibly was Blitz3D, don't we? Well, I personally liked it because it was simple. It was understandable. When I saw the demo, the first time, I was almost clueless about 3d programming. I didn't even know what was the differences between vertices and vertices coordinates. I knew nothing about keyframes, or about skeletal animations. All those terms, to me, were black magic, basically, advanced techniques used by studios. And suddenly, I had access to them, with a simple Basic code, that was simpler than a QBasic code. I had the same feeling that I had when I was a kid and I saw Gorillas, or Nibbles, and saw the basic code available.

In my opinion, that was what made Blitz3D great: how it made things easy, for beginners. And nowadays, looks like that role has been taken by Unity, and by Python.

Now, the people who were on the forum, and who asked for new features, were NOT beginners. They were advanced users, who had used Blitz3D for a while, and compared it with other tools and other 3d engines. What did they ask? They asked for more advanced features: OOP, shaders, and so on. All things that were supposed to make the language harder, not easier. Because they wanted new features for themselves, not to make things simpler for others. They asked a lot of features they saw in C++... so, the new language, BlitzMax, had those features, but was basically as complex as C++. It wasn't something good for newcomers.

I observed the same thing in FreeBasic: it is made by, and for, people who learned programming in QBASIC, but it's not designed to be appealing to new programmers, it's designed to be appealing to its current users. In case of Blitz, in my opinion, this approach has been a mistake, because the only people who were really interested in BlitzMax were the ones who had already bought Blitz3D: so, Mark Sibly didn't increase his userbase, he just made a new product that he could sell only to his current userbase. And by doing so he split his userbase in pieces.

Personally, when I discovered FreeBasic, and I saw how Blitz3D was being abandoned for BlitzMax, I had two goals: 1) trying to make FreeBasic do for Blitz what it did for QBasic: provide an open source replacement. Since FreeBasic was already pretty close to Blitz and to BlitzMax (besides the 3d functions), I tried my best to get MiniB3D (later OpenB3D) to work with it. I don't know if I managed to get some ex Blitz3D developer to switch to FreeBasic or not... but at least some BlitzMax users seemed to find my work useful

Also, when I tried to improve OpenB3D, I tried to add features that could be appealing for newcomers, that could make a complex task simpler: so, I focused on shadows, on spherical terrains, and on metaballs.
I have no idea if it was the right choice, or not... but I tried.

By now, the competitor is Unity, that features also mobile platforms. OpenB3D is not available for Android and iOs, yet. It has the advantage that it's free and open source.
Also, some 3d engines are offering Vulkan as backend: personally, I have looked at some sample code, and I really don't like it, since it seems to require thousands of lines to do things that old OpenGL could do in 3 lines. I am not sure if Vulkan will ever replace OpenGL or not (so far, it's not even supported on all platforms). But I have read how Angle already supports WebGL over Vulkan. I have also read that Apple has deprecated OpenGL, and it doesn't support Vulkan (since it uses its propietary driver Metal), but it still supports WebGL (also, Angle is being developed for Metal as well). Since OpenB3D already offers full support for WebGL, I hope it is ready for the future, and it won't become obsolete for a while.

My opinion is that what we need, now, is to get new people interested in 3d programming using it.

Xaron

It's interesting that AGK still has some niche to survive. Obviously not everyone likes Unity/Unreal. Personally I tend to hate/love Unity, but my heart was in BB3D even though I'm pretty good in C++/C# now.

To be fair I think the Monkey project was a pretty nice move, WHEN you target cross platform gamedev. And I never found it hard to set up. Yes, you need to install the SDKs if you want to work with Android for instance but the same is necessary when you want to do it natively. HTML5 and desktop targets worked out of the box - well you need to have MinGW installed but come on that's probably standard?

I did not like the split of the communities and drop of websites. I offered him multiple times to cover the costs for those or to takeover his domains (I think there were others as well offered this) but he denied.

I'm happy that Brucey still keeps BlitzMax alive and Mikeheart Cerberus (formerly Monkey).

I think there would be still a market niche for a nice BB3D language. I never really got warm with AGK which has too many commands for simple things IMO.

angros47

Are you the same Xaron who, in 2011, started writing a Blitz3d replacement called BitsBasic?

Xaron

Oh yes that's me. How young and naive I was. I still have it in mind to do it but I think the time window has closed as noone would need it anymore...

In the meanwhile I helped out a bit with Cerberus in the beginning (added gradle builds for Android and https support using curl for desktop) until Mike thankfully took it over completely.

Nowadays I do full time game dev mainly with Unity but still feel the need to create some BB3D v2. Not sure why. Probably Windows only would be enough...

3DzForMe

@Xaron:
Quote.. HTML5 and desktop targets worked out of the box - well you need to have MinGW installed but come on that's probably standard?   

Yeah, I'd some success with making a tcx file parser comparator in HTML5 as the target in Monkey, then MonkeyX.  It's the file that can be exported from Garmin GPS training devices.

It's by no means all bad. It's a shame Blitz3D could not have evolved more, however with JV-ODE physics AND FASTLIBS it was pretty bloody capable at that. To name but a few I managed a Mario Fort block style tower, rendered in Wings I think it was, had my own articulated truck driving around with a Knight rider style car that came out the back..... And you could control both! Never would of dreamed of that on the old Speccy 48K. I'll stop now.  ;)
BLitz3D, IDEal, AGK Studio, BMax, Java Code, Cerberus
Recent Hardware: Dell Laptop
Oldest Hardware: Commodore Amiga 1200 with 1084S Monitor & Blitz Basic 2.1

Xaron

Quote from: 3DzForMe on December 29, 2020, 08:53:12

It's by no means all bad. It's a shame Blitz3D could not have evolved more, however with JV-ODE physics AND FASTLIBS it was pretty bloody capable at that. To name but a few I managed a Mario Fort block style tower, rendered in Wings I think it was, had my own articulated truck driving around with a Knight rider style car that came out the back..... And you could control both! Never would of dreamed of that on the old Speccy 48K. I'll stop now.  ;)

If I would be Mark I would have continued with BB3D or even BlitzMax. I've told him several times that it makes no sense to create a language which gets closer (Monkey) to Java/C++ and even much closer (Monkey 2) to C++. Because why should I use it instead of C++ itself then?

Basic definitely has its purpose. And with Monkey he lost quite some people not only because of the community split. He even banned me from the forums because I once said: Why shall I use Monkey 2 for desktop when there are virtually thousands of better solutions out there? Bann....

angros47

Quote from: Xaron on December 29, 2020, 07:52:54
Oh yes that's me. How young and naive I was. I still have it in mind to do it but I think the time window has closed as noone would need it anymore...

Nice! At the time I wrote an article about it: http://back2basic.phatcode.net/?Issue-%236/Blitz3D-Legacy%3A-History-Repeats

Do you still have the sources of what you wrote at the time? If so, would you publish them?

QuoteIf I would be Mark I would have continued with BB3D or even BlitzMax. I've told him several times that it makes no sense to create a language which gets closer (Monkey) to Java/C++ and even much closer (Monkey 2) to C++. Because why should I use it instead of C++ itself then?]If I would be Mark I would have continued with BB3D or even BlitzMax. I've told him several times that it makes no sense to create a language which gets closer (Monkey) to Java/C++ and even much closer (Monkey 2) to C++. Because why should I use it instead of C++ itself then?

I guess the main point of Monkey was to make a single source that could support every platform (flash, Javascript, native codes of mobile and desktop). Unfortunately, to do that Mark had to target the lowest common denominator, and as result Monkey was extremely limited in features (only features available on all platform could be included).
And all that effort was wasted, because Flash was deprecated (so there is no point in targeting it anymore), and then NDK and Emscripten were released, allowing C++ to target also Android and Javascript, so now there is no advantage in using Monkey over C++ anymore

Xaron

Quote from: angros47 on December 29, 2020, 10:37:42

Nice! At the time I wrote an article about it: http://back2basic.phatcode.net/?Issue-%236/Blitz3D-Legacy%3A-History-Repeats

Do you still have the sources of what you wrote at the time? If so, would you publish them?

Well I had some stuff going, but that was kind of an Irrlicht wrapper I used as the backend but nothing compiler/interpreter wise yet. When I would do that now I'd probably use Raylib for everything and then doing an interpreter first and a transpiler second which translates the basic language to C which then is compiled using a modern gcc compiler for best execution speed. I think that would combine the best of both worlds because it could be debugged pretty nicely using the interpreter but runs lighting fast in release mode - one thing which AGK is lacking for tier 1.

RemiD

#38
Blitz3d was great and is still great. There are a few bugs (linepicks on terrain) and a few missing essential commands ( createbone, addskinnedvertex, setweight, (added by the updates B003 by Bobysait), custom blend modes, ... ) but overall easy to learn / use and fast and stable.

hobby / indie coders make me laugh, you want all kinds of features and effects, but most of you only make simple games / graphics...

I have used Unity for a while and it is often recommended to not use per pixel lighting or shadows or glow / reflections shaders on smartphones, so back at vertices lighting / shading and volumetric glow / flares and cubemap reflections, lol :P

However i admit that making games / apps for android is a must nowadays...

Xaron

Quote from: RemiD on December 29, 2020, 11:14:50
However i admit that making games / apps for android is a must nowadays...

It depends. I did quite some games for Android the past years but the store is flooded like hell so I focus more on PC now. I think some BB3D for Windows only would be still neat, at least to begin with as render libs like Raylib are cross platform as well and it would be very well possible without too much effort to go cross platform.

Xaron

@GfK: I agree that Blitzmax is more flexible indeed. In that regard you should like Monkey as well. ;) But you see, some like this, some like that, you never can get it straight for everyone...

Steve Elliott

Quote
I think we all agree that the best product made by Mark Sibly was Blitz3D, don't we?

No, actually.  BlitzMax was a fantastic foundation that much, much more could have been (and to an extent, was) built on top of.

Yeah BlitzMax had a much better foundation and general syntax, unfortunately the 3D Engine never arrived and Mark produced something more Java/C++ instead.

Quote
The standard IDE was absolute dog filth compared to BLIde and IMO, it should have been bundled with BlitzMax as it made the whole development process much easier and much more professional.

Mark always liked to produce a comedy IDE with every language lol.

Quote
The Unity forum is full to the rafters of egotistical bitch-slapping morons who you daren't ask a question in front of - they think they know it all, therefore everyone else should already know as well.  ::)

Perhaps a lack of maturity with some Unity users?  There seems to be  alot of stolen code in the name of frameworks and assets readily available to bolt-on to a project, and oh look what I've done, coding is easy!  Well you didn't really do anything did you?

Quote
A lot of what made BlitzMax so accessible, was the "community"* itself - the forum was full of useful advice and bits of code so when the plug got pulled on that, Mark might as well have called it a day right there and then.  It felt like a big fat "fuck off" to everyone's hard work and support.

A complete act of vandalism by Mark, and a disgusting way to treat loyal customers.
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RemiD

can somebody explain to me what is so better about Blitzmax that Blitz3d can't do ?

(except the cross platforms or external libs)

Xaron

@RemiD: I think it was the modularity and kind of first attempts to do some OOP.

3DzForMe

#44
@Xaron:

Quote@GfK: I agree that Blitzmax is more flexible indeed. In that regard you should like Monkey as well. ;) But you see, some like this, some like that, you never can get it straight for everyone...
 

Yep, comparing Blitz3D to BlitzMax is like comparing a v6 2.3  Ghia Ford Sierra to the stock 1.6 pinto - oh, showing my age.

BlitzMax is flexible, Blitz3D is the 3D daddy in my book - married with IDEal 'UI', who could want for more.  Errmm.. me I suppose, hence my dabbling with AGK - a great little tool with plenty of bells and whistles, that complements Cerberus in the Indie Mobile development scene.

Although I was late to the party with Cerberus - was running 32bit windows until my ginger box died.
BLitz3D, IDEal, AGK Studio, BMax, Java Code, Cerberus
Recent Hardware: Dell Laptop
Oldest Hardware: Commodore Amiga 1200 with 1084S Monitor & Blitz Basic 2.1