What's this BlitzMax Thing?
Monkey Archive Forums/Digital Discussion/What's this BlitzMax Thing?
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| I hear BlitzMax mentioned here quite often, so I ventured over to the web site to check it out. Looks like a nice product! Funny thing was seeing all these familiar names over there in the forums! :-D So, should I get BlitzMax, or would I never have a need for it if I'm just doing monkey targets? |
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| You could have opened a can of worms here. Just look at the Blitz3D vs BlitzMax posts over on the blitzbacsic community posts. But in general if you main interest is in multiple targets then just stick with Monkey as BlitzMax is solely only used on the x86 versions of Windows, OS X and Linux. You will also find that BlitzMax is hardly getting any updates any more. Though BMax does come in handy is you want to write development tools for example level editors. |
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| Lol, Ah BlitzMax, how sweet thou were! IMHO, monkey will consume blitzmax. |
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| Monkey is the latest in a long long (long!) line of languages from Mark Sibly/Blitz Research dating as far back as 8-bit computers. AFAIK it's actually the first one that isn't a "Blitz" named language. Maybe Mark wanted to get away from the "Basic" connotations that Blitz had become attached to. Not sure. Either way BlitzMax is pre-Monkey, and Blitz3D is pre-BlitzMax. Each one gets built up as far as it can go, before Mark plunges head first into a whole new area. When his new language is still new, the old one seems "Fully Featured!" and the new one seems "A bit iffy.. why does it not do X/Y/Z?", but that's only because it's not finished yet! Monkey's been worked on for a good few years, now, and so has been built up to a relatively high standard. It's usually at this point that Mark applauds himself, and starts work on something new, but given the insane amount of updates he's been working on lately, I think he might've finally found a project he's actually liking! |
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| I also think that monkey will and in a lot of regards already hass surpassed BlitzMax, but what Max has over monkey and will continue to have over monkey for some time to come is a vast vault full of community content, code, modules, and god knows what else. Monkey is growing in the modules department, which is really cool but its got a long way to go before its close to having the same amount of support that Max has, when it comes to community content. I think it boils down to the money, if your in a good job and have spare cash that you wont miss, then buy it, it's definitely a good product and one you will enjoy working with, but if your cash flow is tight then stick with monkey. |
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| You will also find that BlitzMax is hardly getting any updates any more That may be the case, but it is very well supported by Brucey's fantastic modules, as well as many many others, and has proven itself time and again to be capable of producing top-selling games.If Windows/Mac/Linux is your thing, you won't go far wrong with Blitzmax. |
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| I used to use blitzmax but I switched to monkey when it came out, with no regrets |
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| BMax still has some good features that are missing in Monkey but it's got less over time. incbin would be nice for starters.. and a Direct X target ;) |
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| AFAIK both XNA and Win8 are DX based |
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| BM is a lovely language but I feel Monkey is the future. |
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| I own both monkey and BlitzMax monkey is better for mobile and consoles. BlitzMax is better for desktops. It really depends on what your shooting for. But I still favor monkey over BlitzMax because BlitzMax is a (mostly) dead product, with no AppStore-ready Windows 8 store target. Eventually the Mac and Linux games won't be AppStore-ready because these AppStores are getting new standards and rules for app submissions like nobody's business. It's only a matter of time that the BlitzMax, its games, and its active users will slowly fade away. But what I really hope is that all those users won't leave blitz research all together but rather head over here, buy monkey and be a new part of its community. In conclusion, monkey is more worth it in the long run. Time Killer Games Productions |
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| I feel for monkey to succeed it needs to be completely robust, for this to happen it needs to compile perfectly for all targets and options it has without fail. I know that quite a lot of the time its down to the coder to sort the problems out BUT there are some cases where a simple step by step help system to get something installed and running wouldnt go amiss. For example getting MinGW working on windows with monkey isnt a simple case of installing it in some cases as I have found out, yeah it works 75% of the time but there are some instances where it will fall over completely making compilation impossible. On the laptop I own (Clevo M76T, 2Gb ram, Vista Ultimate), I cannot install VC++ Express 2010 as it gets to 81% and fails the install I have checked with Microsoft on this and get told 'upgrade to windows 8 as it seems to be a problem with the laptop', Once again if we are to use every platform perfectly we need a help system that will not only point us to things to be installed by guide us through the pitfalls of the installation so the end result is a rock solid system. Without this people will look to other systems and ultimately will go to them, I for one like using monkey as its getting more and more the feel of coding in BlitzMax everyday but getting the system to compile sometimes can be a right pain in the butt. |
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| To be fair, I'd pin the blame on MS or your laptop here. Probably the laptop. |
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| The thing about getting it to compile first time, every time, on any platform it VERY hard to do especially when you are relying on a third party for your compilers. I have had MinGW just hang a couple of times but its nothing that the task manager cant sort out. Even using something supposedly more "pro" like Marmalade, which is way more expensive than Monkey for less targets, is fraught with problems, problems that cant always be worked around. And if you think Mark is absent from this forum a lot of the time you should try and get a response from those guys. Sorry, a long weekend of problems. |
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| @Gerry: I installed Vista (stop shuddering at the back) and I have managed to get it to compile now, as stated in some cases its down to the user but there are some instances where a good guide never hurt anyone. I do agree that not all dev packages are perfect, Unity for one has 'issues' with flash keys and external USB drives (the constant reloading of data problem for one) so nothing is perfect. |
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| Future is OOP As future is Monkey. |
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