I feel sorry for BRL and Mark. He's had a tough couple of years in someways and he's pretty much just got himself to rely on. 5 years ago he was one of only 2 places you could go for straight forward PC game development. Unfortunately, bigger companies have realized that this is a great market and are just taking over. BlitzMax gets slaughtered in the 2D category by Torque Game Builder and it has no 3D natively and I think most people feel like Liberator.
It's cool that BMax is modular and all but if you've got the skill to take advantage of that you might as well just use C++. BRL should have stuck to what they had going best ... Blitz3D. They should have KISS and just added more features to that tool. They should have added the graphics upgrades, physics, AI, and a complete tool chain that all works with Blitz3D's basic structure.
When you think about it BRL logic really is completely ass backwards. Instead of going more abstract and making it easier for people to make games which was the whole point initially they went less abstract, more low level, and decided to let that users should develop all the tools etc.
I'm sort of glad they did what they did but I think the DarkSDK is a better way to do the same thing. Blitz should just have a C++ SDK for Blitz instead of trying to make a language that bridges the gap between C++ and traditional Blitz. Afterall the jump from Blitz3D to C++ really isn't that big. I guess Max helps a lot but I don't know ... I haven't used it for much. I love the language don't get me wrong, it's a thing of genious but it's just not really necessary for what most of us want to do. It lacks the total control of C++ and if you've outgrown Blitz3D that's probably where you need to go.
It's cool that BMax is modular and all but if you've got the skill to take advantage of that you might as well just use C++. BRL should have stuck to what they had going best ... Blitz3D. They should have KISS and just added more features to that tool. They should have added the graphics upgrades, physics, AI, and a complete tool chain that all works with Blitz3D's basic structure.
When you think about it BRL logic really is completely ass backwards. Instead of going more abstract and making it easier for people to make games which was the whole point initially they went less abstract, more low level, and decided to let that users should develop all the tools etc.
I'm sort of glad they did what they did but I think the DarkSDK is a better way to do the same thing. Blitz should just have a C++ SDK for Blitz instead of trying to make a language that bridges the gap between C++ and traditional Blitz. Afterall the jump from Blitz3D to C++ really isn't that big. I guess Max helps a lot but I don't know ... I haven't used it for much. I love the language don't get me wrong, it's a thing of genious but it's just not really necessary for what most of us want to do. It lacks the total control of C++ and if you've outgrown Blitz3D that's probably where you need to go.