Personally I can't for the life of me fathom why BRL haven't converted the Blitz3D 2D and 3D graphics library into a dll form compatible with BlitzMax and other languages that can use dlls, and put it up for sale. I'd buy the thing in a second, as long as the price was reasonable. The Blitz3D graphics engine suits me just fine, but I'm thouroughly sick of working around the limitations of the procedural language.
Obviously there are other 3d options available for Max - but the Blitz3D function library is a thouroughly tried, tested and stable platform which behaves in a familiar fashion for those of us used to Blitz3D. It's not cross platform, but who cares. The people who don't need a cross platform engine can buy it - others can use something else.
Max3D will probably be useless for the vast majority of BlitzMax users, anyway, as the indicated system requirements will most likely be too high for the shareware market that most Blitz programmers are catering to. It makes better sense to release an engine with lower requirements first and then later on worry about the cutting edge engine that Max3D is supposed to be. And the Blitz3D engine is already written, so no need to write and test the huge bulk of code that would go into a 2D and 3D graphics engine - it's already there. Tried and tested over several years, with many released games using it. It just needs to be modified to work as a dll.
Sure there are going to be issues with people complaining because they already have a license for Blitz3D and don't want to pay for the graphics engine again - and this would be a valid complaint. The solution is to simply provide a discount for existing Blitz3D license holders, as was done with the MaxGui module. Not a free upgrade, however - the work done on converting the codebase to work as a dll needs to be paid for.
And think of the huge market for the dll with the many other languages that support dlls but don't have a graphics engine. Most other graphics engines are either not available as a dll, are too young and untested, or try to do far too many things themselves that should be done by the programming language - restricting the uses which the engine can be put to in the process. And then there's the Darkbasic engine. In the past, Darkbasic has garnered a reputation for being as stable as a truckload of set mousetraps. I don't know whether or not that reputation is still deserved, but it still most likely exists in the minds of many people who've looked into integrating a graphics engine into their language of choice and have done the research into the various engines available. Blitz3D on the other hand, has always had a reputation for being rock solid stable and easy to use. Even if it's not a cutting edge engine, many people using other languages would buy it just to do rapid prototyping with an engine they know will work.
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Obviously there are other 3d options available for Max - but the Blitz3D function library is a thouroughly tried, tested and stable platform which behaves in a familiar fashion for those of us used to Blitz3D. It's not cross platform, but who cares. The people who don't need a cross platform engine can buy it - others can use something else.
Max3D will probably be useless for the vast majority of BlitzMax users, anyway, as the indicated system requirements will most likely be too high for the shareware market that most Blitz programmers are catering to. It makes better sense to release an engine with lower requirements first and then later on worry about the cutting edge engine that Max3D is supposed to be. And the Blitz3D engine is already written, so no need to write and test the huge bulk of code that would go into a 2D and 3D graphics engine - it's already there. Tried and tested over several years, with many released games using it. It just needs to be modified to work as a dll.
Sure there are going to be issues with people complaining because they already have a license for Blitz3D and don't want to pay for the graphics engine again - and this would be a valid complaint. The solution is to simply provide a discount for existing Blitz3D license holders, as was done with the MaxGui module. Not a free upgrade, however - the work done on converting the codebase to work as a dll needs to be paid for.
And think of the huge market for the dll with the many other languages that support dlls but don't have a graphics engine. Most other graphics engines are either not available as a dll, are too young and untested, or try to do far too many things themselves that should be done by the programming language - restricting the uses which the engine can be put to in the process. And then there's the Darkbasic engine. In the past, Darkbasic has garnered a reputation for being as stable as a truckload of set mousetraps. I don't know whether or not that reputation is still deserved, but it still most likely exists in the minds of many people who've looked into integrating a graphics engine into their language of choice and have done the research into the various engines available. Blitz3D on the other hand, has always had a reputation for being rock solid stable and easy to use. Even if it's not a cutting edge engine, many people using other languages would buy it just to do rapid prototyping with an engine they know will work.
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