BlitzMax released for Mac OS X

Junks Jerzey writes "The long awaited long suspected-to-be-vaporware BlitzMax game programming language has been released for Mac OS X. Linux and Windows versions are set to follow "soon," making this a truly cross-platform, OpenGL-based game development system. Don't be scared by the BASIC monicker: this is a modular programming language that lets you get under the hood if you want, but also includes OOP support and higher-level features. But of course C++ game programmers will still shake their heads in a puzzled fashion, ignoring all the amazing games written by hobbyist programmers. If nothing else, write a cross-platform OpenGL demo in ten lines of code!"

Comments

Why

[JavaLord]

Why would anyone need this when there is Java!

Perfect!

[American AC in Paris]

I wrote version 1 of Jardinains in BlitzBasic for Windows. For version 2, I want to expand to the Big 3 desktop platforms and use modern 2D techniques (realtime scaling/rotations, transparency effects, etc,) among other things. Until just seconds ago, I was pretty much locked into using Torque for this. I checked out SDL, but it was a little lacking in OS X support (for example, double buffering wasn't supported (!).) BlitzBasic was hella-easy to write in, but it didn't have cross-platform support and had limited 2D capabilities--that is, it was 'old school' 2D, not the nice, smooth 3D-in-2D that most modern 2D games use. Torque is wicked slick, but it's overkill for my needs.

If you want to make games and not focus on programming geekery and coding arcana, Blitz is a great little toolset. With the cross-platform support and in the 2D graphics using OpenGL and you've got a very happy little package here.

Re:What we really need...

[kenthorvath]

They do. It's called Never Winter Nights.... (It sounds similar anyway....)