before the Entity Guild drags me off to be decapitated, and my name forever erased from the annals of the Blitzian Historical Record... i'd just like to open a lil discussion on what struck me today as possibly a grave error in the direction that the whole Blitz saga has embarked upon...
now, this may sound strange coming from me... one who commonly regarded as second assistant to the high priest, at the right hand of the god of OOP... and seeing that Max has brought OOP to the previously unwashed masses, makes this statement seem even more amazing...
but it is not the OOP in 'Max that is the problem... this aspect is a good thing... it's the wholistic approach that Blitz is taking that gives me reason for pause...
... an approach that seems to do more to dilute the identity and presence of Blitz in the development scene, an approach that seems intent on relegating it to what amounts to merely another unremarkable coding option... and one that puts it in direct competition with the likes of MS Visual Studio Express... another tool for programming against interfaces (wrappers) to other 3D rendering and gaming 'engines'... a tool that is now available for free...
this thought dawned upon me as i read over the pending release of the next DarkBASIC SDK and a .net wrapper designed to allow you to use either vb or c# to now write your DB games...
now, grant it... anticpating Microsoft's decision to make the Express .net tools available free of charge would've been a true feat of prediction, maybe rivaled only by the great Nostradamus himself, i think that still, it might've been a smarter, safer, and more expeditious route, to update the existing Blitz3D to include some new (dx9) (shadows) (etc) features, and then to release an api, SDK sort of thing, accessible from a wide range of coding languages (c++, .net, delphi), so that the Blitz3D dev would have a pretty decent choice... making Blitz3D even more appealing to a greater audience...
seriously... BlitzMax will loose sales to a free .net every time... MS has done this before in other segments, offering free versions of their product nto the marketplace... now they've, and very smartly i may add, moved this practice into the indie coding segment...
... and in the long run this will be a bad thing for 'Max.
i think that Blitz will find itself on the wrong side of the equation in the not too distant future...
i think the DarkBASIC gang is to be applauded here... really... not only have they managed to maintain the simplicity of an entry level 3D BASIC programming tool... but while doing so, they've also been able to exploit the underpinnings of that, and not only make a next gen click and make tool (FPSC) based on it, but also to make available an attractive option to those devs who need a more advanced programming environment, with everything that the .net brings with it now available to the DB coder... now if they can get everything working like it's supposed to, but that's a different topic altogether...
but while they've been on the 'upswing', and made some right moves... we have been on sort of a lull... and, in my humble opinion, have made some moves, that in the short and long term, will prove to not be as good as what could've been...
i really feel that too much time and effort is being devoted in the wrong direction by the Blitz dev team... i'm a loyal Blitzer... not a fanboy, mind you... just a loyal Blitz coder who likes the language... but i feel that i must make this statement...
the future is not hard to 'see'... it has already happened... i have seen the day come to pass, when someone has written a BlitzMax wrapper to the Dark Game SDK... and that day has happened a few months from now...
ok... let the lambasting begin... you may throw your rotten tomatoes and eggs at the speaker now...
--Mike
now, this may sound strange coming from me... one who commonly regarded as second assistant to the high priest, at the right hand of the god of OOP... and seeing that Max has brought OOP to the previously unwashed masses, makes this statement seem even more amazing...
but it is not the OOP in 'Max that is the problem... this aspect is a good thing... it's the wholistic approach that Blitz is taking that gives me reason for pause...
... an approach that seems to do more to dilute the identity and presence of Blitz in the development scene, an approach that seems intent on relegating it to what amounts to merely another unremarkable coding option... and one that puts it in direct competition with the likes of MS Visual Studio Express... another tool for programming against interfaces (wrappers) to other 3D rendering and gaming 'engines'... a tool that is now available for free...
this thought dawned upon me as i read over the pending release of the next DarkBASIC SDK and a .net wrapper designed to allow you to use either vb or c# to now write your DB games...
now, grant it... anticpating Microsoft's decision to make the Express .net tools available free of charge would've been a true feat of prediction, maybe rivaled only by the great Nostradamus himself, i think that still, it might've been a smarter, safer, and more expeditious route, to update the existing Blitz3D to include some new (dx9) (shadows) (etc) features, and then to release an api, SDK sort of thing, accessible from a wide range of coding languages (c++, .net, delphi), so that the Blitz3D dev would have a pretty decent choice... making Blitz3D even more appealing to a greater audience...
seriously... BlitzMax will loose sales to a free .net every time... MS has done this before in other segments, offering free versions of their product nto the marketplace... now they've, and very smartly i may add, moved this practice into the indie coding segment...
... and in the long run this will be a bad thing for 'Max.
i think that Blitz will find itself on the wrong side of the equation in the not too distant future...
i think the DarkBASIC gang is to be applauded here... really... not only have they managed to maintain the simplicity of an entry level 3D BASIC programming tool... but while doing so, they've also been able to exploit the underpinnings of that, and not only make a next gen click and make tool (FPSC) based on it, but also to make available an attractive option to those devs who need a more advanced programming environment, with everything that the .net brings with it now available to the DB coder... now if they can get everything working like it's supposed to, but that's a different topic altogether...
but while they've been on the 'upswing', and made some right moves... we have been on sort of a lull... and, in my humble opinion, have made some moves, that in the short and long term, will prove to not be as good as what could've been...
i really feel that too much time and effort is being devoted in the wrong direction by the Blitz dev team... i'm a loyal Blitzer... not a fanboy, mind you... just a loyal Blitz coder who likes the language... but i feel that i must make this statement...
the future is not hard to 'see'... it has already happened... i have seen the day come to pass, when someone has written a BlitzMax wrapper to the Dark Game SDK... and that day has happened a few months from now...
ok... let the lambasting begin... you may throw your rotten tomatoes and eggs at the speaker now...
--Mike