Possible new user questions

[QuickSilva]

Hello everyone, I`m thinking of buying PureBasic as I have been really impressed by the demo although I have a couple of concerns that I would like to ask about before I spend my money.

Hopefully, you guys will be able and willing to answer them for me

OK, firstly I`m coming from a Blitz3D\Max background. I would like to know how well PB compares with the Blitz languages in terms of features for creating 2D games (+ running speed). Fore example, I can see of no easy way to set an images handle or to colour tint a sprite like in BlitzMax. Are these features not available? How are things like collisions handled with Sprite 3D? And how are blend modes, like alpha blend, achieved? I have seen some great looking games on the B-Games site (really nice games guys!) so these effects must be possible right? Are new 2D features in development?

Secondly, the Visual Designer is really neat but sometimes after a few test runs of my app (F5) it no longer seems to run properly and will no longer run a preview of my GUI. Is this a common issue? Is the Visual Designer updated in the full version? How about the IDE?

Finally, on the website of PB it states that anyone can make user libraries. Can they be made out of PB code or do they need to be in C or similar language? How exactly are they made as I can see no information in the demo version.

Thanks for your time, all going well I look forward to using this great looking language in the future.

All the best,
Jason.

[JCV]

I will only answer 2 questions since I don't really code games in 2d/3d but application programs and game client emulator.

the Visual Designer is really neat but sometimes after a few test runs of my app (F5) it no longer seems to run properly and will no longer run a preview of my GUI. Is this a common issue?

What I do is I just copy the the generated source of VD and compile inside PB IDE. You can try using other gui designers available here in the forum.

on the website of PB it states that anyone can make user libraries. Can they be made out of PB code

Yes you can make user library coded in PB and compile using Tailbite.
You can also code in c/cpp or asm and compile it as static lib then convert to userlibrary using LibraryMaker found in SDK folder in PB or directly import the static libs by using Import command.

[netmaestro]

Sprite3D collisions can be managed using the 2D sprites they were created from to test the collisions, but for zoomed/rotated 3D sprites you'd need to code your own. 255 levels of transparency can be selected within DisplaySprite3D and to get alphablended 3D sprites you need only specify the #PB_Sprite_AlphaBlending flag when creating the 2D sprite you'll make it from.

[EdzUp[SD]]

Hello everyone, I`m thinking of buying PureBasic as I have been really impressed by the demo although I have a couple of concerns that I would like to ask about before I spend my money.

Hopefully, you guys will be able and willing to answer them for me

We can but try

OK, firstly I`m coming from a Blitz3D\Max background. I would like to know how well PB compares with the Blitz languages in terms of features for creating 2D games (+ running speed). Fore example, I can see of no easy way to set an images handle or to colour tint a sprite like in BlitzMax. Are these features not available? How are things like collisions handled with Sprite 3D? And how are blend modes, like alpha blend, achieved? I have seen some great looking games on the B-Games site (really nice games guys!) so these effects must be possible right? Are new 2D features in development?

I havent used sprites yet but PB is good, the sprite3d.pb demo has alphaed sprites.

Secondly, the Visual Designer is really neat but sometimes after a few test runs of my app (F5) it no longer seems to run properly and will no longer run a preview of my GUI. Is this a common issue? Is the Visual Designer updated in the full version? How about the IDE?

The visual designer is a god send its so much easier to use that than code your own

Finally, on the website of PB it states that anyone can make user libraries. Can they be made out of PB code or do they need to be in C or similar language? How exactly are they made as I can see no information in the demo version.

IIRC PB can create .dll files

Thanks for your time, all going well I look forward to using this great looking language in the future.

You may remember me over at the blitz website, I use PB because threading is so easy

-EdzUp

[blueznl]

I think there's still quite some space for improvement left when it comes to graphics and game programming, but it's getting better with every release.

You may take a quick trip through the Survival Guide to see some of the excentricities of this particular Basic variant... It's nevertheless my language of choice though!

[tinman]

Finally, on the website of PB it states that anyone can make user libraries. Can they be made out of PB code or do they need to be in C or similar language? How exactly are they made as I can see no information in the demo version.

You can code them in PB but you need to use a tool called Tailbite in that case.

Apart from that you can probably create them in any language you want as long as it is capable of creating a library (.lib on Windows) file that exports it's symbols in the way expected by the PB LibraryMaker tool.

The LibraryMaker tool takes a .lib file and a text file with a description of the library and creates the actual PB UserLibrary file.

[Fred]

Yes, B-Games only use PureBasic to do their games, so you have a good idea of what is possible with it.

[QuickSilva]

Thank you for all of the replies. They have cleared up lots of my questions.

I`m a little surprised that after seeing the quality of the games on the B-Games site that there are not more Pure Basic made games. Is there a reason for this? This is the only thing that really puts me off of buying PB, can anyone point me to some other examples of PB that really stand out?

Jason.

[djes]

I'm pretty sure that you have seen a lot of Purebasic made games without knowing it was behind the scene. It's one of the thing he's good to, allowing creation of C-like programs, but as with C, why telling you were using Purebasic?
Personaly, I was using PB long before participating to this forum. I've created several tools with it. If you're good enough, you can do everything with it. You may code with API like in C, calling directx or opengl stuff and not using the internal graphic engine. It's up to you!

[PB]

> I`m a little surprised that after seeing the quality of the games on the
> B-Games site that there are not more Pure Basic made games

What law says a company needs to say their game was made in PureBasic? :roll:
Your logic is silly. It's like looking at a street full of cars and wondering why not
more of them are using LPG instead of petrol. Unless they say, there's no way
you'd ever know. Same concept with games and PureBasic.

[QuickSilva]

I see your point

One last thing that I forgot to ask was how easy is it to port a PC game to Mac. Is it just a case of recompiling it on a Mac or is there more involved?

Thanks again to everybody who answered my questions, I look forward to using PB in the future, it looks like a great language.

Jason.

[citystate]

I see your point

One last thing that I forgot to ask was how easy is it to port a PC game to Mac. Is it just a case of recompiling it on a Mac or is there more involved?

Thanks again to everybody who answered my questions, I look forward to using PB in the future, it looks like a great language.

Jason.

if you aren't using API calls or Windows specific resources (eg DirectX), I believe it's just a matter or recompiling your code on the platform of your choice - Mac, Windows or Linux

[Trond]

On each manual page there is a platform note at the bottom. As long as you use functions that works on all platforms, you only need to adjust your paths and recompile the code.

[QuickSilva]

Excellent. Thanks.

Jason.