A lot of what has already been said I think applies to most projects:
1) "Coder Art" and "Coder Music" (substandard creative assets because they are all created by one person) are not considered acceptable these days and very few of us have the money to pay the going rate for these assets.
2) The amount of time required vs the other (much more important to me) things I need to do with that time.
3) Most of the things I wanted to see have now been done by professional studios 1000 times better than I could have done them.
4) The fact that I'm not very good at programming in the first place.
5) The standard of free and very cheap games that are available is very high, this is also fueled by abandonware.
6) The gap between the amount of work, resources and money required to make a mainstream game and the amount of resources available to a bedroom coder has grown hugely.
7) I think for larger scale projects Blitz is no longer the right tool. Blitz 3D is too old and outdated, BlitzMax doesn't have the ease of use of Blitz 3D. I've gone towards Java myself these days which seems like a better choice than BlitzMax.
etc.
I still use Blitz for what I bought it for, writing quick utility programs that do simple functions I need them to do. I've always felt the main strength with Blitz is that you can knock off something pretty quickly to do something useful or impressive. Some of the things people have done "for fun" or as little samples of code, or just to help others, have really blown me away.
Gradually though even this functionality is being eroded as applications that need this kind of functionality gain it or other web based applications take over.
For example, one of my first Blitz programs ever was used to manage and update workstations with anti-virus updates because the software we had deployed to a large number of seats didn't have this functionality and the company wouldn't pay for it to be updated. These days it's unthinkable that any anti-virus solution wouldn't have that functionality built-in so that program is obsolete.
Like most things in life it's not what you have at the end of it, but the journey that is the most valuable thing; and for that I'm happy with Blitz and grateful to those involved with it.
Darkheart
1) "Coder Art" and "Coder Music" (substandard creative assets because they are all created by one person) are not considered acceptable these days and very few of us have the money to pay the going rate for these assets.
2) The amount of time required vs the other (much more important to me) things I need to do with that time.
3) Most of the things I wanted to see have now been done by professional studios 1000 times better than I could have done them.
4) The fact that I'm not very good at programming in the first place.
5) The standard of free and very cheap games that are available is very high, this is also fueled by abandonware.
6) The gap between the amount of work, resources and money required to make a mainstream game and the amount of resources available to a bedroom coder has grown hugely.
7) I think for larger scale projects Blitz is no longer the right tool. Blitz 3D is too old and outdated, BlitzMax doesn't have the ease of use of Blitz 3D. I've gone towards Java myself these days which seems like a better choice than BlitzMax.
etc.
I still use Blitz for what I bought it for, writing quick utility programs that do simple functions I need them to do. I've always felt the main strength with Blitz is that you can knock off something pretty quickly to do something useful or impressive. Some of the things people have done "for fun" or as little samples of code, or just to help others, have really blown me away.
Gradually though even this functionality is being eroded as applications that need this kind of functionality gain it or other web based applications take over.
For example, one of my first Blitz programs ever was used to manage and update workstations with anti-virus updates because the software we had deployed to a large number of seats didn't have this functionality and the company wouldn't pay for it to be updated. These days it's unthinkable that any anti-virus solution wouldn't have that functionality built-in so that program is obsolete.
Like most things in life it's not what you have at the end of it, but the journey that is the most valuable thing; and for that I'm happy with Blitz and grateful to those involved with it.
Darkheart