Since I find myself with less, and less time these days, I've been thinking about buying either Blitz3D, or Dark Basic Pro to do some game development with. I've been trying to compare the features, and downloading several games and demos that were written with each trying to get a general feel for what each one is capable of. So far, I've been leaning toward Blitz3d simply because several of the Dark Basic games have had some glitches occur when running on my computer, while I haven't ran into anything with any of the Blitz games I've tried. This could just be an issue with the game code, and not with Dark Basic itself though. I was hoping to get some people opinions on either of these if possible (without starting a flame war, since I've noticed that a lot of people who are Blitz programmers hate Dark Basic, and vice versa.) Thanks.

I recently purchased Blitz3D after really enjoying working with it during the demo period (it's limited by number of uses so I left it open for a week :) ). You've got nothing to lose by checking out the demo. The forums there are informative and helpful, too. Note, however, that unless they've updated the demo in the past couple weeks it lags *way* behind the current version. The debugger is improved, the online (in-IDE) documentation is *much* improved, just to name a couple changes since the demo version.

I can happily recommend blitz3d. It doesn't have the "next-gen" features of darkbasic pro, but to my mind at least, that's actually a good thing, as it "only" requires DX7. The syntax and language structure is also cleaner, and it seems more stable than DBpro (although yes, that is debatable - but like you, I have experienced random glitches on several DB games that seem to occur on a computer-by-computer basis. And I have heard of many ex-DB users complaining of too many bugs. But okay, it's debatable). However, I do know Blitz3d is *very* stable though, which is great for me, as I have no desire to test my games out on every conceivable hardware/software configuration.

But yes, the demo version does lag *way* behind the current retail version, but hopefully it'll still give you enough insight into how the language is put together.

Personally, I find it a pleasure to use. And I eagerly await the next incarnation, featuring, amongst other things, mac/linux support... (that's a way off yet, though - but being worked on as we speak)

Personally, I find it a pleasure to use. And I eagerly await the next incarnation, featuring, amongst other things, mac/linux support...
Hehe that's what we all blitz programmer need :D
My vote goes to Blitz3D too.
Brief story: I was game designer with a previous software houses, but not much skilled in programming. I could do games in VB, but found it is really SLOW, so wanted something better.
Tried A4-A5 Studio: nice, but too limited.
Tried Torque (I even bought Visual C 6.0 for it!!) but lacks of documentation and language difficulties stopped me again.
Then I found DB Pro and Blitz3D... I tried both, but DB Pro demos crashed a lot on my system, while Blitz3D were absolutely rock-solid.
Bought Blitz3D, and I am writing a game with it (hoping to finish soon!!). The Beta I made works perfectly on those PC:
1) Athlon 1.6Ghz, WinXP, 512mb RAM, ATI Radeon 9000
2) Pentium 3 500mhz, Win98, 256 mb RAM, Geforce MX 2
3) Duron 1Ghz, Win98, 256mb RAM, Integrated GFX

so you have an idea how solid it is. It is also quite fast, not like C, but my game run at 1024x768 nicely even on the 2nd and 3rd pc above... and it's not really a bad result!! :D

If your games are mostly 2D you might take a look at Game Maker -- http://www.gamemaker.nl It's completely free and the games you make are royalty free. I've been trying it out lately and it's pretty cool for retro-style games

... Completely free for the next couple of months. Small registration fees are being introduced. :) (Still, it's on the order of $15 rather than $150.)

I wholeheartedly recommend Blitz3D as well. Best $100 I have ever spent.

really? I hadnt heard that. Still $15 is hardly a large investment... Anyway, it's still pretty nifty, and I'm all for folks being paid for their work.

I've made my first 2 games in Dark Basic and haven't had any problems or user complaints. That's DB *classic*and if you are a complete programming newbie like I was then I recommend it. I found the syntax more friendly.

However, if you have programming experience or are specifically choosing between Blitz and DBPro then I would urge you to buy Blitz. DBPro may support more "next gen" features but compatibility and stability are nowhere near 100%. I would guesstimate that DBPRO is about 2 patches away from being in a truly useful state.

Ultimately I am switching to Blitz completely, it just takes me longer to pick things up since I'm a little soft in the head ;)

Wow, thanks for all the replies!! Sounds like Blitz is the way to go, since it's more stable.

triptych, I have seen Gamemaker. It's actually a pretty decent tool for making platform/scrolling type games. There's really nothing you can't do with it. In fact, I've been playing around with creating a Ghost & Goblins type game with it. I was originally going to write the engine myself using VB 6, but found that GameMaker could do everything I want minus Alpha Blending. As for the registration fee, I think it will still be optional starting in version 5.1, but I believe it watermarks your startup screen if you don't register.

However, my next game is going to be a bit more ambitious (a 3D fighting game), so I either need to use C++, or something like Blitz3D. I'm perfectly comfortable using C++, but thought that Blitz3D or Dark Basic Pro might speed up my development time considerably.

since you know C, using Blitz will be easy.
be warned though that you can use OOP or complex structures with it efficiently.
but for a "simple" 3D fighting game, should work really fine...

I know this thread is mostly about 3D games, but if you are doing 2D games or puzzle games, or 3D without huge performance requirements, you might want to check out Runtime Revolution http://www.runrev.com

It's an xtalk environment, based on metacard. It compiles single-file executables for every platform in existence. The 4GL language is easy to learn.

-Just a runrev user

http://mindlube.com