BlitzPlus -vs Blitz3D
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/BlitzPlus -vs Blitz3D
| ||
| Is there any advantage to buying both Blitz3D and BlitzPlus since Blitz3D can also do 2D? From the limited information I have read, it seems BlitzPLus may be faster for 2D than Blitz3D... Is this a correct assumption? I have purchased BlitzPlus to start learning game programming and want to also do 3D after I feel comfortable with the 2D concepts. Any opinions on this route of study? Thanks |
| ||
| Blitzplus is geared more toward GUI based apps (although it has all the 2D capabilites of the old Blitz2D). I belive some people have had success using OpenGL with B+ (I don't own B+ so I'm not 100% sure), although B3D is obviously a little easier to start with. |
| ||
| That makes me almost think I should have gone with Blitz3D. The "Game Programming for Teens" just said that it had "Blitz Basic 2D" on the CD. I'm new to both so I wasn't sure which to buy. Impatient and wanted to get started so I bought BlitzPlus thinking that it was better than Blitz3D for 2D and that I would later buy B3D. Does B3D in fact do everything for 2D just as well as BlitzPlus? |
| ||
| BlitzPlus has an event-based engine, so it's more CPU-friendly. (Having said that, it is still 99% backwards compatible with existing BlitzBasic and 2D-only Blitz3D code, which is not event-based.) It also will easily do windowed games (any size) and/or full-screen games to your pleasure. Its compiler has also been completely re-written, and it does indeed manage video graphics more efficiently (though the difference is negligible in many cases). If you're reading the Game Programming for Teens book, Blitz3D would have been a decent choice because (a) the book was targeted for BlitzBasic, which is a subset of Blitz3D, meaning it's 100% copmatible. On the other hand, BlitzPlus is perfectly capable of handling anything in the 2D realm, and is definitely preferred by me (for 2D). My suggestion is to go with what you have, and once you have some projects under your belt, you can decide for yourself. |
| ||
| Thank you for the info. That helps. Do you know of any books and/or recommended tutorials specifically targeted at BlitzPlus? It gets anooying when some simple examples, in the "Game Programming for Teens" book, with "flipping" just show blank screens until the escape key is pressed. They seem to be running in the back ground but don't redraw correctly. I having those issues with most of the code in Chapter 6 (Page Flipping and Pixel Plotting) Thanks for your time. |
| ||
| THe "flip" command does wonders... |
| ||
| That's because you are using BlitzPlus. The book was written for Blitz2D which Blitz3D more correctly simulates. As you realized, you just need to add the flip command and you are set. Most everything else should be fine (same as Blitz2D). |
| ||
| For some reason one can't be without another.. for games you're likely to want map-editors .. and they're so easy to make in B+ .. |
| ||
| Thanks all for the info and input. I seem to be going along just fine now. This is a nice break from VB, .NET and J2EE. Might be fun to create some Easter eggs to embed somewhere at work... |
| ||
| Is there a way to create a program that uses B+ GUI and B3D 3D rendering? |
| ||
| Not without two seperate apps and a custom communication protocol. Easier to use OpenGL in B+, probably. Either that or code GUI functions in B3D with WinAPI. |
| ||
| Buy both. |
| ||
| Don't forget that B3D required at least Direct-X 7 to be installed, while B+ only Direct-X 1 , that comes with ALL Windows' versions. |
   |