Here's my perspective, for what it's worth:
If the only people who bought Blitz3D were people who finished what they started, Blitz3D would have sold maybe 10 copies and Mark would have made no money from it, gotten bored, and moved on. In fact, the folks who wanna mess around and make cool demos are clearly the vast majority of Blitz3D users, so I think it's kind of pointless to tell them to move on. If they were to move on, Blitz3D would not be a commercially viable product.
If a person who wants to dabble with high end 3D effects isn't able to get a thrill out of Blitz3D and chooses DarkBasic Professional, say, on the basis that it's got more gee whiz features, I don't see how it benefits us.
I think Blitz3D is a great product, but it still needs to keep up with the Joneses, if only because a serious project I start today probably isn't going to get to market for at least a year, by which time every PC sold in the last 12 months will have DX9 hardware and if I want to stand out from the crowd I'd like to support it.
Mark gave the reasons for the apparent lack of progress in a recent post -- he's been (a) caught up in politics, and (b) he's been largely working on stuff that will benefit all of the Blitz line of products (i.e. BlitzMax, BlitzPlus, and Blitz3D). This seems like a reasonable explanation, but this underlines the fact that an explanation was required... There has been an apparent lack of progress and it did need explaining.
One obvious explanation for the lack of DX9 support is that BlitzMax is supposedly going to be OpenGL-based. If this is the case, then writing DX9-specific code will delay BlitzMax, which is not in Mark's interest: he's probably not making much money off Blitz3D any more, because he doesn't charge for updates. BlitzMax, on the other hand, will make him a lot of money. This is why I think that he needs to charge for updates; it's probably too late to change the Blitz3D business model though.
3DMark 2001 uses DX7 features Blitz3D still doesn't support (e.g. bump maps). 3DMark 2001 SE uses first generation pixel and vertex shaders (DX8 stuff).
Indeed. If your game needs anything more than an ASCII display then you probably don't have a game. But you may have trouble selling your ASCII game to anyone.
You would be if Blitz supported them, because they should be no harder to support than any of the usual features of Blitz3D.
If the only people who bought Blitz3D were people who finished what they started, Blitz3D would have sold maybe 10 copies and Mark would have made no money from it, gotten bored, and moved on. In fact, the folks who wanna mess around and make cool demos are clearly the vast majority of Blitz3D users, so I think it's kind of pointless to tell them to move on. If they were to move on, Blitz3D would not be a commercially viable product.
If a person who wants to dabble with high end 3D effects isn't able to get a thrill out of Blitz3D and chooses DarkBasic Professional, say, on the basis that it's got more gee whiz features, I don't see how it benefits us.
I think Blitz3D is a great product, but it still needs to keep up with the Joneses, if only because a serious project I start today probably isn't going to get to market for at least a year, by which time every PC sold in the last 12 months will have DX9 hardware and if I want to stand out from the crowd I'd like to support it.
Mark is a highly focussed, busy chap who needs support and constructive crticism, not negativity
Mark gave the reasons for the apparent lack of progress in a recent post -- he's been (a) caught up in politics, and (b) he's been largely working on stuff that will benefit all of the Blitz line of products (i.e. BlitzMax, BlitzPlus, and Blitz3D). This seems like a reasonable explanation, but this underlines the fact that an explanation was required... There has been an apparent lack of progress and it did need explaining.
One obvious explanation for the lack of DX9 support is that BlitzMax is supposedly going to be OpenGL-based. If this is the case, then writing DX9-specific code will delay BlitzMax, which is not in Mark's interest: he's probably not making much money off Blitz3D any more, because he doesn't charge for updates. BlitzMax, on the other hand, will make him a lot of money. This is why I think that he needs to charge for updates; it's probably too late to change the Blitz3D business model though.
I saw 3Dmark with DX7 and wow it's still impressive
3DMark 2001 uses DX7 features Blitz3D still doesn't support (e.g. bump maps). 3DMark 2001 SE uses first generation pixel and vertex shaders (DX8 stuff).
At the end of the day, if your game NEEDS bump mapping, "real" cel shading, vertex shaders or pixel shaders to work, then you don't have a game in the first place.
Indeed. If your game needs anything more than an ASCII display then you probably don't have a game. But you may have trouble selling your ASCII game to anyone.
Absolutely, I am nowhere near able to use things like bump-mapping, dot3 (wot?) or many of these nice functions
You would be if Blitz supported them, because they should be no harder to support than any of the usual features of Blitz3D.