
BlitzMax, Cross-Platform OO BASIC, Is Free and Open Source - dragonbonheur
http://www.blitzbasic.com/Products/_index_.php
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philippeback
Blitz3D is Free and Open Source too.

And Monkey-X is mostly Open Source. Soon to be fully Open Source after MX2 is
out
([http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/topics.php?forum=230](http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/topics.php?forum=230))

[http://monkey-x.com](http://monkey-x.com)

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cordite
Oh hey, this is the first language I ever used, when I was 12!

Don't think I'll ever go back to this though. Never could figure out the 3D
stuff back then, but had fun drawing lines, text, occasional bitmaps and
playing sound samples.

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mbrock
My very first was C64 BASIC, then QBASIC for DOS, which was a really good
programming environment for a kid—Dijkstra's warnings about mental mutilation
notwithstanding, it was really simple, it came with some games that you could
modify, and it had a built-in help manual thing. And plus awesome features
like the PLAY function that took a string of notes, which I'm pretty sure
helped me even get interested in music, at age 6 or whatever. Me and my
brother made all kinds of weird pixel patterns and stuff. One time mom brought
home a projector from work, in like 1997, and we made disco lighting by making
a full-screen button in Visual Basic that changed colors.

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seanwilson
> Dijkstra's warnings about mental mutilation notwithstanding

I really dislike that quote: "It is practically impossible to teach good
programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential
programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration". I'm not
sure how serious he was being but I cannot see how a potentially good
programmer would refuse to learn new concepts like they would need to do when
first moving to OO, functional, procedural etc. languages. BASIC is obviously
less relevant now but it was nice in that it was easy and quick to get started
in whereas more complex languages might scared complete beginners away.

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donatj
I'd place an argument that BASIC still is in many ways one of the best
languages for human machine empowerment. I've spent the last 20 years of my
life programming, (C, C++, PHP, Java, Go) and I have never felt the
overwhelming "I can write anything I want if I try hard enough" I did as a kid
writing QBasic on a 286. I wrote literally hundreds of games as a kid with
graphics and sound, none of which were over a couple thousand lines of code.
The thought of doing any of that in the languages I listed above sounds very
complicated at best. I didn't get so lost in the details. We need to take a
step back and rethink __why __we program. For me it is the sheer joy of
creation.

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greggman
I grew up on BASIC as well (TRS-80, Apple II, Atari 800, C64) but I think I'm
remembering through rose colored glasses.

A few years ago I tried to write something in "real" BASIC again. GOSUB has no
stack and no arguments!? WHAT??? I had forgotten how basic BASIC was.

Go to any high school computer club and all the kids are probably using
Unity3D and C# and the stuff they are able to create in a day or 2 blows my
mind.

Or watch some kids hack on JavaScript. Access to way more APIs then I ever had
back in 8bit BASIC and instant sharing.

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dragonbonheur
>Or watch some kids hack on JavaScript. Access to way more APIs then I ever
had back in 8bit BASIC and instant sharing.

Can they press F1 and get instant access to the relevant documentation for
those APIs? People who write IDEs for BASIC have always put more care and
passion in them - press one button for documentation, press one button to
compile and deploy, no messing with XML configuration files, copying
boilerplate code, or "manifests".

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tarellel
I hate to ask, but is BlitzMax similar to DarkBasic? Which it seems is in the
processing of OpenSourcing their programming engine at the moment as well.

\- [https://www.thegamecreators.com/product/dark-basic-pro-
open-...](https://www.thegamecreators.com/product/dark-basic-pro-open-source)

~~~
dragonbonheur
The two have often been compared, but BlitzMax is lighter on resources, plus i
think DarkBasic has a camera system for 2D rendering while BlitzMax doesn't.

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arc0re
Neat, I was looking for a "modern" BASIC to make some little games, just to
see how it was made before. I've always been interested in BASIC, I don't get
why some people hate it...

~~~
giancarlostoro
Might have to do with projects based around BASIC being developed by
inexperienced developers and most people dread maintaining poorly designed
code, probably one of the reasons, there's others I'm sure. Also if you come
from a different background to BASIC you get the wrong impression about the
language.

~~~
arc0re
Yeah and there is a lot of C# people that despise VB, its not helping either

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johnhattan
So how are BlitzBasic, BlitzMax, DarkBasic and MonkeyX related?

Just trying to figure out the differences.

~~~
ComNik
Can't comment on DarkBasic or Monkey, but:

BlitzBasic and BlitzMax are about the same language. What BlitzMax provided
over BlitzBasic was a direct integration with DirectX and OpenGL, which
allowed you to make 2D games with hardware supported rendering.

Your average BlitzBasic "Hello World" would usually take up 50% of the CPU.

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dragonbonheur
>Your average BlitzBasic "Hello World" would usually take up 50% of the CPU

On the Amiga?

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ComNik
No, on a Core-2 :)

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dragonbonheur
That's weird. BlitzBASIC games run well on a 1.2 GHz single core Celeron with
512MB RAM. You must have been doing Hello World wrong :D

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TazeTSchnitzel
Re: DarkBASIC, its creators, The Game Creators, are now selling yet another
BASIC dialect for cross-platform game development:

[http://appgamekit.com/](http://appgamekit.com/)

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empressplay
I love the "free as in beer" license:

BlitzPlus is released under the zlib/libpng license.

The zlib/libpng License

Copyright (c) 2013 Blitz Research Ltd

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In
no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use
of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely,
subject to the following restrictions:

1\. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim
that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product,
an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not
required.

2\. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
misrepresented as being the original software.

3\. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

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jorgecurio
I used to use DarkBasic from seeing it first time in PC Gamer magazine around
99 or 00, so this is great news.

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tarellel
I tried DarkBasic years ago as well, I was into Bryce, C4D, taking a bunch of
A/V classes, and learning to program at the time. I was in major overload. I
ended up buying a few a of their tools, the pro version, etc (which were
mostly made in DarkBasic as well, aka eat you own dog food). But I haven't
touched it in years...

But since seeing this post I looked at the DarkBasic website and it appears
they are also OpenSourcing their Pro version as well.

[https://www.thegamecreators.com/product/dark-basic-pro-
open-...](https://www.thegamecreators.com/product/dark-basic-pro-open-source)

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ComNik
I spent most of my early programming years with BlitzMax. The language itself
probably has no future on it's own, but combined with the DX/OpenGL
integration and overall straightforwardness, I'd heavily recommend it for
interested children.

If you have one or know of one, consider this.

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gosukiwi
Nice! I remember using it some years ago. I'll check it out again.

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orionblastar
You have to register an account and use a discount code to download it for
free. It looks like it has been migrated to open source and used to be
commercial at one time.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitz_BASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitz_BASIC)

Here is a Wikibooks entry on it:
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/BlitzMax](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/BlitzMax)

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phantom_oracle
Is the primary use-case of this software for creating games?

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dragonbonheur
Most people make games, but you can do a lot more with it. there are functions
for lots of things.

