Original Blitz Basic book...
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Original Blitz Basic book...
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| Hello everyone, Quick question here. I still have the book that came with the original Blitz Basic (back around 2004). I'm curious if the coding taught in that is still applicable to Blitz3D? Has it been changed much for B3D, other than adding the 3D aspects? It's a pretty substantial book, and I like the way it's structured, so it'd be cool if I could go through it to learn, or use it as a reference otherwise. Thanks! |
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| Once you understand that to make a tool/game, you need an initialization part, an update part (mainloop), an exit part, different procedures, different systems, different components (meshes, materials, textures, joints/bones, animations, images, fonts, HUD, GUI, sounds), the language is only a way to organize all of this. The blitzbasic language helps you to have an easy to understand and to write code, but you could achieve the same results with another language/engine... (if it has the same functionalities) However, keep in mind that there is not only one way to achieve a result, each programmer has its own way to structure/write code. So yes you can probably learn some techniques/tips from these books, but this is probably not all there is to know or the only way(s) to do it. To answer your question more precisely : ->if your book is about 2d graphics, you are in a 2d world with 2d coordinates. ->with blitz3d you can work on 2d graphics in a 2d world with 2d coordinates (x,y) and on 3d graphics in a 3d world with 3d coordinates (x,y,z) ->with 2d graphics/world, x axis is left right, y axis is up down (the y axis is "inverted", the top of a buffer/image/texture has the lowest value, the bottom has the highest value) ->with 3d graphics/world x axis is left right, y axis is up down, z axis is forward backward (it is similar to how you sense the 3d material world around you) |
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| The basic ideas, syntax etc. should be the same. 3D is a different thing, so you will also have to learn that. Some things to keep in mind... The built-in help is not up to date. The online manual contains more recent changes and also has occasionally quite useful comments. There is a Language Reference which is worth reading. It is accessable from the IDE home page, which you see when the IDE starts and there are no files open. There is a versions.txt file which lists (most) changes made with each update. Unfortunately there are no dates on these, but 1.98 was ten years ago. Here is the 1.108b versions.txt file. |
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| Thanks for the replies, folks. So, I should not go by the original BB's physical manual, then? It would be outdated? |
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| The original manual should be mostly okay, although I haven't looked at it in many years. The sound/music system was revamped at some point. |
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| Most code should run as-is, from memory. |
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| Okay cool, thanks. It's a very handy resource to have, with the command index in the back and such. |
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