Is Blitz Max good for "Retro" games?
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Beginners Area/Is Blitz Max good for "Retro" games?
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| Hi everybody. I currently own B3D, but I'm about to buy a copy of either BlitzPLus or Blitz Max. My questions are: - is BlitzMax capable of handling "pixel perfect" graphics (without any blurring / filtering)? - How big are the EXE files? That's a big concern to me, since the media files I'll use take less than 200Kb...I don't want the code to be much bigger than that. Something in the 200Kb to 300Kb range should be fine for me. (I won't need any fancy module, probably) - On the same note, is it gonna make any difference on the file size compared to a game generated on B3d? Or should I just use B3D? (although BMax's multi-platform support appeals a lot to me) Thanks! Leo. |
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| What I can say is that BlitzMax doesn't have any buffers you can mess about with( like b3D and BPlus - LockBuffer etc. ). If it's strictly 2d games you wanna make that have realtime scaling, Rotation and alpha then blitzmax is for you. When you say retro do you mean game like those they make over at retroremakes.org? In Blitzmax you can control how big the final exe is by only importing the modules you need for your project to work thus reducing the exe size. You can't do this in B3D so you're always going to get big executables. Hope that helps. :) |
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| How big are the EXE files? Taking the BlitzMax sample, Digesteroids, as an example of a 2D shooter: Without using Framework, the non-debug .Exe is 1,190 K Using Framework/Import (the excellent and free Framework Assistant makes this easy), it's 513 K Running that through UPX Compress (also free) gets it down to 224 K |
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| If you want to write retro games AND try to get the hang of OOP then blitzMax is OK, (But Its min requirments are Higher) If on the otherhand you dont want to learn OOP, then stick to Blitz3d, rather than BPlus and just use Graphics commands rather than Graphics3D commands. The main reasson other than the OOP one to stay with Blitz3d, is that the 2d graphics mode doesnt need a 3d card, but the one in blitz does. The size of the Exe is a bit important, but not in my opinion more important than the Only 3dCard restriction of BMax. Also (Tho not sure) Blitz3d can use 256 color mode? Because BlitzMax cannot. I personaly prefer Blitz3d to BlitzMax, and Im only persevering with max for three reasons, 1) The long expected 3d mod, 2) I think I really should learn OOP 3) I only have a demo of blitz3d, but have bought Bmax I can see no reason to get BPlus if you already have B3d, (But Ive never used BPlus, so I might be wrong) |
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| You might want to consider Haaf's Game Engine ( http://hge.relishgames.com ) which is now available for free, and can be used with BlitzMax, thanks to a (free) module I wrote. It creates very small EXE's compared to using Max2D, and everything is automagically pixel perfect. Unless you choose to make it otherwise. It also has texture compression, among other things, which I find very handy. |
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| ok and 4) Stuff like what Gabriel has just done. Because when all said and done, most of the people who know how to do that sort of thing (Which I cannot), have moved to BMax |
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| Hey, thanks everybody! I'll probably go with BlitzMax then, and I'll take a serious look at the Haaf's Game Engine (thanks for the tip, Gabriel). >>When you say retro do you mean game like those they make over at retroremakes.org? Kinda. It doesn't have to look "old", but I do want to make a "Pixel Art" game, as a style choice. I don't want to do a remake either, it will be original stuff. Thanks again! Leo. |
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| blitzmax is the best =P. It's powers go insane. |
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| Gabe, where is your HAAF wrapper? It is free? Leo, www.retroremakes.com is ace. I should know, I'm one of the admins. lol. :D |
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| I've wasted many a good hour at retroremakes, it's cool. |
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| Bmx is cool for retro stuff. Much better than bp! Btw: Is there a retro remake of "River Raid" (c64) somewhere? |
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| http://planeta.terra.com.br/lazer/robsoft/EXE/river_attack.zip |
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| I guess there was some kind of wierdness with graphics not being pixel-perfect in older Blitz versions, eh, as it seems to be bandied around a lot as a potential issue. BlitzMax has pixel perfect graphics. You can elect to use filtering or not. You can also position graphics at sub-pixel positions with antialiasing/filtering. |
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| I really don't understand the idea of staying away from Max because you don't like OOP. As I have said many times before... Max has OOP as an OPTION - you don't HAVE to use it. |
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| huh, there was nothing wrong with BlitzPLus, it was pixel perfect. The new one (Max) will blur a bit if you try to draw at a fractional coordinate. |
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| Thanks for the linky! Ahm, BP has pixelperfect graphics. It's just not as fast as bmx in certain areas such as alpha blending. |
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| yeah it's TOTALLY not as fast in areas such as alphablending as you have to write all that code by hand, and it will be WAY slow on even the best CPUs. Not good enough for real-time basically. |
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| So where does this need for "pixel perfect" come from, if it always was pixel perfect? What's the big hoohah all about? |
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| I don't know... maybe it was the dark side. Maybe people just had bugs in their code. See my little cardwar game. It has realtime alpha etc pp all made with bp... :P |
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| Anyways you could get BMax and Grey's Framework code and be able to concentrate right on the game almost immediately without having to worry too much about all the...oh this is sounding like an advert isn't it!? Sorry. Check out Grey's framework threads - you won't regret it. IPete2. |
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| Gabe, where is your HAAF wrapper? It is free? It's on my site, and yes, it's free. It needs updating though. HGE has been updated to 1.54 and I've updated my wrapper to match it, but haven't uploaded the updated version yet. Not many changes, but a very useful fix for getting system states. I'm just putting the finishing touches to a game I'm writing with the wrapper, but I'll try to tidy up the updated module and upload it over the weekend. |
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| @NoMen Luni I was the only one who metioned OOP, and I said it was a reason to move from Blitz3D to BlitzMax. You are obsest with Not useing OOP you, you procedural programer you |
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| Gabriel: None of your download links seem to be working? At first I thought they just weren't working from Firefox so I tried IE, same deal. A blank window opens at a url like http://www.glimmergames.com/downloads/download.php?f=hgebmax.exe but no download??? |
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| @TheCaffeineKid yes, retroremakes is cool =) regards xperience2003 |
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| Gabriel: None of your download links seem to be working? At first I thought they just weren't working from Firefox so I tried IE, same deal. A blank window opens at a url like www.glimmergames.com/downloads/download.php?f=hgebmax.exe but no download??? What do you mean by "none of them"? HGE isn't working because I haven't uploaded the new version yet. AFAIK all the other downloads should be working. |
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| @H&K- Ha- perhaps that was a misread on my part! You are obsest with Not useing OOP you, you procedural programer you Ok I admit it - I've been a closet procedural programmer all these years!!! |
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| @NoMen I just fake being an OOP programer, by putting all my procedures inside types. (Fools Everyone ;) And going x:int = CreateInt (10) rather than Let X=10 |
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| Wow you can use 'let' in blitz? |
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| You cannot, that was just an indication of the level of my programming skills. (I still look for commands on the keyboard somtimes) |
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