modules wishlist
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/modules wishlist
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| Feel free to add any module updates or additions you'd like to see for BlitzMax in the future. Off the top of my head: * new httpstreamfactory using http/1.1 (support proxy servers and better end of files for readline operations) * add Alsa sound driver to freeaudio for better blitzmax audio compatability on linux * Max3D, yes it is VERY exciting * MaxGUI, almost almost ready.... |
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| * Force feedback (for joysticks) * Tablet/digitizer support for all platforms |
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| decent audio mod:D ¬_¬ |
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| * Particle system * Decent terrain system (If not included in Max3D) |
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| * A Nanosec Timer , assuming it is possible crossplatform. |
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| * Finished Win32 mod * Dll Creator |
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| Ooooo.. DLL Creation sounds nice. What about some basic thread support like Purebasic? |
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| * Blitz3D engine, with DX7 and OpenGL drivers (purely selfish - just so I can convert my game to Mac) |
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| I'd like freejoy finishing off. Really need a JoyHit command for a project I'm working on. |
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| Support for streaming audio, reading/writing to audio streams dynamically. |
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| A Symbian (and/or PocketPC) compile option. Wishful thinking indeed! Also, module to read/write Types to streams/files. |
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| Although Peturbatio's suggestions would probably be covered by previously mentioned audio hooks (yum yum), I think freesound on the whole could do with a big sprucing up. Or at least the BMax interface to it - this is very easy, but I think beginners would like a command to set the absolute playing frequency of a sound and also there needs to be a way to get a sound to start playback from a certain # of samples or bytes or whatever into the file... reverse playback would be nice, along with pingpong looping (and perhaps even a .TListable set of loop points)... I would love to see a freemusic module, wouldn't mind starting it myself using freesound, if freesound were adequate enough (and I had any time;)... I would quite like to see some sort of threading support... Also a software renderer for Max2D/3D. |
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| MySQL Database support, Access DB Support, SQL Server Database support. Custom DB with SQL. Yes, I like databases. |
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| * ode with tri/box collisions! * occlusion culling * a simple worker thread (multi threading can be a nightmare, but 1 extra just to load stuff in the background would be useful) * better control of gl contexts and depth buffers etc (esp. in linux) oh and why not keep us all happier with bi-weekly worklog entries ;D |
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| Some ideas: Ability to easily generate screengrabs and save them to files as images, in PNG and JPEG at least. Ability to save images in general, from pixmaps, in a few formats - PNG, JPEG, RAW etc. MNG would be nice too. Ability to load/save/play/navigate/modify some kind of video format. Ability to load/save/play/navigate/modify some kind of animation format like the old Anim5/Anim7/Anim8 on the Amiga. Better compression options, different algorithms to choose from, different degrees of compression. Also encryption. Ability to embed an OpenGL context within a GUI as generated by the GUI module. This can then serve as a 2d/3d preview/render area. A particle engine module might be nice given that they are becoming more and more popular. I would like the ability to be able to easily access some or all API's of the native operating system and correctly communicate with them with ease. Ability to create new processes on all platforms, and maybe threads too, plus inter-process communication. Perhaps using.... Some kind of scripting thing like Arexx on the Amiga with an interface port, maybe something that uses Applescript or something similar (not Lua). It would be nice if there was an audio-effects module like able to add reverb, volume envelopes, special effects, merging of samples, real-time stream generation, and playing of music module files. I would like to be able to load a font and have it be represented as a list of vertexes or polygons that I can then manipulate simply in OpenGL. I presume you'll have some kind of loader/saver for Max3D - would be nice if it could handle scalable fonts too. Support for embedded Quicktime and Windows Media Player. I guess Max3D will include physics. How about physics for 2D as well. How about a game engine module which comprises most of the features you might need for most 2D games, like scrolling tile engine and commands to keep track of and draw the tiles automatically, with layers and parallax scrolling and handling of sprites. It would give a lot of people an easy head start. Maybe it would even do isometric. It could also include something like Amos Basic's `amal` animation language. A framework for a variety of games - platformers, shootemups, overhead soccer, 2d racing, whatever `old school` stuff. Amos Basic also had `mouse zones` - a list of rectangles on the screen which are defined as zones and you had some commands to check if the mouse was in the zones - good for making custom GUI's. It would also be cool to ensure that all screens on all platforms have a mouse pointer if it's supposed to be there, regardless of hardware support. How about better multitasking - ability to cooperatively hand back control to the o/s so that your app isn't a CPU hog. It can probably be done already but it's not obvious. A screenwipes/transitions module. A fractals module, to generate fractal landscape, draw fractal trees, generate fractal textures, etc A raytracing module. A MIDI module, to play it but also to edit midi music and transmit it to a midi device such as a music keyboard. Some kind of interrupts whereby you specify the timing and then the current piece of code is literally interrupted to run another piece of code without you having to do anything extra to make it happen. An image processing module which can image-process either the game display or just for graphics-generation purposes. All the usual stuff, sharpen, blur, tint, colorize, balance, contrast, gamma, plus warps and twirls, and so on. It could also include some `demo` effects. These could maybe be applied within the game as realtime effects but also useful for custom content generation. Hardware accelerated. A module (maybe part of gui module) that let's your GUI/app interact with the desktop environment, e.g. drag-and-drop, adding things to menu's, iconifying to the desktop, adding shortcuts, etc An automated frames-per-second counter which displays automatically when you Flip the display, if this feature is switched on. Some kind of sprite engine - not just `DrawImage` to render stuff, have a higher level system to handle animation sequences, interaction with the mouse or joystick, more automated collision detection, interaction with scrolling map etc. Isn't there already some code for a map module? Graphical stencils using the stencil buffer to easily hide/protect portions of the screen. More drawing modes. For example, draw to backbuffer's alpha channel, draw inversed, draw XOR'd or using other OpenGL Logic operations. A color module - RGB and HSV manipulation and maybe some other format as well (CMYK?). Ability to translate between them and to adjust the HSV of the backbuffer. Some kind of gamma correction/brightness feature to help with adjusting to the differences in people's displays. A screensaver module to easily generate compatible screensavers that work on all platforms much the same, with configuration screens/GUI's and previews. With OpenGl support. More and better options for READING the content of the backbuffer. We need to read individual pixel colors. Plus dumping the backbuffer to an image file, and image operations that need to detect the image content such as a flood fill. Also please add rotatable/stretchable gradients of different kinds which can be drawn as the various basic objects - rects/ovals etc. Also this might tie in with easily giving these shapes a texture to use. DrawImageOval()? Max2D should also have at least some basic 3D ability - rotation around the image handle in X Y and Z, like the perspective feature in Deluxe Paint. Max2D should also support stippled/dotted lines and line width and antialiasing. You should also have rounded rectangles and definitely unfilled shapes. Ability to switch on/off dithering of the display easily for 16bit. That's all for now. |
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| I think focus on the sexy stuff, a simple physics mod would be a big bonus. good interaction between the physics and animation system is a must these days. |
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| Maybe there should also be a patience module :-P A module for mental clarity, and a module for coming up with good ideas ;-) |
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| * An SDL module Can't think of anything else... |
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| A Physics mod. Biggest wish of all however are additions to the language like function overloading/operator overloading, .dll/.lib creation, plus a set of io modules(Including file) that are coded from the ground up with multi-threaded design in mind. You can't afford to ignore it in this era. |
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| * low latency audio input (portaudio) * higher resolution timer |
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| Cross platform full printer support. With the ability to save/preview/render to screen the printers output. Also a way to direct all drawing/image commands to the printer output rather than the screen. Fully skinable GUI Better audio. Play music (ogg,mod,xm) direct from disk. Steve. |
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| I would really like a Physics Mod @Mystik, there is a gui coming, also check IGLass |
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| Fully skinable GUI Working on a free one as we speak. |
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| Just the one - Modifications to the existing Max2D, Pixmap & Sound modules so that we can load media in sections rather than all in one go. For example, at the moment if you want to load a large OGG music file, there will be a noticeable pause, since LoadSound doesn't return until it completes. I would like the ability to load say 1KB at a time. This would allow us to stream media from the disk in the background whilst the player roams the level. One of the things that frustrates me about many Blitz3D games is the long loading times. Anything that could help us cut these would be welcome. |
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| Decent Audio mod |
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| Well, my wishlist is quite all covered from the above posts, I'm really interested in a decent audio mod, and also a good and reliable MIDI mod. I don't know if this is the right thread, but I would add also one of my favorite wish, which is a world/level builder ala Maplet, with a Droplet/lightmapper inside.. Thanks for reading, Sergio. |
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| * BRL.MakeHalfLife3.MOD * A complete pub.win32.mod Ability to embed an OpenGL context within a GUI as generated by the GUI module. This can then serve as a 2d/3d preview/render area It would be nice if there was an audio-effects module like able to add reverb, volume envelopes, special effects Nods head to both of those. |
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| Encryption is the only thing i can think of because i wouldnt trust myself to write something which would successfully encrypt a file without messing it up. |
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| real threading support for threaded media loading and threaded network (to prevent massive problems like in B3D ...) |
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| DX1 2D run-anywhere graphics a la BlitzPlus; A DirectFB module for embedded Linux support, as mentioned in some other thread! PocketPC or some sort of generic ARM target? real threading support for threaded media loading and threaded network (to prevent massive problems like in B3D ...) Me too -- even if threading is just implemented for these specific types of situations and not generally. |
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| Efficient method of creating and manipulating packed data (aka regular c-type arrays) (sorry BRL, I know you don't see a problem but I still do ;-)) |
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| * data structures like vectors, maps, queues, stacks (like the STL in c++) * multi threading I would value multi threading the most. |
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| When its done - my hierarchy mod stuck up on the blitz mod server :) Then when anyone uses the TList mod have the compiler tell them its deprecated XD I'm having trouble working on it because this screen is low res, this comp has no .net support, and the blitzmax ide has no folding (sad really, ive become dependant). Its hard to see hte overview of things without it. Oh, and requests for mods you guys are making.... hmm. *Well, as you can see from the above posts audio improvements are needed *multithreading *Cross platform video support integrated into max2d and max3d *webcam support *printer support +Im sure many requests for 3d engine. Like builtin fly camera etc for debugging, stereoscopics, we will see once its out. Knotz - Vector is pretty easy, an will probably come along with stuff like matrices and quats in the 3d engine. I believe there is a mod for maps. In my hierarchy mod (WIP) there are LILO and LIFO stacks. Whats a que? |
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| an AvailVidMem() command and TotalVidMem() |
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| *Threads would be wounderful! Could start with a simple way to run code while loading images and sound. |
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| * Max3D, yes it is VERY exciting * MaxGUI, almost almost ready.... (drool) Would like to see Midi playback...and movie playback. |
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| real threading support for threaded media loading and threaded network (to prevent massive problems like in B3D ...) would also be my favorit |
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| Suprised no one has mantioned a database module. Would be nice if the SQLlite library was modualfied :) |
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| Suprised no one has mantioned a database module. http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=48650#541161 |
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| Ok I missed that one. :) |
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| Here is my list : - a memoryleak-free sound module (this leak is VERY annoying) - a MIDI support (would be very nice) - a GUI module - floding support in the GUI - not a module wish but, better doc on some modules (like linked list) - not a module wish but, a cross in the blitzmax window (on windowed mode) for fast quit... and ability to desactivate the AlwaysOnTop Thanks ^^ |
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| @Rambo_Bill: Check out my SQLite module. Er, somewhere on this forum. Page 2 at the moment ;) @Noel_Cower: I did a partial SDL module ages ago but found it near useless, because Max already did most things better/easier and the bits that weren't were a pain to merge with Max. What bits are you interested in? Me? I don't really care about modules, but I wouldn't mind a nice, clean, safe interface to C/C++ struct member fields. |
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| It's mostly all been mentioned already, but it deserves repeating. * Multi-threading support. Don't particularly care if it's cross-platform either, Linux is really all I need personally. * an ODBC interface, or some other easy way to access the database of my choice (currently the OpenSource FireBird project, based off Borlands commercial database solution). * More advanced datatypes. Particularly a Dictionary / HashMap / HashTable and sorted heap / binary search tree would be really useful. * XML support. Some way of reading in an XML file and getting back information as key/value sets. * And a new one: Shaders in Max2D. ReadPixel / WritePixel aren't always fast enough. * Some way to playback and control ProTracker/FastTrasker/MadTracker et.al music. Those are pretty much at the top of my hitlist. In that order. |
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| a filled option for DrawRect/DrawPoly/etc |
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| * audio : channelFading * 2D shape : DrawRoundRect, DrawBezier * 2D vertex : SetVertexPos, SetVertexColor, SetVertexAlpha |
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| I would also like to see some way to get better access to information about video ram. I would like to know how much there is in total, how much is free, what the largest free block is (if that applies), and also it'd be awesome to know or lock the memory address of the current back and front buffers, to provide a way that we might actually directly write to that memory. |
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| Audio : Channel value retrieve for vumeter's :) |
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I'm working on a dictionary using the hierarchy type, or at least a cut down hierarchy type. Basically each element is a shared portion of text in the key, until the last one.-i |-el-l-o h-' | | -icopter | -o-w | -ardSo, for instance, to find the type value of helicopter you would have to do 2 recrusions and 3 string comparisons. Could probably be possible to build an xml reader/writer into my uber class though :) back to work.... |
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| How about a html rendering module - output to OpenGL? |
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| How about a html rendering module - output to OpenGL? I was wondering about that and how hard it would be to do. even HTML 1.0 would be handy. I made an HTML parser a while ago that might assist with something like this. |
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| I'll put in a vote for multithreading. I'm currently using Antony's thread module in my application (thanks Antony!) and it's working perfectly but it would be nice to have official cross-platform support. |
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| I'd like some sound module to create sound through the sound card...ala c64 SID. |
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| I think the 2d engine could stand a lot of improvement. An optimized renderer, or at least better control over the rendering, the ability to adjust UV coordinates, compressed textures, vertex and pixel shaders, perhaps a few built in special effects, and the ability to emulate or disable anything which the videocard does not support ( specifically compressed textures and pixel shaders. ) |
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| One idea for Max2D is to actually allow a Z coordinate for drawing commands including images, so you can position things in the depth buffer. And the ability to add lights. |
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| * Multi Threading * particle system in Max3D * 2D in 3D in Max3D (a la FontText) |
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| I'm hoping for some system-friendly drawing functions in the MaxGUI module. For doing paint programs, screen savers etc. Something which requires no DirectX/OpenGL at all. Just to jog your memories here are the Amiga Blitz 2 libs AMIGALIBS BASIC SYSTEM |
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| I vote for PocketPC support!! |
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| Some kind of scripting thing like Arexx on the Amiga with an interface port, maybe something that uses Applescript or something similar (not Lua). Interpretive scripting of Blitz code (like BVM) - perhaps simplified in BMax's instance since it's a more complicated language - written by BRL themselves would be kickass. I only say this of course because Koriolis doesn't seem to have any intention of ever finishing BVM2 ;] Multi-threading support. Don't particularly care if it's cross-platform either, Linux is really all I need personally. No no, Windows is much more important <grin> I vote for PocketPC support!! I vote for customisable compiler directive support. Currently doable with use of a single constant, except constants have to be changed manually. I'm hoping opensourcing the compiler (when/ifever that happens) will help see this sort of thing occur. |
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| Maybe a Flash module (Macromedia Flash), it can run on the majors OSs. And its is very usefull. :) |
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| Object Serialization / De-Serialization. |
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| Or a flash module that renders using hardware accelerated openGl, cus the in-browser stuff is very slow :-) |
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| i vote also for PocketPC!!! I heard PPC-Compilers (C++/VB) are free and you can download this from MS. |
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| PocketPc support would make my new PocketPc happy :) + me |
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| I only say this of course because Koriolis doesn't seem to have any intention of ever finishing BVM2 ;] I do mate, I do. Question is when ;)Incidently, any interest in beta-testing it? I have an early version of a BlitzMax port. |
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| I'd love to be able to use the mouse as an incremental controller. Sub-pixel, non-screenbound mouse speed functions would make life much, much easier for me... Tom |
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| Amos Basic Pro had a feature where you could make programs which iterate through sourcecode currently loaded into the Amos editor, to perform operations on it. You could search for stuff, replace text, etc. It was handy for custom processing of sourcecode and making lots of changes. Maybe you can do a module that provides some `IDE` commands, allowing a program to operate on others that are loaded. Although, I guess that wouldn't be much different from customly loading in a sourcecode file and processing it. |
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| a database module.. |
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| I'd love to be able to use the mouse as an incremental controller. Sub-pixel, non-screenbound mouse speed functions would make life much, much easier for me... easy - just set mouse on screen centre and read out distance to this in next loop. add this variables to your own global one - and set your custom bounds - thats it! |
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| Add a module which makes OpenGL more suitable for games development. |
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| MrCredo That only 'kinda' works--it's not suitable for fine mouse control, especially if users have their mouse sensitivity set low. Being able to treat the mouse as an incremental controller would mean that I could detect a mouse delta of 0.23 'pixels' and nudge my sprites accordingly (something I can't do with MouseX, which will only register a change once the mouse has moved through a pixel of arbitrary size...) That, and MoveMouse 'hiccoughs' on OS X--that is, if I drag my mouse at a constant rate and use the mouse delta to move a sprite across the screen, every time I MoveMouse back to center screen, the sprite stops moving for a split second. |
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| Add a module which makes OpenGL more suitable for games development. The latest updates have a version of glew that supports OpenGL 2.0... or is that not what you're after? |
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| Not really a mod but I want FAST access to every pixel on the screen. Kind of in the same vein - webcam/realtime image input mod (ie. EyeToy for PC) - coupled with Max3D obviously ;) General 'video' mod - something you could use to treat each frame of video as an individual image and act upon it with aforementioned FAST pixel access. Comprehensive sound mod. |
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| toon shading for max3d |
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| I'll second the toon shading... |
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| More blend modes |
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| @teamonkey What bits are you interested in? The threading and graphics (surfaces and 2D [software]). |
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| 1. Max3D 2. MaxODE 3. MaxGUI 4. MaxOcclude (?) 5. Maplet II 6. .b3m = New and Improved .b3d 3d object file system including user defined fields, Physics info and Shader stuff. |
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| 1.Max3D 2. A math module for blindfishes like me, which includes the stuff you need generaly in games. Splines, angle calculations etc. Stuff like turntovector(x,y,z,step) or SplinegetPos(blabla). 3.MaxGUI |
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| teamonkey, no. I'm talking about providing functionality that games need. For example, image buffers. OpenGL wasn't exactly thinking ahead about being used in games when it didn't have imagebuffers readily available in early versions, or easy access to the backbuffer directly in video memory, etc. Seems directX was designed more with that in mind. |
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| wishlist * Convert existing full fmod module to mac and linux. Get windows version here: http://www.sherrox.com/Fmod3_74_BlitzMax.rar * Max3D to support DX7 fallback * Multiple mice support under windows and mac (possible using rawmouse on xp and something else on mac - it's been achieved by a few people, c++ though) * a nice cup of tea * |
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| I'd like to see an old style audio module for making chip music (like c64 etc.) |
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| 1) Finish what you're working and on do some more work on the documentation before starting anything new. 2) GUI Module *Threads would be wounderful! Could start with a simple way to run code while loading images and sound. Big vote from me too! |
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| Threads are really only going to be killer when you're making a Max3D game or a cpu intensive app... Do you know why? Well, nearly every new chip from now will feature more than one core. AMD already have begun to move their entire line over to dual core processing - even the knock down semprons will be dual core! The real power is of course, one thread will be executed on one core, and if you code your threads really well, you're looking at a two fold speed increase therabouts. And thats whats quite exciting for a future generation of applications. The future of app and intensive game design is definately dual core. Course, it has almost no benefit for everyday games and apps... a loading screen will sometimes still halt and pause under multithreading because of the HD, single core, etc... No doubt I'll get lynched by flameduck or dreamora around about now. |
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| I agree with ya Fish. Id love BRL Supported threading as well as dll support. would be real handy to create my own DLL's |
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| revised wishlist. 1. Max3D with ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) Module 2. MaxGUI 3. Maplet II 4. FMOD brl release |
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| Embedded support for ARM MIDI Accurate high res timers MAXGUI (but we all know thats on its way) |
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| "Cross platform full printer support. With the ability to save/preview/render to screen the printers output. Also a way to direct all drawing/image commands to the printer output rather than the screen." -Mystik I'm with Mystik on the printer thingy, especially the last bit about draw/image commands directly to the printer or maybe draw to a printer buffer and then print the buffer. BlitzGUI and Blitz3D are up there amongst features I'm waiting for. James |
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| Talking about printing, I'm going to be annoying and bump this topic <cough>ImageBuffers</cough>. No, really, you don't need a printer buffer, just an image buffer should do, draw to it whatever you want and then print the image. Would be nice if MaxGUI is capable of drawing it's gadgets/windows/etc to an image too. *Even if* ImageBuffers would require a large bump to the version of OpenGL that is used in Max2D - if it's somehow kept optional there shouldn't be a problem... What version did pBuffers get standardised in? There's absolutely no reason why the DX module can't support this -right now-, as good old BB/B3D proved. It's just OpenGL standing in everyone's way. Why was 1.2 settled on anyway? Why not 1.0, while we're being archaic? =] |
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| Don't know if it would be a module, but a better debugger would be great. |
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| what i need is a cairo-module i don't know why, but i was not able to compile the c-sources to obj-files :-/ http://cairographics.org/introduction |
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| * An official input command for graphics mode. EX: Name$ = GInput( "Enter your Name: ", 10,10 ) Would decrease the EXTRA code required for every basic example that requires more detailed input than just bare keys. And this can't take Mark more than ~3 minutes to implement. |
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| Imagebuffers Graphical Input 2D Particles with editor 2D Light/Soft Shadows 2D Map Editor and handling 2D Physics (I realise people are working/have produced some of these but it doesn't say 'official mods' although that would be nice). |
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| An official input command for graphics mode. Why? |
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| An official input command for graphics mode. We covered that one in another thread |
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| Why? It's annoying to tell everyone who wish to try a simple simple graphics demo that they need to install a module from the code archive or paste a page of code into the demo - just to make a basic thing like this work! It just doesn't make sense. If you have BlitzMax you should have a GraphicsInput(), used when you want to test something very quick. It saves everyone some effort and time; the need to include in every file or example you do which uses lists. JimJams, please link me to that thread. |
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| i hate this blitzbasic-input-routine in blitz2d/3d/plus... they are bad - you can create much better routine itself... |
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| I'm quite happy with what B+ is today. I think what troubles me most is · Audio · Performance improvement, bugfixes, etc · macros / define preproccesor tags (really!) · threads (but not so important) and · polymorphism Although reading about the last one the other day... I guess it won't ever be included x) |
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| Add in DUMB for free mod music playback. |
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| A wrapper for this would be great: http://www.tulrich.com/geekstuff/gameswf.html ...It allows for Flash SWF files to be used as animated media within a game. Could be used for 2D character animation. All kinds of great things. |
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| - Mod playing (multi-platform) - Midi playing (multi-platform) - Saveimage in multiple formats - 'input' for graphical mode. (Yes, yes, you can do better, etc. but for basic debugging & quick tests a quick-and-dirty built-in input method is WAY preferable over not having one at all) |
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| XML brl mod |
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