http://monkeycoder.co.nz/forums/topic/requiring-discord-to-join-forums/ (http://monkeycoder.co.nz/forums/topic/requiring-discord-to-join-forums/)
Shocker! I've been waiting for that announcement since before Mark even got a real job. Unfortunately he just can't be bothered anymore and dumping the community on a whim was inevitably the beginning of the end.
Quote
Unfortunately he just can't be bothered anymore and dumping the community on a whim was inevitably the beginning of the end.
Yeah, a sad way to fizzle out. :(
Reading that post I assumed he just meant shutting down the website and putting Monkey 2 somewhere else.
Quote
Reading that post I assumed he just meant shutting down the website and putting Monkey 2 somewhere else.
;D
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5e25b7c6-8923-415e-84f3-d9b6bfe50066
Ouch!
Not good news, but expected.
There were so few people who used it and Mark managed to bugger them off by design or madness...
Oh no!
..not really a surprise, but still sad to read..sigh..
I don't know too much about this Monkey 2 programming language.
Nevertheless, I have a very good solution for this programming language and its community.
Some talented and experienced Monkey 2 users from Monkey 2's community should continue developing this software. In addition, a new name should replace the old name. My suggestion is Monkey NG. Furthermove, Qube can set up a Monkey NG sub-forum as the official forum for Monkey NG.
The above solution can help this language and this language's community. Moreover, the above solution will also make SyntaxBomb forum more active. Right? Is my solution perfect?
Quote from: round157 on March 30, 2019, 14:52:50
I don't know too much about this Monkey 2 programming language.
[...]
Right? Is my solution perfect?
No.
If there was almost no activity in the monkey2 forums then this won't become better if someone wants to keep a project alive in its sparetime. And if that one wasn't the original author with the knowledge of all the basics in the tool this will become even worse.
Maybe Mark should commit some fixes for BMX NG and make it emscripten compatible. There might be more people using BMX than monkey 2 - and I bet both (active) user bases are in the low 3 digits (else I would expect way more buzz here).
bye
Ron
Quote from: Derron on March 30, 2019, 15:08:58
Quote from: round157 on March 30, 2019, 14:52:50
I don't know too much about this Monkey 2 programming language.
[...]
Right? Is my solution perfect?
Maybe Mark should commit some fixes for BMX NG and make it emscripten compatible. There might be more people using BMX than monkey 2 - and I bet both (active) user bases are in the low 3 digits (else I would expect way more buzz here).
My language knowledge is limited. What is "make it emscripten compatible"? BlitzMax NG looks very different from Monkey 2.
BlitzMax was once let-go by Mark Sibly for Monkey X
Monkey X was put on ... "maintenance mode" for Monkey 2.
BlitzMax NG is done for some years now by Brucey. It gained some more supported platforms than BlitzMax: so Linux, Mac, Windows (BlitzMax) and additionally iOS, Android, rasPi, NX/Switch-development-devices. It does that by converting blitzmax-language to "C" (plus a ton of little adjustments here and there for android/ios ...) and the help of some libraries like SDL which support these platforms.
To make it produce "html5" stuff it would need to be able to work flawless with emscripten. For now emscripten and the Garbage Collector used in Blitzmax NG are not keen to get best friends -> html5 target not working/incomplete.
bye
Ron
Now why-oh-why aren't we surprised.
Good to see that he expects the language to develop itself, all-by-itself.
Just how I expect my games/apps to be building itself *not*.
Let's face it his commitment and insight is no longer there.
Such a pity for I and many others were fans of his work(well I loved, Blitz-Basic Amiga and Blitz3D).
Still think the path he should have walked is:
1. Merge Blitz3D with Plus, sell it as Blitz3D V2.
2. Add stuff from Max and *then* sell it as Blitz3D V3.
3. Add stuff community asked about for ages( like x64, in-built shadows, physics etc) - sell it as Blitz3D V4.
4. rewrite for multiple platforms and call it Blitz3D V5 - Multi Platform.
5. Add a visual editor a la unity for 2d & 3d.
No name/product confusion, no alienating you customers, sound PR and a steady progress.
But hey who am I.
Guess he got too ambitious, scared by the likes of Unity and Blitz clone like languages and just doesn't have a keen bizz insight or probably... all of the above.
Most good coders usually do not understand the 'real' world(if there is such a thing).
BlitzMax and Max3D running reliably on Windows, Mac and Linux is all the community ever wanted IMO, but he lost his way/got bored.
I never saw Max as a finished product, wasn't running straight from box, so gave me the feel of being a proto-type with an unfinished 3D engine, which he didn't even support anymore after a lengthy wait. :(
This was left to community/abandoned in favor for Monkey(what a silly name for a serious product anyway :o), which was in turn ditched for Monkey2/X. ::)
I think most dev's nowadays realize you have to support a wide platform range amongst which iOS and Android if you wanna make some decent money. The code once, distribute to many feature really helps, but needs to be done well of course.
Doesn't sound like a very good product business continuity plan.
More like a car driving full speed towards a cliff without any brakes or steering abilities.
Or to say in a non verbal way: ;)
(https://media.giphy.com/media/mTXSKTk3BsT6w/giphy.gif)
Mark Sibly produced some fantastically efficient software at his peak. Far better than the rubbish those Dark BASIC guys were churning out at the time (now AGK).
AGK's 3D Engine isn't much to write home about, unless you bypass most of it and write your own code, great for 2D though. Mark Sibly abandoned his 3D Engine for Monkey. Huge mistake, even by his standards.
Monkey was a stupid name, especially if you're aiming at people using C++.
Mark Sibly is and always will be hopeless at business.
Makes me sad.
He had such a fantastic product with tons of future potential in Blitz3D.
Not sure why he dropped it and went off in weird directions. Could have become one of the bigger guys in the engine space.
Quote
Makes me sad.
He had such a fantastic product with tons of future potential in Blitz3D.
Totally agree. I was blown away seeing a BASIC run some of the 3D demos that came with the language.
I am glad I didn't put effort into M2. And I feel sorry for the people who did.
*sigh*
Monkey 2 † 2019
Actually I never looked into it seriously. I remember having done some sort of research about it when it was quite new and already back then hearing sceptical voices about it's longevity, which stopped me from digging deeper. It's a shame. I like to present BlitzMax (one of Mark's more glamorous things) to beginners as a beginner-friendly language. But it kinda sucks to be forced to mention it's from a guy who drops his products. Even though there's a rather active community behind it - nowadays you just can't make anyone interested in something that seems dead.
Dunno about the userbase of Cerberus-X but it seems as if Mike still does stuff there.
The BlitzMax NG front is also still active and reported bugs get fixed pretty quick (especially compiler/language bugs, not module ones).
Still I have to guess user numbers for all of them - and they are so few that it is hard to attract users.
NG is uses by some but yet the contributors code wise are ... countable with one hand. Assume it's not much better with Cerberus. Still it has the benefit of being a coding-language-project. So users are already coders (even if they came from another language).
My game TVTower is (F)OSS for hmm a decade now? Guess how many contributors I had till now? It was played by some thousand people but there only was _one_ other person coding with me for 2 years. Other contributions were some lines in Lua and number/spelling mistakes in the code.
I actively develop on my own so this is not a biggy - but it cries "lie" to the old saying that a FOSS project cannot just get uploaded to github and get then adopted by the crowd without any major activity by the (former) lead developer.
In this very example it might of course be the biggest hurdle that the game is written in BlitzMax (NG) and so potential developer crowd is rather small (the dude who coded with me for 2 years - was not using BlitzMax before but adopted it rather quick!).
bye
Ron
Quote from: Steve Elliott on March 30, 2019, 14:00:04
Quote
Reading that post I assumed he just meant shutting down the website and putting Monkey 2 somewhere else.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5e25b7c6-8923-415e-84f3-d9b6bfe50066
Hahah, that gave me a giggle :)
Let's face it folks: the entire Blitz thing has been killed off by it's own author. R.I.P. Blitzy :(
He donated some 'organs' but that just doesn't cut it. Is there gonna be an official funeral/service where we can go to to show our sympathy? ;D
Remains rather silly, how a brilliant, intelligent coder can't see what's needed, right in front of his nose.
If he only had listened to some of his customers, would still be there, but alas.
Am i surprised... a little... I know I shouldn't be, but I had hope since in Monkey 2 he only really had to support one base language (C++) instead of all languages in Monkey 1 (C++, Flash, Java, HTML5/JS).
Also quite a few people did support him financially via patron for M2...
:(
I've said it a zillion times, but... Mark should have done a yearly paid model for Blitz3D 2 for Windows, Mac and Linux. A guy has to eat and pay the bills and the donations model is a terrible method for this type of thing. The best way I've seen is you charge for your product and get 12 months worth of updates. If after that you want more updates you pay a smaller fee for a further 12 months. If you don't want to pay then you can still use the product for ever but you're just not using the latest version.
Sure, Monkey 2 is a very clever technical language and shows how talented Mark is at making languages but meh!, all your community love BASIC and want to code in variants of a simple to use BASIC language that has grunt, so why go from the super popular Blitz3D language to the ill received Monkey-X and then scrap that and go onto something worse called Monkey2? :o
I guess in the end it was Mark's personal passion vs what the people wanted. I can understand the personal passion side but I can't understand having no passion to give your audience what they wanted.
I still rate Monkey-X, and more so Blitz3D. Time for A Blitz3D_20, Blitz3D for the next decade. You heard it here first..... And last probably.
Mark is a visionary, just at got a few too many coding tools on the market. So, here's a request for Blitz3D__20, not that it'll happen, after all, Blitz3D still works!
I see one only solution:
Mark should write a language that writes itself - in an infinity loop, always up-to-date!
Just kidding (*)
I suppose that mixing hobby/boring (and repeated) things/work is not a good combination.
Speaking of the past is too easy now... surely letting BlitzMax becoming 'open' source (=free) AND stopping the support (not updating it) was the first big mistakes.
It's better (always) have a 'mature' (sold and working!) product that having just something that 'works' like Monkey, without a seriuous userbase, starting from scratch and limited in a specific field (game). And then Monkey2...
Monkey was too ambitious... 2d language and too much targets
Monkey2 was (from the start) just an 'experiment' - in any area: website, community, editor, modules, documentation etc... a very bad way to waste time and energy.
Said this, I hope (still!) the Mark will be back (... well, it sounds like a revenge :D)
(*) = well, it would be a nice experiment for the IA guru ahahah
I wouldn't have thought that anyone would stick with him after this.
He picked the plot, dug a nice big hole and jumped right in it.
So much talent :(
So what is the real deal here? Is he dropping M2 or just the website?
It seems like dropping any kind of website, and working on yet another language when he has the time.
Quote from: MikeHart on March 31, 2019, 20:19:46
So what is the real deal here? Is he dropping M2 or just the website?
He's thinking of dropping the M2 website and also M2 will just be getting bug fixes when reported on Github. M2 as you know it is no longer in development as Mark now wants to do a wasm-monkey variant but only in his spare time.
With all the community and language dumps I'm surprised he even wonders why the M2 site is tumbleweed. Erm, you keep dropping everything on a whim perhaps?. You've alienated a majority of your customer base?. Your "couldn't be bothered" attitude? or perhaps the "I have a real job so won't be doing much on the M2 side which you donated to, bought me a phone and funded £1000 a month for a half baked 3D engine". Take your pick!
Quote from: iWasAdam on March 31, 2019, 12:22:09
So much talent :(
Yup, agree with that. It's very sad how it's all turned out but that's how it goes sometimes.
And the new language is.....?
TADA -> LEMMING the new great language by M.S.
The big feature is there is no need to drop it into the trash....lemmings are doing this thereself. :))
Basically Mark Sibly went from Indie Language God, to very lucky he wasn't jailed for taking peoples money under false pretences. Do not give this con man a penny more.
..initially, just before blitz site went down with no warning whatsoever(a month before announced time), i thought it will be okay eventually, as community will overtake blitz site over that 1 month period as it was already initiative, and probably Mark will reconsider at some point. But next morning, when i couldnt access blitz site, i knew that point of no return has been reached..what a sham and lack of sight to see whats really needed(community members were louder than Forest Gump , yelling "YES DRILL SERGEANT!!!")...all it was really needed is cross platform B3D with a bit updated engine (DX9 will do)..people will swarm blitz site..but hey..
Marks patron page is shutdown now.
Quote from: ThickO on April 02, 2019, 21:23:38
Marks patron page is shutdown now.
I thought he shut that down months ago...
Looking here, it was in October:
https://graphtreon.com/creator/monkey2
And:
QuoteI've decided to leave patreon off for at least another month too, as I'm still not sure how much time I'm gonna be able to put into monkey2 in the near future.
http://monkeycoder.co.nz/2018/09/16/mid-september-update/
Quote from: Qube on March 31, 2019, 02:51:35I've said it a zillion times, but... Mark should have done a yearly paid model for Blitz3D 2 for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Full ACK. Let's compare: I now pay 141,94€ per year for an Adobe Photoshop CC subscription which I use occasionally but getting updates. How much would I've paid for an annual subscription to a modern Blitz3D/Blitzmax successor that is as easy to learn and use as its predecessor? How much would others have paid for it? For me it would have been worth €100 per year since I use it more often as Photoshop and create much more useful things with it instead. Even as a hobby without earning money with it it is not really much money for it. I've already spent a lot more money on other software that I don't use anymore.
But. He totally screwed it up when he closed the Blitzbasic community. But luckily this community here is a worthy successor, smaller but finer, the essence. Blitz went Open Source and it's up to the community what comes next. So i don't think we should wait for any more products from Mark S., he should go his own way.
Unfortunately, Blitzbasic in its current status is dead and a mess. It is difficult to compile for newbies and there are too many different versions out there, some totally outdated, some half-finished with different 3D engines. AGK looks promising but misses important features like easy vertex manipulation which is ridiculous and is closed source. And C++ is too complex for simple indie game projects IMHO. So there is no real alternative in sight. I know there is BlitzmaxNG but I'm looking more ahead, a new concept, a new name, a new product, a break with the old products.
I'm actually still waiting for someone stand up and say: "Stop waiting for something new to come. We're doing it on our own, the way we always wanted it to be, from scratch. With a simple syntax like in Blitz3D, easy to learn but object-oriented. With ALL the features we always wanted. Modular like Blitzmax. Shader support. Modern. Future-proof. Focused on developers and enthusiasts. With a great IDE better than BLIDE to handle larger projects. And everything as open source. We can do it ourselves, all together, everybody can contribute. The power of Open Source."
A lot of source is already there, we have BlitzmaxNG, OpenB3D and many talented programmers which is a good start. Or are we already too old for this?
Didn't see the date.
That makes sense.
You have to give him credit for doing that.
Quote. Unfortunately, Blitzbasic in its current status is dead and a mess. It is difficult to compile
If folks choose to use vanilla Blitz3D it's far from a mess and dead, it still works a treat, on Windows 7 and 10. There are various other products in the blitz stable, however you wouldn't lump one car makers compact vehicle in with its family's saloon and label them all as dead and in a mess. A trifle negative and not exactly true. What's more, Mr Sibly made it available for free, and that generosity results in so much vitriol. Ah well..
Quote from: Derron on March 30, 2019, 15:28:49
BlitzMax was once let-go by Mark Sibly for Monkey X
Monkey X was put on ... "maintenance mode" for Monkey 2.
BlitzMax NG is done for some years now by Brucey. It gained some more supported platforms than BlitzMax: so Linux, Mac, Windows (BlitzMax) and additionally iOS, Android, rasPi, NX/Switch-development-devices. It does that by converting blitzmax-language to "C" (plus a ton of little adjustments here and there for android/ios ...) and the help of some libraries like SDL which support these platforms.
To make it produce "html5" stuff it would need to be able to work flawless with emscripten. For now emscripten and the Garbage Collector used in Blitzmax NG are not keen to get best friends -> html5 target not working/incomplete.
bye
Ron
Original Xbox *might be happening in the future. ;D Things have been looked at.
I believe that there is still a market for a Blitz3d like language. But what is super difficult is to support different platforms. Devs want them all.
@3DzForMe: dont' get me wrong - it is still a mighty toolbox, it may still work now, but let's think about the coming years. I'm still using BlitzmaxOS but it feels like riding a dying horse. I've never really seen any sense in the Monkey "thing". I appreciate the work on BlitzmaxNG but - in my case - without a better IDE I'm not using it yet. I never really liked the standard IDEs, in Blitz3D I used IDEal and in Blitzmax BLIDE. MaxIDE is sufficient in many cases but not to me.
With BlitzmaxOS+OpenB3D+BLIDE I'll continue to use BlitzmaxOS for the next years and must switch over to NG at a certain point.
Quote
I believe that there is still a market for a Blitz3d like language.
Yes I agree with you and with most of what Krischan said.
Quote from: Krischan on April 03, 2019, 07:56:34
With BlitzmaxOS+OpenB3D+BLIDE I'll continue to use BlitzmaxOS for the next years and must switch over to NG at a certain point.
Feel free to contribute to the NG project - write a super-duper IDE, write a language plugin for IntelliJ or another one of the "big IDE pack" (atom, source, ...). They all offer a kind of extension system.
At the end you will get a cross platform IDE with syntax highlighting, auto complete, refactor, ... - it is "just" a matter of someone writing it.
Did you ask Ziggy by mail if he _could_ adjust Blide to make it work with NG params? Did you? Did he say "no way" ? Why?
Open up a new thread for "Blide + NG" or so - I bet you could write a wrapper for "bmk" which Blide then uses to call stuff. This wrapper auto-appends the params you want to the original "NG bmk". Dunno about support of the new keywords etc - but as you do not use them for now I think they could be neglected the first while.
For me BLide is no option as I am running Linux and the .net components BLide uses (especially for syntax highlighting) do not work well here. Which is why I added syntax highlighting and a basic "compiler box" as addon to Geany (open source text editor). Geany is what AGK uses too as its editor. I just use MaxIDE for debugging as I did not spend a second yet to write debugger-support into the geady addon (as there is MaxIDE for this purpose...).
bye
Ron
Skid mentioned(discord) he is trying to buy Monkey2 from Mark. He also ontop of that wants to pay to add documentation and take it off open source and put it on steam. He is also looking(payed job) for someone to create a Blitz3d interpreter for mojo3d.
You cannot take something from "FOSS". You can change the licence for upcoming code but that's it.
Let's see what skid makes out of it - he could always write something for NG ;-)
bye
Ron
@Krischan,
Quote. I've never really seen any sense in the Monkey "thing".
Being able to compile for multiple platforms had its appeal, in truth though, despite buying MonkeyX, I only ever achieved anything of note in HTML5 with Monkey, an online data parser of all things.
Yep, it's a shame MonkeyX forums have gone.... As the previous forums.
However, I'm not sure the Blitz forums may have managed the outlandish quality that has been presented in the latest coding compo. And, easily 90 percent of my hobby coding has been done within Blitz products.
I'm getting to long in the tooth to learn new stuff.... So I'll be coding in Blitz products for the foreseeable. Although the MonkeyX forums doing a vanishing act still irks me.
QuoteI've never really seen any sense in the Monkey "thing".
Yeah, I bought it thinking it'd be the next evolution of BlitzMax without trying a demo first. Hated the style from the outset as it was no longer a BASIC variant but a bastardisation of other languages. I did try many times to "get into it" but in the end it just didn't gel and judging by the community I wasn't alone. Of course, how do you fix this... You ditch another paid product and do Monkey 2 \o/ #MindBoggling which has even less of an audience than Monkey-X. But you all know this :P
Thank God the Cerberus-X guys are breathing new life into it. At least that's some saving grace for Monkey-X owners / users.
QuoteAlthough the MonkeyX forums doing a vanishing act still irks me.
I bought Blitz2D, Blitz3D, BlitzPlus, BlitzMax and Monkey-X and all the forums for those have been dumped so that irks me too :P
Never paid for a licence ;-)
- BlitzMax: got the licence by someone who took over programming of TVTower in 2005 or so (started earlier in Delphi - he went to C and later to BlitzMax - until he lost interest)
- Monkey-X: won the licence in a compo (Ape's Banana Conquest - free web game and buyable in the amazon app shop - with 0 sales in 4 years or so)
Disliked Monkey-X' case-sensitivity. Especially as you have to use "TED" (or another of these "IDEs") to auto-correct your lower-case written commands. I prefer to be able to write in the text editors of my choice.
What I liked whas the lightweight character of the Monkey-X JS-runtime. Just compare what you will load when you do an "Html 5 export" with Godot, Unity, ... you will have way way bigger downloads (bigger runtimes... and no modularization).
I think "output wise" all the BRL languages were cool. They created kind of "efficient" code. You felt that this was a product of someone knowing his own developed toolchain not some "put or bought together stuff".
bye
Ron
Purchased BlitzBasic 2.1 on the Amiga, then when I found out about Blitz3d, I first tried out an, ashamed to say, pirated version to see if it could do what I wanted. I then purchased it to support BRL even though it was somewhat aging.
And of course got Plus and Max after he set them free. But they individually they weren't my favs. They should have merged the command set and features with Blitz3D. Then it would have all made sense.
Silly really, how all went down hill.
BTW: Godot is looking better all the time..
I now understand why AGK is trying to catch up so quickly.
Yep, my first Blitzbasic was 2.1 on the old Amiga - which still works incredibly - desk husbandry needs a bit of work though;)
Quote
I bought Blitz2D, Blitz3D, BlitzPlus (was embedded in the version of Blitz3D I bought), BlitzMax and Monkey-X and all the forums for those have been dumped so that irks me too :P
Yeah got all those, although MonkeyX needed the forums to get anywhere I found - with perseverance you could. Can't go the way of cerberus till I shell out for a 64 bit PC. Still, B3D kinda cuts some mustard - give M Sibly his due there. A great software tool developer doesn't necessarily equate to a great marketing bod, hey-ho there you go. Still pleased Blitz stuff existed - can't imagine I'd I've been anywhere near the geek I am today without them. :))
Godot does look quite impressive....
I stopped supporting Monkey 2 on Jan 1, 2018. I wanted to give it a year, but after few months since the discussion here, I gave up on it.
Blitz3D was good with Fast Libraries. Its language was not good for me. I am C fan.
I liked BlitzMax language and its 2D. Xors3D was good too.
I liked Monkey language, but never seriously used it.
I never used Monkey 2 seriously, I was just hoping that it would become a good software which never happened. Monkey 2 was the worst BRL product in my view.
Blitz3D - BlitzMax community was the best in the world.
Generally speaking, I don't regret spending money on BLR products. I had good times with them, except the last one.
I am glad Mark got a C++ job and is like many probably under corporate dictatorial discipline. Maybe he learn something beyond coding.
Just for curiosity, someone have news from Mark Sibly?
If i just have a Blitz3D with more power tools, to process more information, more entity, i would need another language.
it is a shame as the product line was killed, it would have been good if in some way, with the community it continues to develop ... but I know it is very difficult and frustrating in a world full of unity and other softs
I hate Unity, the way it uses to develop, its interface, its world of options and buttons ...
unfortunately I could not find a replacement that gives me more advantages than Blitz3D continues to give me today.
The graphics are a limitation, but nowadays if I want graphics I download last generation games that are fascinating, a game that an independent developer hardly manages to match no matter how good it is.
But to develop ideas, to make applications and games for museums and events, Blitz3D remains fast, RELIABLE, dynamic.
I have games in museums that have been running for 3 years without stopping (without bugs), without failures.
the low demand of blitz to PCs, makes the PC last longer, that does not generate problems ...
I can run games with cheap old computers.
As in carpentry, there are always modern tools, but that doesn't make old tools obsolete.
@Santiago:
Quote.
As in carpentry, there are always modern tools, but that doesn't make old tools obsolete.
Repo
Yep, so true. From my pov, I achieved phenomal things in B3D, beyond my imagination. I started coding on a spectrum decades ago. I don't code so much now bud, c'est la vie. ;D ;D
Ive looked at many alternatives and never found anything like Blitz3D. Its so easy and fast to use.
Quote from: degac on April 04, 2020, 14:46:36
Just for curiosity, someone have news from Mark Sibly?
He's still active on Twitter and has a full time paid job as a C++ dev. That's all I know.