Greetings,
My BB game "Once Twice Thrice" has been published by Dexterity Software.
Its all actually a bit more interesting than that though: Once Twice Thrice (OTT) was actually published in September of 2002, written in Visual Basic with DirectX 7.0. As I made revisions to the game (improved the graphics, refined the interface, and other stuff) I noticed the VB code was getting more and more cumbersome, and adding features was getting to be a real chore. There were things I wanted to add (mouse control, in-game help, full screen gui) that I knew would be a huge headache to do in VB. I heard mention of BB back in march on the forums at Dexterity.com. I tried out the demo for a couple weeks, then bought the full version. I had my entire project ported from VB to BB in 4 weeks (and that only part time work, I have a day job you know). I found the conversion mostly painless, and the end result was definately worth the effort.
Improvements in OTTbb over OTTvb
-800K smaller download size.. (now only 2.2MB)
-*Much* better performance on slower machines
-DX setup code: in VB = 50 lines, in BB = 1 line
-DX surface creation: VB = 12 lines, BB = 1 line
OTTbb was actually live on Dexterity.com about a month ago, but I've waited until now to make any announcement because I wanted to see if any serious bugs showed up.. aside from the Nvidia thing, none have.
Since I moved from VB to BB, I was able to make the game much more intuitive and accessible. There's in-game help, and mouse control and the whole app is full-screen (previously I'd used windows gui, transitioning into full-screen mode just for the game play screen). I also added a bitmap font to the BB version. These are all things I wanted to do to OTT, but VB's ridiculous overhead and slow blitting made them almost impossible.
Bottom line: Thank you Blitz.. my game is much better now and it would have never happened without BB. I've converted my other big project from VB to BB, and I've started a few side projects with BB and made tremendous progress very quickly, far more quickly than if I was having to deal with VB still.
oh yeah.. there's a link to my game in my signature!
My BB game "Once Twice Thrice" has been published by Dexterity Software.
Its all actually a bit more interesting than that though: Once Twice Thrice (OTT) was actually published in September of 2002, written in Visual Basic with DirectX 7.0. As I made revisions to the game (improved the graphics, refined the interface, and other stuff) I noticed the VB code was getting more and more cumbersome, and adding features was getting to be a real chore. There were things I wanted to add (mouse control, in-game help, full screen gui) that I knew would be a huge headache to do in VB. I heard mention of BB back in march on the forums at Dexterity.com. I tried out the demo for a couple weeks, then bought the full version. I had my entire project ported from VB to BB in 4 weeks (and that only part time work, I have a day job you know). I found the conversion mostly painless, and the end result was definately worth the effort.
Improvements in OTTbb over OTTvb
-800K smaller download size.. (now only 2.2MB)
-*Much* better performance on slower machines
-DX setup code: in VB = 50 lines, in BB = 1 line
-DX surface creation: VB = 12 lines, BB = 1 line
OTTbb was actually live on Dexterity.com about a month ago, but I've waited until now to make any announcement because I wanted to see if any serious bugs showed up.. aside from the Nvidia thing, none have.
Since I moved from VB to BB, I was able to make the game much more intuitive and accessible. There's in-game help, and mouse control and the whole app is full-screen (previously I'd used windows gui, transitioning into full-screen mode just for the game play screen). I also added a bitmap font to the BB version. These are all things I wanted to do to OTT, but VB's ridiculous overhead and slow blitting made them almost impossible.
Bottom line: Thank you Blitz.. my game is much better now and it would have never happened without BB. I've converted my other big project from VB to BB, and I've started a few side projects with BB and made tremendous progress very quickly, far more quickly than if I was having to deal with VB still.
oh yeah.. there's a link to my game in my signature!