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Geek Culture / every 1 goin blitz

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WOLFY
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Posted: 10th Jul 2003 22:05
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There is plenty of information available to make an educated decision as to which language will suit you better. Both have demos available, and both have tons of examples.

Both languages also have their downfalls. Blitz3d is not being developed further (or dosn't seem to be) and DBpro is buggy. Everyone knows that. It is dumb to sit and knock one language because you use another one. They are both capable. Both have excellent things written with them. So, both must be a good decision.

HOOOWWWLLL!!!
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Falelorn
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Posted: 10th Jul 2003 22:07
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I tried Blitz and DBPro / DB before making my choice.

I think Blitz is easier to use, not by much tho.

But the main reason I went with DBPro is the community. Its one of the best communities I have seen, almost everyone is helpful, and nice.

But I have to agree that, the skill of the developer or team is what will be a great game. You could make a SIMs game with DBPro, and sell 10 million copies (tho im not sure why people like the Sims but more power to you), or you could make the worst game ever with the most powerful game development tool out there. Im sure we all have seen some crap games in our local stores.
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haggisman
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 00:19 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 00:20
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Quote: " Cubemapping has been a built in feature of DBP for ages true, but does it ACTUALLY work and how long has it been working correctly?
"


It worked on release day and ever since here, and guess what it even works in 16bit mode unlike another softwares attempt at cube mapping.

project: light/obscurance mapper (85% done)
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Kentaree
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 00:56
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I'd say Dead Glory would count pretty highly aswell, dont you agree?

Whatever I did I didn't do it!
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Flashing Blade
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 00:58
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If you go here:

www.retro64.com

I do believe all their games were done with blitz3d. These are the sort of thing I wanna achieve fun/good looking games.

I have DBP and I aint gonna spend money on another programing language.
My point? No point - just wondering if any of you have played buggatron - how do they make the ships shine metalic like. 'cus i wanna do pseudo 2d/3d shoot 'em up and i want shiny things too.
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Kanzure
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 01:17
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iBasic? Never heard of that one.

Has anybody tried YaBASIC? Its a *GREAT* open source BASIC language in C...Unfortunatly I can't compile it because its in Visual C++..Oh well. It has very nice commands for making windows for windows & etc...

~Morph/Kanzure
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Dazzag
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 01:21
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Wow, takes a lot longer these days before someone asks what the point of these arguments are. Maybe cos both languages cost more now. Dunno.

I was always in the buy both camp. Which I did. Several times. Personally I prefer DB. But mainly because I prefer the syntax. And back in 2000 it was the first thing I had seen on the PC that reminded me of STOS (after DIV - but come on).

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
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Rob K
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 02:15
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Cube mapping works fine and has done since day one.

It is perfectly possible to do your morph demo with a .X object. However there is a critical issue with CHANGE MESH, which can cause problems after prolonged use.

I'm not going to defend DBP here, that is lamentable.

The point is that since P4.1, it is pretty stable and hasn't had very many problems IME. With U5 it should be perfectly suitable for making commercial games.

Blitz is pretty good, apart from the HUGE loading times.

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Joeyjoejoe Shabadoo
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 02:41
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If you want to show that DB is better than BB then make a great game showing off all of these features, after all Van B said that it was the flashy games that people like to see not crummy applications (like tech demos).
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Rob K
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 03:32
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Theory and practise are two very different things. Proper games take a long time to create, and if I started now, you definately wouldn't see anything before October. Learning 3D modelling from A to Z is my next task - and it isn't a five minute job, but the ability to create your own media is essential.

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Mattman
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 03:46
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ya, modelling is tough. i just started muy first object (other than a cube ) and it's tough

---Mattman
DID YOU KNOW THAT ???
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8truths
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 04:13
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Modeling is tough -- understatement of the year.

Wait til you try that first human!

We can't stop here! This is bat country!
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Mattman
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 04:22
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thats what i'm doin!!!

---Mattman
DID YOU KNOW THAT ???
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Rob K
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 04:24
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I can throw a model together which is fine for testing / coding purposes, but I want to move on to making a model which will actually look good in a real game.

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Puffy
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 05:19
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Yo DarkHeart... =\ I'm making a plugin for DBPRo, Blitz, DBC and really any language that con process a dll... theres only one problem right now with the Blitz... o_O Why can't it send the dll more than 1 parameter.... ^_^ I know a very easy way to get around this but I was just wondering if someone made something to do it for me... ???

EVERYONE LOVES THE PUFF!... =\
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 05:44 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 05:46
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Quote: "Yes..Wolf..but..the real thing here is who gets the money ^_^..and who gets more outta teh money :p!"


DarkBASIC & DarkBASIC Pro outsell Blitz2D/Blitz3D/BlitzPlus 10:1 ... this might be more because DB isn't stucks only with a single publisher who doesn't appear to be too good at advertisement or retail - but still the fact remains that DBS has a far larger customer base as is also used as an educational tool within quite a few highschools and colleges now (from what i hear atleast)

you want a simple examply of realtime Mesh Deformation in DBP



i don't see that being particularly difficult and actually ou can achieve that just as easily within DarkBASIC Enhanced 1.1x

one thing Blitz3D doesn't have that DBP does and thats shaders... also the plugin ability is very convoluted making upgrading the language to suit your needs (more of a professional need but good none the less) - i doubt i could achieve the same thing as what my mipmap terrain plugin can do for Blitz, mainly because i can't actually access the engine directly in Blitz.

and before your wondering that tiney tech demo took me all of 3mins to create... given time i could create a sphere that has a water effect scrolling down with environmental reflections if you like (and REAL reflections not just the spheremapping).

i don't really give a poop which language is better, i know that Blitz is good and powerful for what it is - but it just isn't a system that i like to use.

[edit-]
lol didnt' see the second page

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Puffy
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 06:27
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o_O I noticed... your morphing demo thingy doesnt work for me... =\

EVERYONE LOVES THE PUFF!... =\
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DMXtra
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 10:44
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There have been Blitz coders moved to DBPro as well and I have seen their work.

I have already owned Blitz 3D for two years and without the community, Blitz wouldn't have gone anywhere. Blitz 3D is nice if you want to write games from 4-5 years ago and try to extend the engine with DLL's to get OpenGL and try to keep the dead meat a float.

Its not far from 2004 and Mark is now just adding in cube mapping for goodness sake. Cube mapping is a feature thats already been present in Direct X 7 for almost 5 years.

If you want to go backwards, by all means go nuts. Might as well get a Voodoo card while your at it so you can experience those nice graphics as well.

Blitz 3D is just not important to me anymore and I have moved on.
Its mainly just for those British Amiga users that are still bitter that the PC took over so they are spent trying to relive those days and Mark is right there with them.

who cares, its almost 2004, time to move on to more progressive things.

Dark Basic Pro -- The luxury for game programmers everywhere
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 11:13
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Quote: "Its mainly just for those British Amiga users that are still bitter that the PC took over so they are spent trying to relive those days and Mark is right there with them."


... i'm a very big British Amiga fan and Blitz doesn't spark any sort of sentiment in me at all - AMOS was the simplest and best BASIC based programming language on that machine, and DarkBASIC is simply the PC version of that.

i can't say i'm bitter that PC is bigger than Amiga now because Amiga never was AS big as the IBM-Compatible machine ever was, but even now i still do get Amigas and thier parts.
if people ars sentimental for the old days so much then they should pick up the old systems like most normal people and just have good old fun, but Amiga is so much more evolved now - especially with AmigaOS Alpha and AmigaC not to mention PureBasic.

i mean not to be funny but Blitz can look outstanding at times and with alot less effort than it takes for DBP too - especially with its softer touch rendering.

this isn't to say i'm like against DBP or anything, i'm just saying that its sickening that people feel there are real differences.
if you wanted cubemapping in Blitz3D i could've told you howto do it 3years ago, as it had the feature - it just wasn't a builtin command.

this is what really irks me about people who are all like "you must pick a side" ... its like in Jedi Knight your either a Light Jedi or a Dark Jedi they don't accept you being just a Jedi.
quite frankly thats a stupid and petty minded train of thought... yes i prefer DBP, and yes i'd love for it to show up Blitz in every possible aspect - but quite frankly if you want to sit there and talk about merits and demerits of programs your either
a) never used or
b) used but never really got good at it or even
c) were slighted and decided to use a rival out of spite

then quite frankly what the hell do you think your doing programming?
there is NO such thing as the RIGHT language, only the right language FOR YOU...

i kinda prefer Marks focus on trying to make Blitz3D more and more stable rather than more and more feature packed ...
but i also like Lee's objective to give you the most features to make the language simpler to use ...

but at the end of the day i'd prefer and upgrade which allowed me to develop my OWN upgrades and give me more REAL power than just FOR SHOW power, and i'm sure alot of programmers here, on blitz and on pb would agree with me that we want better core features suchas arrays in types over some new fangled octdecahedron mapping.
Or perhaps some actual object data pointers over a VertexBuffer Memblock.

sorry but at the end of the day what matters to me is which has the best set of types/core functions/operators that work well together and in a way that make sense to me.

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Rob K
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 12:55
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@Raven

Please don't post code unless you have tested it. A statement like GLOBAL ripple(numverts) is obviously not going to compile. The parameter syntax for WRITE MEMBLOCK FLOAT is wrong as well.

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 13:24 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 13:47
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I see more talking but no more working executeables...

Puff, your the only person that has reported that the demo doesn't work so far, I would guess it's probably due to the hardcoded 800x600x32 windowed resolution I did. This is pure laziness on my part as I didn't put any checks in to make sure the card can do that mode or check for multiple GFX adapters, I was just banking on the fact that most cards released over the last few years can do that mode. I guess maybe your a Voodoo user?

As for the loading time on the demo I think that's purely the amount of data used in this demo which breaks down like this:

There are around 4000 verts in the model.
Each vert has x,y,z,u,v,nx,ny,nz which are all floats.
There are around 3600 tris in the model (each with three points).
Each vert deforms each frame and there are 200 frames of animation each deform has x,y,z all floats again.

All this works out to around 1,250,000 individual values that have to be loaded, processed and then manipulated during the animation so it WILL take a little bit of time. However the loading time shouldn't be more than 10 seconds even on pretty slow systems. I tested it on an Athlon 500 and it took 10 seconds from start to loaded and running.

Raven if you have working executable demos, let's see them, you talk a lot about what you can do but don't produce anything to back it up.

Let's see:

1) A cubemapping demo similar to or better than Rob's.
2) A mesh deformation demo similar to or better than mine with an equvielent polycount.

You guys talk a lot of smack and push a lot of half-truths or outright untruths but when it comes to it you haven't got anything to back it up.

Blitz is still being developed, Cubemapping should be added in the next patch with a bunch of other stuff. I've yet to see a demo from any of the coders here which actually shows DBP's cubemapping working in the same way that Rob's does so DBP's cubemapping ATM is not shown as functional. One of the reasons I've never wanted to pile into DBP is that while it looks good on paper the actual useability and functionality of the product seems to be questionable and this has always pushed me away from using it.

If there's a feature listed for Blitz3D then usually you know it works!

Darkheart

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Van B
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 13:42
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One thing is for sure, we need more control over cube and sphere mapping in DBPro - it is difficult to get it looking nice, but it's so easy to use. I mean you can just load an image and SET SPHERE MAPPING ON obj,image - that's why I love DB, it's so easy.

If you want to see plain old sphere mapping on a high poly (well, 2000 polys) model, check out the media forum for my mountain bike thread (tech demo download).


Van-B

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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 13:52 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 13:59
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To enable spheremapping for a texture in Blitz you just do this:

Myhandle=LoadTexture <mytexture>,64

I don't see that being significantly more difficult, Blitz allows you to set texture attributes with bitwise flags which is handy for manipulation at runtime. Cube mapping will probably use a new value.

They can be set as follows:

1: Color (default)
2: Alpha
4: Masked
8: Mipmapped
16: Clamp U
32: Clamp V
64: Spherical reflection map
128: Cube mapping (when it comes)
256: Store texture in vram
512: Force the use of high color textures

You can also set multiple attributes simultaneously: e.g. LoadTexture <mytexture>,64+1+2 or just, LoadTexture <mytexture>,67

I find this very easy and it's a lot less verbose, one of my other bugbears with Pro is the huge number of long commands and the fact that there are over 70 "SET" commands which is a nightmare to find using the help.

The other thing that I find very restricting is having to use numbers to create objects, I just don't like that at all, if you have a big complex program with lots of objects it could get very difficult to remember what all those numbers mean unless you comment extensively.

In Blitz you can just do Sun=CreateSphere(), Moon=CreateSphere() etc. So it's very obvious what things are, it's a pain to have to remember that the Sun is object 342 and moon is 343. I bet a lot of DB coders sometimes accidently overwrite objects because they came back to their code after a while and forgot they had used a number already.

Darkheart

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Van B
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 14:11
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But using numbers allows more freedom - means we can keep track of our objects with constants, (moon=1 : MAKE OBJECT SPHERE moon,100) or with arrays and functions. It's upto the programmer to decide, they can be lazy and hope they don't lose track, or they can be careful and spend time on organising it. If I had 20 identical objects, I would'nt want to give them all names.


Van-B

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Puffy
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 14:35 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 17:38
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Quote: "I see more talking but no more working executeables...

Puff, your the only person that has reported that the demo doesn't work so far, I would guess it's probably due to the hardcoded 800x600x32 windowed resolution I did. This is pure laziness on my part as I didn't put any checks in to make sure the card can do that mode or check for multiple GFX adapters, I was just banking on the fact that most cards released over the last few years can do that mode. I guess maybe your a Voodoo user?"


LOL ... not your morphing demo.. ravens...

=\ DarkHeart you haven't answered my question... is ther any way to get Blitz3D to send more than 1 parameter to a DLL... I have the code to make my plugin work for blitz... but if I didn't have to recode everything it would be better...

EVERYONE LOVES THE PUFF!... =\
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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 14:40 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 14:52
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You don't need to name them in Blitz either, you can just create a type which holds the objects or stick them in an array.

e.g.

Type Sheep
Entity
Field Xpos#
Field Ypos#
Field Zpos#
Field Baa$
End Type

for i=1 to 20

x.Sheep=New Sheep
xEntity=CreateSheep()
xXpos#=Rnd(1,10)
xYpos#=Rnd(1,10)
xZpos#=Rnd(1,10)
xBaa$="Baa!"
Next

Etc.

This is used for particles, scenery objects or anything else where you don't want to name each rock and tree. You can do a similar thing with Arrays if you like to access your objects that way.

Puff I'm afraid I do not know the answer to your question as I don't use dll's with Blitz myself. My exporter uses a two stage process, one to export from Max and then a pure Blitz program to reencode and translate. I'm pretty sure it's possible to send mutliple parameters but you would be better asking on the Blitz forums in the userlib or Misc area. I'm sure someone has probably dealt with this a long time ago.

"LOL ... not your morphing demo.. ravens...", oh right, I don't think compiled working programs are Raven's strong point, he talks the talk but I've never seen him walk the walk. But anyone can talk smack, still he may surprise us...

Darkheart

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Rob K
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 14:54
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@DarkHeart

So that I can just get this straight.

Your app does a sin wave with each vertex and all of the sin waves are synced so that the whole object waves.

Raven's morph demo doesn't work, so I'll have a stab at it later (much later...)

I haven't done that much with real-time mesh deformation before, simply because I've found easier waves. I'll give it a go later. I'm pretty confident that DBP can do it, the challenge lies with the programmer, not the language

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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empty
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 14:56
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Quote: "
If I had 20 identical objects, I would'nt want to give them all names.
"

You could use an array for that.

I awoke in a fever. The bedclothes were all soaked in sweat.
She said "You've been having a nightmare and it's not over yet"
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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 15:05 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 15:09
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Rob K, no it doesn't just do a sine wave on a mesh, it exports ANY deforming object from 3D Studio Max with all it's smoothing groups, colours, textures, uv's, normals, etc.

So I can make anything in Max and then use it in Blitz 3D without being limited to just PRS which is all 3DS format gives you. And I'm not just trapped into using dodgy boned X format either, whatever you do in Max you can do in Blitz 3D. Cool huh?

This demo was made in about 5 minutes using the teapot primitive and the wave modifier. It was then exported and packaged which took the longest amount of time. I would very much like to be able to support Darkbasic Pro as simply put, it's more money for me, but there's no way to do this in DBP ATM without trying to do it through memblocks ATM and I don't consider this a viable route myself.

Darkheart

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Rob K
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 16:45
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Sphere mapping is nice and easy: SET SPHERE MAPPING ON object,image
Whatever people might say about the commandset being complicated, I rarely have to look up the help files for the name of the command, I just guess and usually I am right

@DarkHeart

DarkHeart, you are correct about stability it seems . Calling CHANGE MESH repeatedly causes large objects (like this) to dissappear and slowdown. If someone can find a workaround for this or show me if I have done something wrong with the code I would be most grateful. CHANGE MESH isn't a fast way of doing things either. Direct vertex manipulation (couple of months away I guess) would be quicker.

Here is an exe demo with source.

http://www.realgametools.net/forums/attachments/teapot.zip

On the plus side, you will notice that the object and image are loaded in in 140ms, thats 0.140 seconds. That is an awful lot faster than Blitz. That is without any optimisation. In the version posted, I have used memblocks to make object / image loading much quicker, down to 16ms (0.016 seconds).

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 17:08 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 17:10
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The first time it seemed to run but it was untextured and ran really slowly (15 fps), the pot doesn't seem to be really morphing but scaling. If you look at my demo you will see a different wave which travels through the pot as the waveform decays. This is much more uniform although I'm sure you could code in some decay and feedback. However the point of doing mine was so that you DON'T have to code anything, you just get it as you want it in Max then bring it in.

The second time I ran it I got an error, error 1 cannot load core.dll and it made my computer run REALLY SLOWLY for a minute or so.

Then it cleared up again (there's no virus on this thing is there ).

Anyway, as I said above the point wasn't really to make teapots limbo but to be able to export vertex deformation animation into B3D/DBP. I have already tried it with DBP and run into the same problems as you which is why I'm going to wait until P6 is out for DBP before I think about doing a Max->DBP exporter addon.

As a comparison I think mine runs much faster and looks a lot better I don't know how many vertices that teapot has but it looks like it could do with a few more to take the jagginess off it. As for loading time, well your loading a lot less than me, no UV's no normals and no deformation data, the time from double clicking on the icon to running was about 5 seconds. This is definatly not bad for a first crack it though.

Still waiting for Raven to post an executeable...

Darkheart

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Rob K
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 17:42
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Sorry DH, I didn't quite understand what you were after. I wasn't quite sure how to code the wave effect of yours. I'm surprised about the untextured part though. The same sphere map as used in your demo was used in mine, and here it shows a sphere mapped teapot.

UVs and normals data are loaded in though.

If you are waiting for Raven to post an executable, it'll be a long wait. I don't mean any offense, but Raven is all talk I'm afraid (as in, its a long time since I've seen something that acutally compiles and runs without crashing from him)

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 17:49
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i ain't posting an exe... i'm on a modem and i ain't spending like 20-30mins uploading something just to prove you wrong, you want that then download the trail of pro and run the code.

and right now i'm getting really f**ked off with DBP's commands, it seems that they've still not TOTALLY enabled them again - md3 won't load, DirectX Spline animation crashs pro (which before 4.0 it didn't ) and 3ds is also gone, wonder when the hell thats comming back... times like this i wish i had the bloody interface.

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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:05
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This rather prooves my original point, we get all this "But DBP is so much better it's not even funny, it can do this and that etc." talk but it's never backed up with something like: "Ha! I can do this better in DBP AND HERE IT IS!", which would be a lot more convincing.

It's all talk and claims and never any results this is why I've never taken DBP seriously, there's just too much that just doesn't work like it should.

Darkheart

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Van B
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:07 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 18:13
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Well, considering that patch 5 promises much more control over meshes, maybe a BB3D/DBPro duel is a bit premature, let's wait and see what the next patch brings, maybe some of us could make some tech demos.

I will say this though, some of the developments on the horizon for DBPro are gonna make all the difference. If this was a fable, BB3D would be the hare, guess who DBPro would be.


Van-B

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Puffy
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:15
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O_O UH UH ... PICK ME PICK ME... =\ the troll?

EVERYONE LOVES THE PUFF!... =\
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MrTAToad
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:17
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Na - it'll be a mole...

Good news everyone! I really am THAT good...
http://www.nickk.nildram.co.uk/ for great plug-ins and other exciting things - oh my, yes!
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Van B
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:24
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A ninja waiting in the dark with a big stick...

or a tortoise - either one is fine.

I haven't seen any of those Blitz tech demos, can someone please email me some links? - I don't think the mods would appreciate them posted here.


Van-B

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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:25
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VanB I don't want to turn this into a flamewar but the phrase "after patch <insert next patch here> Darkbasic Pro will <insert boast here>" has been synonmous with DB development for years. Darkbasic Pro has been out for more than a year now and it's still playing catch up in terms of speed, stability and working features. Not taking anything away from DBS but I'll believe it when I see it.

Wasn't patch 4 supposed to make a huge difference and slay the competition? It hasn't really made much differnce and DBP is still well behind in features and speed. Every thing I've seen in DBP can be or has been done already in Blitz faster and to a higher standard mostly these days it's the other way round, people trying to duplicate features from Blitz in DBP.

Darkheart

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Joeyjoejoe Shabadoo
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:28
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I would have to agree with the non backing up. I mean I wanna see what my DB can do, coz im not too good at coding.
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Martyn Pittuck
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:30
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I would rather have patches then band new products every 3 months when new technology comes out.

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empty
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:45
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Quote: "
Darkbasic Pro has been out for more than a year now
"

I'm not a big fan of DBPro either, but it hasn't been out for more than a year.

I awoke in a fever. The bedclothes were all soaked in sweat.
She said "You've been having a nightmare and it's not over yet"
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Rob K
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:46
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I think DarkHeart has one this round - Let's hope Patch 5 sorts things out properly.

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:51
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Van check these out:

Peter Schult's awesome realtime soft shadows:

http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=peter__scheutz04032002142220&comments=no

Alexx's explosion FX 'fest:

http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=alexx06282003195337&comments=no

Richard Betson's 3D Winamp plugin:

http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=richard__betson04022003100931&comments=no

Tigerz rather nice little Island Demo:

http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=tigerz09182002143633&comments=no

Skitchy's rather excellent little lightmapper (3 rd gen based on Elias's excellent work):

http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=skitchy04022003234031&comments=no

Makakoman's rather nice Infinte Terrain Demo:

http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=makakoman04012003155225&comments=no

Derek Doctor's utterly superb Cybernoid 2 Remake (2D but is VERY good):

http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=dr__derek__doctors04102002043021&comments=no

Fjsanto's rather nice plasma based screesaver:

http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=fjsantos07172002131820&comments=no

Theres about 600+ entrys on Blitzcoder.com so there are plenty more to try out, there's some really amazing stuff up there.

Darkheart

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Van B
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 18:53
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Patch 4 was always the new technology patch, nobody said it would do this and that - it's the start of the new features, they changed a lot in patch 4, maybe not visually, but maybe the fact that the changes are not obvious is a good thing. There's an internal model format now, which means we'll have support for any model format that someone writes a converter or plugin for. In the next patch we should get to see the benefits of the internal model format in things like realtime animation, mesh deformation, all the stuff your interested in. This won't turn into a flame war, not on account of me anyway - I don't care enough about it to get that involved, in fact the only reason I checked this topic out is I was expecting the usual Blitz trolls to appear. At least this thread hasn't gotten rediculous yet, unlike the last one (which is probably still going on!).


Van-B

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Martyn Pittuck
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 19:06
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I wonder if the Great Blitz can support the new DX9 features without a patch of any kind.

Hummm

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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 19:16 Edited at: 11th Jul 2003 19:24
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It must be very nearly a year since DBP was released I thought it came out in July, or was it August.

I think quite a lot of claims were touted about patch 4 but rather than get it wrong by going from memory I'll let Rick do the talking:

"Using the term "patch" doesn't do Patch4 justice, if anything it's a complete enhancement package that removes the entire 3D engine from the previous version and replaces it. What can the new version do? Well how about out-perform the majority of the competition?! It gives DarkBASIC Professional a boost in speed like nothing before it. Truly fantastic frame rate increases for all manner of 3D scenes are now possible."

Now maybe it's just the way I'm reading it but from all that you could be lead to believe that people would have some pretty high expectations from Patch 4 and yet it doesn't really seem to have made DBP a vastly superior product.

DBS has great marketing, but on crucial bit of delivering a fast, stable, product they just don't make it.

I cannot think of any specific features from DX9 I actually need or would really use. I'm not into writing vertex or pixel shaders and I don't want to pigeon hole my games to only the latest and greatest hardware so a move to DX 9 is not that important to me.

There ARE some things I would like to see in Blitz but they don't require a move to DX9. If Blitz does get upgraded to DX9 I would be quite happy about it as it would extend the boundries of the product however ATM I'm quite happy to get cube mapping, dynamic multitexture alpha, a morph chunk for the B3D format and maybe a feature to load from and save to banks. If I had that functionality I wouldn't give 2 hoots about wether it was DX9 or not at least for quite a while. One downside to going DX9 is that everyone must have it installed if they want to use my game/product and certainly ATM not everyone does.

Darkheart

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haggisman
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 19:21
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Quote: "Wasn't patch 4 supposed to make a huge difference and slay the competition? It hasn't really made much differnce and DBP is still well behind in features and speed. Every thing I've seen in DBP can be or has been done already in Blitz faster and to a higher standard mostly these days it's the other way round, people trying to duplicate features from Blitz in DBP.
"


On DBDN recently two demos were posted up, one made in DBpro and the other in B3D. In every case DBpro was on par with or faster than B3d. That was not even at the expense of Image quality as everyone agreed that DBpro version looked nicer.

I'd love to know about all these "features" that we are apparently trying to duplicate in DBpro...

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Darkheart
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 19:28
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Let's see those demos then or is that not allowed? Let me guess, you can't backup that claim can you?

As for the features that people are attempting to duplicate, read the other posts:

1) Rob's Blitz 3D Cubemapping Demo : So far Raven has talked a lot about it but not produced anything.

2) My Mesh deformation demo from Max->Blitz 3D : Rob K did produce a scaled down version (but of course it was his first stab) but even the scaled down version ran a lot slower and looked a lot uglier.

Darkheart

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Van B
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Posted: 11th Jul 2003 19:29
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We've yet to see what DBPro is truly capable of though, so why don't we put this on ice for 6 months and see where we are then. I'm betting we'll be on patch 8 or 9, and Blitz won't have changed at all. You gotta look to the future mate, and decide which language is better supported - DBS ain't perfect, but come on - Mark Sibly on his own with about 4 other projects does'nt install confidence in a product like Blitz. And all those demos showed effects that are useless for games, like your gonna make a game with a cube and a sphere just so you can get nice shadows - not exactly splinter cell is it?

Is there any good Blitz first person shooters anywhere?. The best thing I've ever downloaded that was made in blitz is Bruce Lee, and that's a little depressing for a language twice/thrice as old as DBPro.


Van-B

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