Help me get back into Blitz!
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Beginners Area/Help me get back into Blitz!
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| Hi been away a (very) long time, due to serious illness. I need lots of help because I have been totally out of touch with Blitz and computers in general. Anyway Im better now :) I think I should get a new version of Blitz (I had the old Blitz 2D). What I really want to know is if Blitz 3D has the same sprite handling commands as BlitzMax? Can you create 2D games in Blitz 3D just like in max? Does Blitz 3D handle sprites in exactly the same way? I ask because I know I will eventually want to write 3D games, although initially I will be writing 2D games. Also if I buy (download) a version of blitz now, and then later on I buy a new computer can I somehow transfer it accross without buying a second version of Blitz? I really appreciate any help. Thank you very much! Rico |
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| My suggestion is to get BlitzMax. It's 2D out of the box, and there are some really nice and free 3D addons. And Blitz3D is, last time I heard, not going to be developed anymore. Some patches from time to time but nothing else. You can download a new copy of your blitz[basic/3d/max] on your new machine, just login here and click on "Account->Product updates". |
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| Blitz3D handles 2D drawing completely differently to BlitzMax. Both use the same underlying technology, but Blitz3D only naturally deals in 3d coordinates so you have to write your own system ( or use one of the libraries available ) if you want to think purely in 2d coordinates. BlitzMax is much closer to Blitz2D in this regard, as it uses nearly all the same graphics commands. The only major difference between BMax and B2D is that BMax is using 3d acceleration so drawing rotated images and images with transparency is much faster. You can already do 3D in BlitzMax, as there are several free and several commercial 3D engines, including the Blitz3D engine itself ( available as the B3DSDK. ) |
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| but Blitz3D only naturally deals in 3d coordinates so you have to write your own system ( or use one of the libraries available ) if you want to think purely in 2d coordinates. Blitz3D can do 2D just fine out of the box, however it's not going to be as fast as a good 2D in 3D system or indeed as fast as BMax. I do however recommend BMax over B3D, it's a much more advanced and flexible language. |
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| Blitz3D can do 2D just fine out of the box, however it's not going to be as fast as a good 2D in 3D system or indeed as fast as BMax. He specifically asked about "sprites". In Blitz3D, sprites are 3D entities. |
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| yeah but in 2D programming, sprites are 2D images. |
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| Welcome back, dude. I would thoroughly recommend BlitzMax, however some people here absolutely hate it. My best advice is try the demos and see what fits. Be aware that last time I looked, the BlitzMax demo was a bit out of date. |
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| It's still very much out of date, but you can get a general gist of the language. |
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| One other thing to remember is that BlitzMax has a Win32, Linux and Mac version. So if you want to write multiplatform games in 2D and 3D, BlitzMax is the best option. The MiniB3D mod is very good and Klepto's extended version is even better and can handle most functions exactly the same as in Blitz3D. The extended mod cannot handle everything yet as editing the surface of terrain realtime (Creating craters in the ground after explosion for example), but the next version will probably have this option. So if you want to start programing in 2D anyway, I would advice BlitzMax. In 2D you can do very great stuff with images using different kinds of blendmodes. |
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| Thank you very much for all the help - its nice to be back! Yes, I think I will buy BlitzMax, since I intend on doing mostly 2D games for the time being. One thing I wanted to ask though - are bitmaps limited in size in Blitz? I wanted to save lots of time (now that computers are so powerful and memory is abundant), and just draw the level (many screens-worth) for my game on one huge bitmap, and then use it in collision detection with the player and enemy bitmaps. I know the accepted way of doing things is to build up a map out of lots of square tiles, but hey I'm lazy, and it would be so much easier. I really appreciate all the help people have given me. Best wishes - Rico |
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| I think the limit will be the graphics card if you load it as an image. You could use a pixmap but it would be much slower. <edit> You might also want to see this |
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