Engine Details
| Blitz3D |
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Rating:
 (8 votes) |
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| Blitz3D provides a simple yet powerful environment for game creation - simple, because its based around the popular and easy to use BASIC programming language; and powerful, thanks to a highly optimized underlying 2D/3D engine. |
| Author |
Blitz Research Ltd |
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| Graphics API |
DirectX |
Operating Systems |
Windows |
| Programming Language |
BASIC |
Status |
Productive/Stable |
| Documentation |
Yes |
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| Features |
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Built-in Editors |
Maple: a Constructive Solid Geometry modelling tool, designed to make creating 'indoor' style scenery as painless as possible. |
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Physics |
Collision Detection: |
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Lighting |
Per-vertex, Lightmapping:
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offers directional lights, point lights and spot lights. You can control the color, range and 'cone' of lights with ease |
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Texturing |
Basic, Multi-texturing, Bumpmapping:
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Multitexturing allows you to apply up to 8 layers of texture to an entity |
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Scene Management |
General, BSP, LOD:
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esigned around the idea of entities. |
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makes extensive use of the idea of brushes to color, texture and otherwise manipulate the appearance of entities |
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Animation |
Keyframe Animation:
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create animation sequences |
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Meshes |
Mesh Loading:
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allows to either create your own meshes from scratch, or load existing meshes in either X, 3DS or B3D format. |
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B3D exporters are available for 3D Studio, Lightwave and Truespace. |
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Meshes provide features such as vertex colors and multiple texture coordinate sets. |
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Special Effects |
Environment Mapping, Billboarding, Particle System, Fog, Mirror:
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supports spherical or cubic environment mapping. |
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Terrain |
Rendering, CLOD:
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terrains can be modified in realtime |
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Sound & Video |
2D Sound, 3D Sound: |
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Rendering |
Fixed-function:
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Cameras offer the programmer direct control over viewport, zoom, clipping range, fog effects and even offer an isometric mode. |
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Multiple cameras supported |
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| Features: |
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Ease of Use: |
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| Stability: |
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Support: |
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| Date Added |
Wed, 14 Jul 2004 |
Last Updated |
Sun, 8 Aug 2004 |
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There are currently 8 reviews for this engine
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| License Name |
Price |
Source Code |
Comments |
| Other/Custom |
$100.00 |
No |
Package includes: Blitz3D compiler, IDE, debugger, example code, tutorials and documentation. |
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Screenshots:
Member Reviews |
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NOTE: The ratings and reviews below reflect the opinions of their respective authors and as such, do not reflect the opinions of DevMaster.net or its staff.
The reviews are not moderated and some are completely inaccurate. Therefore, most reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. If you find any inaccurate or inappropriate reviews, let us know by stating in detail why you think the review should be removed and any links/documents that support your contention.
| My First Review, on one of my favorite Indie Engines. |
First of all, this is my first review, but not the last, I´ll be reviewing many other engines that I know.
I´ll tell also on the end of the review, the kind of game development teams that the engine is aimed for.
How I´m gonna rate it:
Features - The Built-in Features only (And some cost/benefit included)
Ease of use - I´ll be assuming that you have a solid logical notion as well a basic knowledge on a language and game development basics.
Stability & Performance - The name says it all.
Support: Not only the Company to Consumer Support, but the Community Suport and so on.
OK, here we go...
Features - Blitz3D built-in features are decent enough for a Indie 3D Engine, but no Physics, no DX9, no Shaders, no Bones Animation and many other things, but the programming, aside from being Basic, is very flexible, I´ve seen many good works using only the built-in features. You can even go Normal Mapping with some effort.
Ease of Use: Well, Blitz3D is all about coding, so, don´t expect a nice behavior based 3D Realtime Level Editor or some stuff like that. But don´t scare yourself, the Blitz Basic Language is pretty straightfoward, and you´ll be mastering the basics in little time, and improving yourself every day. Also, with the language, later you can make your own set of tools, like level editors, lightmapping, and so on... But there´s a HUGE lot of tools available, free and commercial, and those tools rule! Most of them were made for Blitz3D in Blitz3D. The two most impressive tools for B3D are for sure Gile[s] (lightmapper) and TerraED (Terrain Editor with a Level Editor functionality), these two saves you a lot of time, so you don´t have to make the "dirty job".
Stability & Performance: Damn stable and fast...
Support: The best of the best, the community is huge, Mark Sibly (the creator) is a great guy who helps anyone out. And the best thing is that everytime the dudes from Blitz community are making a cool thing to enhance Blitz3D... The last great thing was a Tokamak Wrapper, that gave us Blitz Users the world of Real Physics! And the best of all: For free! Newton Engine rox also!
Conclusion: If you want a good, stable and fast commercial engine, relatively easy to use, and with a huge community working to improve it every day, then you have to go Blitz3D. One of the best for Indie Game Developers.
Kind of engine: Indie Engine
Aimed for: Lone Developers to Small Teams (3-7) |
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Blitz3D well worth the moneyPosted by:
Handy
at Oct 31, 2004 |
Features:
The commandset is well thought out and surprisingly comprehensive. The commands are logical and consistent, but some may not like the hybrid C/BASIC syntax. Blitz3D programmes required DX7, so it's ideal for indie and shareware as it'll pretty much run on any hardware your customers are likely to have.
Ease of use:
Blitz3D is easy for both beginners and experienced programmers, but the hybrid C/BASIC syntax can make it more dificult for newbies to pick up. The IDE and debugger are extremely basic, and the debugger certainly need some attention, but there are many example programs to learn from and an updated documentation available on the internet.
Stability&performance:
That's easy, I have yet to find a PC that won't run my games, and Blitz3D is surprisingly stable meaning that you can be almost certain that the problem lies with your code.
Support:
This is the weakest point of Blitz3D. Updates are available online for both compiler and documentation, but Blitz Research Ltd seems to take an incremental approach to bug fixing and new features and updates less frequently that competing products. On the other hand, they do have a very solid product, where there aren't any showstoppers.
A very positive aspect is the community and the codebase, with hundreds of routines for solving every little problem or doing something smarter or faster.
Conclusion:
DX7 means that you can design your game to scale to whatever PC the customer has.
The Blitz3D language is quite simply elegant and when you ship your game, you can be reasonably assured that any problems will due to your own programming! |
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| blitz3d is a supportable engine! |
If you want to build a 3d game, app or even a 2d shooter, this si the way to go. very supported
No object oriented language though, but trust me it makes up for it in dev time
Excellent support from other people who use the system. Great access to demos tutorials and other peoples opinions and suggestions.
ALso can access external (non managed) dlls which means that you can use your own custom physics libraries, or database connection or network access, etc.
Great system |
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| long time user |
I've been using Blitz3d for a few years.
I would definatley say that it is easy to learn (especially if you've worked with any other form of BASIC). I jumped from Quickbasic to this when I was 13. I've watched the blitz engine added onto constantly thanks to a great community.
Now there are ways of incorperating tokamak physics & ODE physics... people have created projectedshow engines. I recently have programmed a free opensource soft projected shadow library and an opensource decal system for blitz3d.
And I'm 17! Blitz3d is not cutting edge technology, but it is easy to learn, it can be used by beginners, and experts can do amazing things with it. It Really speeds up the development process.
It's a good return to the days of old, where anyone could put together a game in there bedroom...
great stuff... worth a look... Check out the tech demos on the site :) |
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| The best for hobbyists and indies |
Features: Blitz3D is missing 2 things: shaders and physics. And while physics can be added via 3rd party addons (PhysX, Newton, ODE, Tokamak) I guess most developers won't ever need shaders. If you don't know how to code efficient shaders, your game might look pretty but it won't run well. There are codes in the official codebase for realtime shadows, motion blur and bloom; all without shaders. Blitz3D is no Unreal Engine 3, but its featureset is very solid. If you are satisfied with the graphics on Playstation 2 level, then Blitz3D will be enough (a 3rd party DirectX 9 addon is in development btw!).
Ease of Use: as an beginner you will enjoy the BASIC language. If you prefer to code in C/C++/C#/etc. you can still take the B3D SDK. It got the same features as the original Blitz3D but it's a DLL that can be used with almost any language.
Stability & Performance: Released in 2001, Blitz3D has come a long way of updates and patches. It's rock solid and it's performance is the best it can be when using DirectX 7.
Support: While the creator of Blitz3D (Mark Sibly) is mostly hidden and just pops out then and when to make some huge announcements but the community is very helpful, there is a lot prewritten code on the forums to use and all the addons and IDEs will make sure you're not being left behind.
Conclusion: if you're a beginner, a hobbyist or a small indie dev crew (1-5) and you have never even touched shader programming then Blitz3D is for you. If you're the average programmer that prays to C++ all night long and that loves his GeForce 8800 then Blitz3D might not be that appealing. Try out the demo and see for yourself! |
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