Hiya,

I'm just wondering what the general perception of games developed with Blitz Basic is.

Are they seen as substandard or lesser games by indie developers, generally?

What about those who download games. Are they deterred by Blitz developed games?

I just wanted to get feedback on Blitz Basic development and whether it's taken seriously or secretly seen as a bit of a joke.

If it's the latter, then I think I'd better have a rethink. Maybe team up with a "proper" programmer.

I doubt any of your potential customer would know what language a game is written in (or have any idea of what that even means). I can't think that there would be a stigma attached to any development method. What counts is the quality of the final product.

I think generally who you should be concerned about is your customers. If there are some programmers who look down on blitz then those people aren't really worth taking seriously.

I think people who buy games don't care how the game was made. They only care how it looks and plays. Is it fun?

From your perspective you might be concerned about any support issues. Does it run well on systems that your target audience uses? So far as I know blitz is pretty good in that respect.

There are plenty of great games written in blitz. (Platypus and Best Friends for instance) Whether a game is seen as substandard probably has a lot more to do with your talent than whether or not blitz was used to create it.

If it's the right tool for the job then use it.

Most customers don't know what Blitz is, and if they did they couldn't tell whether a game was written in Blitz. In fact, most developers couldn't tell whether a game was written in Blitz or not.

I don't know of any developer snobbish enough to look down on a Blitz creation. You've only got to look at the quality of Blitz games out there. Blitz is perfectly capable of producing professional games. There's no stigma.

Personally, I use Blitz for prototyping and C# for production because I need classes to organize larger projects, but my C# engine is essentially an object-oriented version of Blitz.

Blitz is a good choice for an indie where RAD is needed.

I think I'm probably coming at this from the same direction as you; I'm an artist that taught myself to program on the side (kind of the reverse of what most people do). I wrote one game using C++/DirectX and then switched to Blitz for my second game.
Looking back on the development of my first game I wish I could go back in time and tell myself about blitz. It would have been done sooner and the quality would have been better.
Over the past 6 months as a side thing I have been working on a third game, this time with a professional programmer. This has worked out well too, but of course I'm only getting a 25% percent cut of the profits since I'm only doing graphics.
Working with a professional programmer (and this guy really is pro--he's got 20 years experience in game development), has given me a bit more perspective on the issue. For instance he has been working his butt off for days trying to get Ogg Vorbis sound and music working in his game engine. In my second game (done with blitz) it took me about 10 minutes to get Ogg Vorbis compressed music playing in my game. Blitz in my opinion is a very polished, stable, mature, full-featured, easy to use game engine. And as svero said, many very high quality, professional games have been made using it.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of frame rates do Blitz3D apps have?

A client of mine wants us to research doing a conversion of older game into something "newer", and suggested we look into Blitz3D for middleware..

Blitz is very fast, but it is unlikely to be as fast as a custom made engine built for the specific purpose.

I found myself running out of juice fairly quickly with Blitz3D. It can handle a lot of polys, but seems to suffer with the number of objects. It's usable if you're careful.

Well, Blitz optimization is a long topic that probably isn't worth starting here (the main Blitz site has lots of threads about it).

However, the main thing is surfaces (or, in Direct3D terms - state changes). Keep those to a minimum and you'll be OK framerate wise.

Any performance problem I've ever had in Blitz was easily solved by changing the rendering code to group things a little more and reduce state changes.

Originally posted by Sausage
What about those who download games. Are they deterred by Blitz developed games?
Why would they care? A good game is a good game. Chess (despite my inability to play it) is good whether it is played on 2,000 year old hand carved pieces or handwritten scraps of paper.

Recently my wife has tried out lots of Indie games. What seems to impress her most is a good game with good production values. She wouldn't have a clue, nor would she care, if something was written in Blitz Basic, Java 2 SDK 1.5.0, C++ or uploaded to a mainframe using an IBM 2780 card reader.

To put it another way, does it matter that your favourite author writes his or her books using Microsoft Word 2004, WordPerfect 5.1, Wordstar, a typewriter, or albino goose feathers on specially treated 4,000 year old Egyptian paprus?

No. What matters is the end result.

--- Rod

Well, many thanks for all the useful feedback, guys. I guess you're all correct. It's the game that counts and not how it came about.

I, even with some doubts, had already committed to using Blitz anyway. Merely because it's the quickest way for me to get started. I do feel more confident with my choice to use Blitz now though.

Thanks all.