What version of BlitzMax do I have?

BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Beginners Area/What version of BlitzMax do I have?

Rico(Posted 2009) [#1]
Hi i just came back to Blitz after a long break and want to know if i need to update my version of Blitzmax. How can i find out what version i have. It says 1.30 on the About box. would this be right?


xlsior(Posted 2009) [#2]
The current version is 1.36 -- you can download the latest version on this website, under the Account -> Product Updates link.

Of course you can continue to use 1.30, but there have been quite a few updates since, including an official DirectX 9.0 driver in 1.36.


Htbaa(Posted 2009) [#3]
And a faster Garbage Collector for multi-threading as well.


Rico(Posted 2009) [#4]
oh ok, thank you for the help. I wasn't sure if my version number was correct - i thought it may not change it. Thank you very much i will update to the latest version :)

will the DirectX driver make 2D gfx faster? cos i was having some speed problems before and i have quite a good gfx card and CPU too.


xlsior(Posted 2009) [#5]
will the DirectX driver make 2D gfx faster?


Technically blitzmax doesn't have straight 2D, it's all 2D-in-3D.

whether or not it's faster depends on your hardware: on most the DX9 driver appears faster than the old DX7 driver, but on other computers you may not see any difference or it could even be slightly slower.
(different cards have different optimizations, so it's not always the same)


Brucey(Posted 2009) [#6]
was having some speed problems before and i have quite a good gfx card and CPU too.

It also depends how you use them...

It's very easy to write bad code on a good machine.


Rico(Posted 2009) [#7]
ok thanks Brucey. It all worked nicely when it was using the inbuilt drawing commands to draw the objects but it really slowed down when i replaced them with bitmaps. i will write a speed test program when i get the new version running to see if its ok :)


Rico(Posted 2009) [#8]
hmm i can't remember how to do the update. i have downloaded it and i know i need to use the install prog. but do i uninstall teh current one first? how do i do this? and what do i do about 3rd party modules i have like FMOD and Box2d? do i hav e to add these again afterward?

thank you for any help. i am a bit rusty!


plash(Posted 2009) [#9]
You don't need to uninstall your current installation, and any third-party modules will not be lost.
All you have to do is run the install program, and make sure you rebuild all the modules so they're up-to-date with the new version.


xlsior(Posted 2009) [#10]
Do make sure that you point the installer to the correct folder, so it's the same as your existing install -- one of the recent updates changes the default installation folder from c:\program files\blitzmax to use c:\blitzmax instead. (To work around issues with UAC on Windows Vista / Windows 7)


Dabhand(Posted 2010) [#11]

including an official DirectX 9.0 driver in 1.36



Which BTW, has a couple of nasty bugs in it!

Dabz