BlitzPlus source now available on Github!
BlitzPlus Forums/BlitzPlus Programming/BlitzPlus source now available on Github!
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| Hi, You download the final release version of BlitzPlus from this site for free - use the registration code 'FREEBLITZPLUS' when creating an account, or add it to your existing account. Visit the Account -> Product updates page to download. The source code can be found here: https://github.com/blitz-research/blitzplus It's a MSVC 6.0 project (which I have installed on a version of XP running in vmware) but it should be possible to upgrade the non-MFC projects (ie: everything except IDE and Debugger ) to later versions of MSVC. The only major difference between this one and the commercial version is that the commercial version has fmod 'baked' in - the open source version uses fmod via DLL instead. |
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| Awesome, Thanks Mark! :) |
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| Thanks! It'll be really interesting to read this - finding out how an old friend works is always worth the time, new tech or not. |
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| Very generous Mark ;) |
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| we still count :) |
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| Fantastic news! |
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| BlitzPlus is a professional software. Will some programming experts of this forum improve BlitzPlus in the near future? Will a modified community version of BlitzPlus be released? BlitzPlus may have a new life! |
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| Will some programming experts of this forum improve BlitzPlus in the near future? Will a modified community version of BlitzPlus be released? Based on previous community collaborations? |
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| The only version of Blitz I never owned. Looks like my strategy paid off! |
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| The only version of Blitz I never owned Yeah, I've been using Blitz since the Amiga days too! :-) |
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| I've got them all, straight from the Amiga days :) |
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| Thx Mr.Sibly . |
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| Thanks for this community gift! P.S.: I didn't have the money for an Amiga, but there was Basic on the C64 as well. :) |
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| Very generous, thanks Mac. Hang in there big guy. |
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| Sorry Mark looks like everything is going tits up for you at the moment.Don`t give up guy it will all come good in the end.What with Monkey and now this.My opinion make a Blitz3D 2 or Blitzmax with 3d.You will be on a winner,PC is making a big come back at the moment.After all new consoles are PC`s now. May your new endevours grant you everything you want. |
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| @LittleDave: At exactly which point did Mark even suggest that anything has gone "tits up"? :-/ |
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| His blog post. |
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| Very nice. Great work. |
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| The only version of Blitz I never owned. Looks like my strategy paid off! Yep me too! Just how i planned it!!!!! Wait a minute...not sure if i really did bought it or not.... |
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| Just read the blog post... And, can agree, no wonder Mr Sibly is burnt out, especially after all the work he's chucked into Monkey, and the broad range of platforms it targets. Without sounding like I'm repeating myself, I still dont know why he doesnt use services such as kickstarter and the like to get a boost on what we now know is monkey2. Established developers use these services, why cannot he? Dabz |
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| Now that the source for BlitzPlus is available to everyone, I'm keenly awaiting the first bugfix release from "the community", who are always so vocal about there not being enough bugfixes. Go community! :o) |
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| Cheers for the source, looks good - I have had a quick gander at it already. May come in handy, may not but will give me a good idea on how blitz is structured which is always useful to know. I'm not reassured to know that things are not great for Monkey. It's a shame really, I have to say personally that it's not my thing - for I'm not much into tablets; I'm more of a traditional PC bloke. But I can totally understand there must be a very good market out there for it, it's the thing of today. Shame Monkey apparently is not getting the press it deserves; for I'm sure the ground it covers must be as vast as with the previous BR releases. Stiff upper lip, and all the best to you Mark in any case. I have been a blitz follower ever since I bought BB for the Amiga and was so glad it came out for PC years later. I'd be sad to see BR let it all go. Must say, from a programming point of view I would definatly like to see B3D's code released but that would mean you wouldn't sell it anymore. Don't burn your bridges if you don't have to. As you may or may not know, I have been working on a dx9 /dx11 version of b3d for the past six months (Called 'hardwired' - link below). I have got pretty far with it so far, and have covered many b3d commands. If ever I get to a complete and stable state with this project, and if it interests you of course you could always think about integrating this into b3d to give it a new facelift. If it could bring new life into b3d sales. This would be much more enticing to potential programmers than to stick with just directx 7 capabilities. Be great to see an update of this kind to your site in any case. This couldn't harm BR's survival. Link to my userlib... http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=102259 If ever you think that this could be a feasable idea, please let me know, I'd be more than happy to work with you on this one. In any case, as a loyal blitz user for many a year I hate to see things not going so well for monkey. Hope things turn around for you.... |
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| Hi guys, I don't understand why Mark doesn't have a donate link on his websites, is there one? I have wondered this for a long time. I appreciate the work that is done on the updates and when I download a new one I'd happily chip in a few pounds/dollars or whatever is slushing around in my paypal account. Maybe it wouldn't generate huge amounts of funding, but surely everything helps out with the bills.. Thoughts? |
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| Thanks Mark. |
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| Quick! Somebody stick Ploppy's 3d engine in it! |
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| lol Brucey! |
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| Awesome move, Mark. Thanks a million! |
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| @Brucey, Wiebo, GaryV, etc. I for one am already putting together a to-do list (first item: "build with GCC") and have every intention of hacking on this wonderful new toy. That's not a promise to care about bugfixes (and don't hold your breath), but if it makes "the community" happy to hear that even one person is actually looking at it, well... |
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| Being a Windows-oriented language, it doesn't hold particular interest for me, but it's nice to see something open up and become available for others to tinker with. Meanwhile I'll be keeping my head buried in my own little open project :-) |
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| Yasha: The long-standing OpenGL bug would be a welcome fix. |
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| Wow, thank you Mr Sibly, had a quick look, I will enjoy learning from you! This was the only product I didn't buy, proud owner of Blitz3D, BlitzMax and Monkey :) |
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| Thanks Mark, very interesting move. About Ploppy: hire him please.. And: I'm an early adopter of the Amiga BlitzBasic 2.1 too(purchased way way back, can see it standing proudly on my bookshelve from here). It filled a hole AmigaBasic just couldn't fill, when compared to the earlier Commodore BASIC on the C64. It brought back power to the user on the Amiga. Just like that Blitz3D gave powerful and easy (3D)game programming power straight from the box to the PC, a feature that was very much missed there. (just purchased it rightnow to support the good cause) Basic4Android is now gaining lots of interest cos of the same reason and one can try out the (game)programming on the Android platform straight from the box there too. IMHO people get hooked when they see how easy it is to code something interesting and powerful on the most popular platform(s), in this case for Android, a hot and booming platform(I know cos I purchased B4A too). If BRL could do the same for Monkey I'd love to try it out(and I'm sure many others) and likely purchase it if has comparable powerful features (a big plus is the multi-platform ability ). Rightnow the Monkey trial appears a bit useless if Android is your field of interest(cant try before buy). Of course HTML5 is also cool, but I think a potential huge market is being lost here by this limitation. I would propose to install a 14 day trial limit to try Monkey on Android and iphone just to get people hooked. Also a 3D engine would make a big hit out of it, cos most phones and tablets are perfectly capable of running 3D games(I have a few really good ones installed on my S3). They are the handheld consoles of the future I dare bet. PSP and NDS will be/are loosing ground rapidly. |
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| Thanks Mark! |
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| 29 years? OMFG! I still have my Blitz Basic 2 disks (and B.U.M. magazine!) from my first version of Blitz! I miss those B.U.M.s... Anyway, I think Kickstarter is a great idea, especially since you have a 'mostly-complete' product (Monkey) to offer. When people learn that they can (fairly) easily code for iOS and Android, etc they may be interested...Even heretofore non-programmers. Also, didn't you write 'Skidmarks' all those years ago? Problem is, if you wanted to write a game to sell, you'd have to devote a lot of time to it, which has its own problems. Finally, although IDG did you wrong, knowing what you know now you could enter into a relationship with another entity that could give you some much-needed breathing room to further develop Monkey (or 'Monkey 2'). Good luck in whatever you choose to do! Sincerely, Russell Jones, Florida USA |
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| Thank you so much. This is so awesome. Now I can have a look how a real compiler is structured :D and learn something that goes deeper. Thank you so much. |
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| If you want to learn more about compilers, check out http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=51 Mark posted it long ago and I was very fascinated by it. (make sure to view the source - not all of the code shows on the page) |
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| This is great news and sad news at the same time. I have to agree with a few people in the thread, it is Blitz3D you should develop further. I program several languages but I always come back to Blitz3D for quick projects, ...and larger ones. It is so incredibly easy accessable and it just works! I also believe that the majority of your fans appreciate this simple approach that Blitz3D provides. From first download to some cool stuff happening on the screen there's just minutes. That is unique. Many also go long way back and fancy procedural programming (I do) more than object-based (but keep types, they are great). But above all, the easy (accessable) commands and syntax are the genious of Blitz3D IMHO. I have tried a lot of the other "basic"-varieties out there, they're all shit compared to Blitz3D. And that's a fact. iOS/Android addons to Blitz3D would be AWESOME for oldtimers like me. I'd be producing stuff like Flappy Bird with my eyes closed. In fact, I personally would buy Blitz3D 2 the very second it was released, hands down, even if it were like $500, or even more. How about a Blitz3D 2 project on Kickstarter? Count me in! |
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| Now I remember, Blitz3D also had an excellent, category and A-Z search of all 2D and 3D commands right in the IDE. That was also one of Blitz3D's good points. Simple to ease, and very easy to access help (often with copy and paste samples which worked right out of the help area) |
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| I totally agree, Blitz3d is for me the flagship of all Mark's accomplishments. I have, like many others, been waiting many years for a follow up to Blitz3d and would have gladly gladly paid to have all that additional render power. But it seems that this is not blr's goal. If it is however somthing BLR would think about doing I'm sorry (and I do not wish to sound pretentious in any way, and I may regret saying this), but they may have missed the boat with a new flagship. Unless blitz research comes up with something phenomenally groundbreaking there will be not much point in doing so. It is taking me some time but I'm well on my way to making a dx9 and dx11 version of b3d with extra bits thrown into the bundle. And once I get my hands on a 64-bit machine I'll release a 64-bit version of my dll too. I am not the only one with a userlib on the way either. Aqualung equally has a very good wrapper available too. So I can't after all this help thinking that Mark really has missed out on an opportunity. On the other hand, much respect goes to Mark for following his feelings on where to go with his projects.. |
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| Keep in mind that different people have different needs/wishes -- just because some of you are DIEING for a B3D-like 3D engine, personally I couldn't give half a hoot about whether or not a language does 3D -- for me 2D (or at least 2D-in-3D) is where it's at. You can't assume eveyone will rush to knock the door down when you're favorite feature(s) get supported. |
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| You can't assume eveyone will rush to knock the door down when you're favorite feature(s) get supported. They sure aren't rushing to knock the door down for the current features of Monkey. Perhaps it is time to expand the horizons a bit. Not many seem interested in a 2D only Monkey. |
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| @ENAY Blitz3D also had an excellent, category and A-Z search of all 2D and 3D commands right in the IDE. That was also one of Blitz3D's good points. Simple to ease, and very easy to access help (often with copy and paste samples which worked right out of the help area) Its still there ;) And it works very well. I'd go as far to say B3D could have another outing in Blitz Format - if it ain't broke why fix it. With all the physics extensions that are available to Blitz3D (JV-ODE is still outstanding) there is more than enough coding examples to cut your teeth on within the forums for an Indie. Happy coding folks ;) |
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| How about a Blitz3D 2 project on Kickstarter? that would be great idea to see if is success fundings or not and I for one would back it :) |
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| Its still there ;) And it works very well. I'd go as far to say B3D could have another outing in Blitz Format - if it ain't broke why fix it. Of course it is, that's because it's offline. An online sort of help, with links and stuff, but offline. Those were the days. I did notice that although there were some for Blitz+, they were really starting to lack. |
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| Beautiful code! AND "K&R" brace style... Wonderful! :-) |
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| Thanks for the BlitzPlus. But i would prefer to get new version of Blitz3D (not for free of course). I tried the Monkey, but it just isn't the language for me. I am doing programing in my spare time, not to make money or get reach etc., just for fun and need something where i can come back after 2 months or so and start coding. Blitz3D is perfect for that, but Monkey is just way to complex for someone like me. OK, lots of people have for sure other needs, but i am also pretty sure that Blitz3D market is still much bigger than Monkey. In other words, I would immediately buy Blitz3D 2 or donate you money to show that I appreciate your work. I even bought BlitzMax to support you, but have no time to properly learn it. So, I am using Blitz3D. Sure, i have money to buy Monkey, but I (and lot of others, i guess) would prefer to have your appreciated resources focused on Blitz3D. Once you have enough money, you can point your forces and knowledge back on Monkey (2) and all the things you love about it so much. Sounds like a clear business plan ;-) Greetings from Switzerland, good luck and success! MZ |
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| I cant face b3d anymore. The lack of garbage collection and having to manage memory myself...ugh yuck. Cant go back to such a language. |
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| Interesting discovery I made a while back: B3D/+ actually have a primitive version of Max's RC-based garbage collector built-in working behind the scenes; it can be re-enabled for user code with a minimal amount of hacking. Of course there are various other language-level problems that will then get in your way if you try to do much fun stuff with that, but it's interesting to know. |
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| For me the problem with b3d is the fact that it's very hard to do OOP. Considering that I was exclusively a procedural programmer until about ten years ago it's amazing how OOP has become something I can't live without. I can feel the same thing happening with LISP... |
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| I love me some Blitz Research! Blitz Research makes the BEST game making products for "skilled" developers. The Blitz tools are well worth the price. :D I bought BlitzMax first, after "trying" the demo for 3 years. I was not disappointed in the least! I still use it today for every app I can think of. Mostly for platformer/shmup/FPS level editors and to grow my small indie game business. Got Blitz3d a year later. Was not disappointed, even with the lack of flexbility BlitzMax had. It's still a great tool for 3D games on Windows desktops, because of its ease of use, heavy documentation and incredible power hidden underneath. Most people don't know how good they have it, when it comes to getting a 3D game up and running in 2 minutes from less than 6 lines of code anyone can read. And the limitations of the product aren't even apparent at the time! It's VERY flexible. I don't think any product has balanced language flexibility, ease of deployment and graphical quality so well like what Blitz3d has, and no one probably will for the next 10 years. This is coming from someone who's tried nearly every 3D game making software on the market. Nothing beats Blitz3D. And the community's great too(very smart folks)! :) I got Monkey as well, expecting it to work like past Blitz products, or at least be more stable. I hate to say it, but I was VERY disappointed with this product. :( First of all, there's a lot of code "catches" that annoyed even myself, a veteran game programmer of 13+ years. It's very annoying having to run throughout the source, and patching up the product before you even deploy a game. That is, IF you can deploy it! I can only run HTML5 apps. No other targets, even when I've followed all directions, and set things up PERFECTLY! Really bums me out when I can deploy using FlashDevelop/VSC# 2010, but not deploy C#/Flash apps using Monkey on the same machine. Monkey just has too many problems to be worth the $99 USD. At its current state, it's an alpha at best. Charging so much for alphas is not a good PR strategy. If I'M annoyed at how terrible(IMHO) Monkey is, just imagine what someone less skilled than me is gonna say if they encounter all those issues! And then the customer support is downright awful? Yeah, they're not gonna be very happy at all. Personally Mr. Sibly, I'd highly recommend you start small and iterate more, and focus on the [long-standing]community's wishes. Many of these guys have GREAT ideas! You can make money from them! They're asking you to take their money! I wish I had passionate customers like that. ^_^ You're right Mark, I would've bought bigger and better versions of BlitzMax/Blitz3D, and I'd STILL use the old products I bought! Because I'm a fan of Blitz Research. I know you have your dreams, but I learned in university/life, that a good business needs guaranteed money-making strategies - exploiting your customers as much as they want. It doesn't need your dreams. The dreams can be used when you start making the BIG BUCKS! |
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| .... |
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| Love the B+ code...not only works well...the source code itself is indeed a "work of art"! Thanks for this, Mark. I normally don't post anything in these groups. I generally just do my personal programming (in a variety of languages including Blitz) and keep silent, but this gift is superb and worthy of comment. Most of the programming I do is for personal scientific applications with fairly robust graphics for visualization (Fourier, Schrodinger, Relativity-Lorentz Transforms etc.). As such, most people would likely find anything I do excruciatingly boring and probably not be very interested in it (which is one reason I am not highly active in these groups). I have not had time for games (at least right now). But I have found that code development with Blitz is very fast. It takes just a few lines of code to do what could take a couple of pages in C++. (Note, however, that I have never used Monkey). So...for the future, I would love to see continued development of B+, Bmax and B3D so we can continue to use them as future OS's and graphics technologies emerge. I program almost exclusively in Windows, and worry that it won't be too long and maybe I will just have to rely on C++ (or C#) for development. Anyway, whatever makes the business work is what must be done. It's just that I'd hate to see B+, Bmax and B3D fade away as OS's change. I would be so happy to see continued support and enhancements of these products in the future. In the mean time, my 99E+13 thanks to you Mark for these products and for releasing the source code to B+. I wish you all the best and really appreciate what you have done for the programming world...whether it be games...or anything else! T |
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| BlitzPlus open source this is amazing thank you |
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| Has there been any new compiles of the blitzplus code? I find my blitzplus programs use only 1 CPU on my 2015 quadcore PC. I'm guessing that without changing any of the source code, a compile with a modern C++ compiler would utilize 4 CPUs for a +300% speed increase. |
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| Blitzplus is single-threaded -- to use multiple cores you'll not only need to add multi-threading support to blitzplus itself, but you would also need to (re)write your own sourcecode to make use of multiple threads which is a pretty complex endeavour. Short version: unlikely to happen given that Blitzplus isn't actively developed anymore by its creator, and others are more focused on Blitzmax which is a more advanced language and also open source. |
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| ok. I didn't know much about multi - threading, but I was guessing \ hoping a smart modern compiler would have a few tricks to auto convert \ simulate a single thread over 4 CPUs for a speed boost. |
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| Nope... |
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