Is it worth upgrading to BlitzPlus?
BlitzPlus Forums/BlitzPlus Programming/Is it worth upgrading to BlitzPlus?
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| Hello, I bought Blitz Basic a while ago and have come back to the site for an update (since BB thinks that IE 6 is to old a version of IE and recommends me to "upgrade" to IE 4) and have seen that it's been scrapped and replaced in favour of Blitz+ (which looks nice). Some questions though: 1. Is there a special upgrade offer for those of us who bought Blitz2D? 2. Can B+ support variables defined within a function? (I hate declaring everything as global) [correction: it wasn't local vars but something else, I think what C calls structs - it's been a while) 3. Does the manual on B+ not suck? BB had a thin pamphlet which was pretty useless (although the online docs weren't bad). 4. Will the command structure for B+ not change so drastically as it did with BB? For example, nearly all of the BB demos on the CD don't work with the v1.80 update because the syntax has changed dramatically. 5. Can I set the icon for the exe in B+? 6. Can I embed files, sounds and other resources into a B+ program without resorting to loading them externally? I'd like to give out one file and not have to couple it with 30 additional files for all the other elements. (I know there is some code to encode the content as Base64 and then decompress it from the source - but it's rather hacky). 7. Anything else I should know that would sway me to cough up the money? I know it works on older versions of DirectX (no big deal for me, BB worked on DirectX 5 and most people have that) and it's a little faster (which is fine) and you have the windows gui interface (which will be very useful for certain things - say screensavers, but not much else. Might as well use VB6 for completely GUI applications - it's far more powerful) ... is that it? |
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| 1. No. 2. Er, yes, but so can BlitzBasic (assuming you mean Local vars, that is). 3. It doesn't come as a boxed version - download only. But the help reference always feels like a bit of an afterthought, to me. 4. Who knows? I wasn't aware of there ever being any earth-shattering changes to Blitz2D anyway? 5. No. Still have to use ResHack. 6. No. 7. That's about "it", yes. Except that the original Blitz required DirectX7 or higher, not DX5. Oh, and you can load images in to system memory instead of V-RAM now. Worth upgrading? I don't know. For me personally, no (even though I did). Depends what you're planning to do with it really. |
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| I've not got B+ however: 1. There was... Don't think it's still available though 2. Yes, as could BB2D. 3. B+ Manual... I don't think there is one. 4. The way B+ works is quite different from BB2D as it is event driven now, however, from what I hear you don't need to do major modifications to get your old BB2D stuff working. 5. Not natively, you've still got to reshack. 6. No 7. The GUI thing is the biggy, I would argue that VB would be handy for some applications, however, blitz is far more powerful on the graphical commands so more graphical based apps may be better on B+. Oh, and the fact that it works with Direct Draw rather than DX means that it stuff will run on NT machines. [edit: posted at the same time!] |
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| Thanks! I do remember some type not being able to be defined locally. I have a horrible feeling it was actually the Blitz equivilant of C structs. Do you know if thats fixed? Otherwise, with the exception of the Windows GUI option there seems to be no good reason to update. |
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| I do remember some type not being able to be defined locally Well you can't define local arrays.... |
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| In that case, there appears to be absolutely no compelling reason to migrate to BlitzPlus. Many thanks for all your comments! |
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| ralawrence - I believe you mean static variables? BlitzPlus can't do that. If you are releasing your games, I would probably reccommend BlitzPlus (DirectX 7 isn't a healthy requirement), otherwise there probably isn't any compelling reason to migrate to BlitzPlus. |
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Hmm, you can define local arrays, or am I getting the wrong end of the stick here?
function Thingy()
local testArray[10]
testArray[1] = 1010
return testArray[1]
end function
This will return 1010. You just need to use the square brackets. EDIT: Now I see the problem - you can't create a variable size array, eg "local testArray[numberOfElements]" won't work unless numberOfElements is a const. Oh well. By the way, I didn't think you could change to icon in a B+ app at all. |
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| What about custom types within a function? IIRC in BB you could only define the custom type globally. |
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| You can define them in a function, though they will be globally accessible, if that makes any sense. in other words.
doThing()
for x.Blah = each Blah
print x\Name$
next
function doThing()
local b.Blah = new Blah
b\Name$ = "Sausage"
end function
Will allow access to the type you created in the function. As for replacing icons, just found this little gem : http://www.miharemec.com/tools.html#ReplaceIcon |
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| It should be noted that the replaceIcon program does not work under win9x/ME |
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| Is it worth upgrading to BlitzPlus? Yes. :) Seriously. |
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| Don't forget userlib support, including ones for openGL etc. |
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| If you need windows gadgets at all then its a big YES! If you want to make console apps then yes If you want updates to the product... then yes.. (I think Idigicon owns Blitzbasic distribution so I cant see Mark going out of his way to work on it now that Idigicon is out of the picture) Im sure there are other optimizations as well... so yes. On the flip side, I'm not sure how far off BlitzMax is... so patience might be a virtue... but if you're like me and have a few extra bucks hangin around be impatient and support Mark in his efforts and upgrade ;) plus I needed the native GUI support :) Skully |
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| Perturbatio: Yeah, should have mentioned that. It's still a nice prog though and I'm sure there must be a commandline icon replacing thing for WinME and Win98 users. |
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| IMHO it's definately worth it. |
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| Blitz BASIC only uses DX. Blitz Plus has support built in for DX, OGL, and software rendering. Its worth it just for the speed and to be able to use OpenGL for 2D and get rid of DX and all the problems it brings. |
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| OpenGL for 2D and get rid of DX and all the problems it brings. Erm, what? |
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| From what I've heard most of the commands in B+ are the same as BB2D. In other words, the commands are the same apart from new ones which have been added. In that respect you can port over your BB2D programmes without having to change them. Am I right? I don't B+ it myself and seeing as I'm mid-project this would be a defining factor in me getting it. |
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| Erm, what? We went thourgh this in another thread and it seems way over your head? Simplified... DX related issues (like recent issues with many Nvidia drivers that are DX related) do NOT hamper your product when you are not using DX. Stability IS a good thing, trust me ;c) |
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| We went thourgh this in another thread and it seems way over your head? Simplified... DX related issues (like recent issues with many Nvidia drivers that are DX related) do NOT hamper your product when you are not using DX. Stability IS a good thing, trust me ;c) Don't listen to him. Use DirectX, not OpenGL. |
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| What is Blitz Max? I did a search on the forum and found one thread moaning about people talking about it ("NO MORE BLITZ MAX DISCUSSIONS PLEASE" or something like that). Details seem to be a tad sketchy. Can anyone point me to some information about this? I appreciate that it might be rumour and a release date is unconfirmed - but I'm interested to hear anything that anyone has. |
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| Combo of Blitz3D and BlitzPlus. There is no release date and no point in waiting for it until it's finished (if ever). Mark Sibly has three programs (B3D, B+, Maplet) that he has to provide updates for as well as trying to come out with a new compiler (BMax). |
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| Take another tack -- everytime he works on BlitzPlus, he's working on BlitzMax, because the BlitzPlus compiler is the basis for BlitzMax... It's a little more optimistic that way anyway =) |
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