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Post by kirkkaf on Jun 28, 2012 15:30:12 GMT -5
Hi everyone,
I have heard about Basic4GL for some time now and never got around to giving it a try.
I have tried many languages, what makes this language different to the rest - BlitzBasic, DarkBasic, Nuclear PureBasic ect...
What is Basic4GL able of, can I create Windows applications as well as games? Can I use native OpenGL functions?
Is Basic4GL currently being rewritten and if so why?
Thanks.
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Post by matthew on Jun 28, 2012 17:53:18 GMT -5
Hi kirkkaf, nice to see you back. :-)
Well one of the main differences between Basic4GL and a lot of those other languages is it's free. But it's not as simple to design games with, when compared to Blitz or DarkBasic.
If you browse through the Plugin section of the forum you'll find lots of plugins which enable you to write different kinds of applications. WinAPI, OpenGL etc.
Yeah, basically it's being rewritten because it hasn't been updated for a while. But we don't know how long it's going to take to develop a fully working replacement yet. :-P
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Post by Nicky Peter Hollyoake on Jun 28, 2012 18:30:35 GMT -5
Hey kirkkaf!
My view at Basic4GL in my opinion is maybe it's not as simple to create games as in other langauges which provides all these shortcuts and all but it definitely teaches you a lot more espescailly if you are new to programming.
Just thought I'd throw that in,
- Nicky
EDIT
If you are looking for shortcuts there must be at least a dozen plugins which have been created to do so.
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Post by kirkkaf on Jun 28, 2012 19:27:31 GMT -5
Hi guys,
Thank you for the replys.
Well my main interest at the moment would be to learn OpenGL and I have got quite a bit of knowledge with Basic dialects over the years, that is what has brought me here.
What is the aim of the new Basic4GL, what improvments will be made and who is currently working on the project or is it open source?
P.S - Will it support multiple platforms?
Thanks guys.
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Post by matthew on Jun 28, 2012 20:13:05 GMT -5
Well the original Basic4GL was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio so Basic4GL only ran on Windows. The new B4GL is being written using MinGW (GCC) so versions can easily be created for Linux & Mac as well. A lot of the improvements are mainly superficial, what we're basically trying to do is create a version of Basic4Gl that can be compiled in it's entirety from Source.
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Post by Darkjester on Jun 29, 2012 16:23:24 GMT -5
another thing to try to achieve with the new basic4gl project is to try and make it somewhat easier to make game demos currently theres a steep learning curve if you wanna do anything 3d related, where the math and collision, etc makes it hard to put something together, im gonna add a few functions just to make this a tad bit easier, and it should go together with current trig, matrice, vector library, also planning on adding some GUI library stuff, and also more examples, eventually add some documentation, and lastly distribute some tutorials to show that you can do what you can do in darkbasic, blitzbasic etc. -darkjester
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Post by kirkkaf on Jun 30, 2012 12:32:54 GMT -5
Hey guys,
I have decided to download Basic4GL and give it a shot, so you should see me around the forums more often.
Thanks.
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Post by angros47 on Jul 2, 2012 11:37:01 GMT -5
DarkjesterAs far as I understand, the general idea is to move away from the "basic4gl is a tool to learn opengl", toward a "basic4gl is a fast game development tool, like DarkBasic, Blitz3D and GameMaker" I believe it will have much more success: there are few good game making tools that are easy to use... and most of them are not free neither open source. Instead, a tool to learn opengl was a dead end, since most basic languages (FreeBasic, VB, RapidQ) already have include files for OpenGL... and the syntax is exactly the same; so, why anybody should have chosen Basic4GL, when he could achieve the same result (and more) with any other Basic dialect? Basic4GL needs to have its own unique features: IMHO, these features could be: - the IDE, working out-of-box, and with the ability to immediately run your code (in freebasic, for example, a very common complain from beginners is that they don't know how to write and run they first program: in fact, the compiler with no IDE and only a command line interface might scare and turn of many beginners - compatibility with FreeBasic: in fact, many programming languages are very good for a beginner, but when the programmer needs more features, not available in that languages, he needs to switch to another one.... and he needs to start again from the beginning. Since FreeBasic already has many advanced features (like OOP), it could be a good "second step" for programmers that learned on Basic4GL: and they could still use their old code, with just few changes (in fact, the same libaries used to make Basic4GL easy to use can work in freebasic, too)
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Post by Darkjester on Jul 2, 2012 18:12:24 GMT -5
Not to be cold but compatibility with freebasic is never gonna happen. theres no point you wanna do freebasic, great go download it LOL but im not copying that projects Syntax. Secondly lets keep the new basic4gl stuff in that thread i dont wanna be throwing stuff around adding confusion
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Post by angros47 on Jul 3, 2012 10:48:03 GMT -5
Actually, most of Basic4GL syntax is already compatible with FreeBasic. If the new Basic4GL is compatible with the old one, it will automatically be compatible with freebasic, too. I'm only saying that the graphic library should be available in freebasic, too (and the multiplatform version I'm working on actually is compatible with freebasic).
What about the rest? Should new Basic4GL just be a tool to teach the use of OpenGL... or should it become a game development tool? Or something else?
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Post by Darkjester on Jul 3, 2012 17:12:45 GMT -5
Well ill tell you my plan. im gonna finish what im doing then someone else can do whatever they like, the course of my project was to get a new version out there that's compile-able modular, and cross platform, i am having difficulties in the cross-platform area. But that may be beyond the scope of the project, and not really, i have been using freebasic for a long time, and yes the two do share alot of simularites, but i have no intention of changing any syntax in basic4gl its fine, and it works.
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Post by James :) (aka Madcow) on Oct 22, 2012 19:15:14 GMT -5
I've always found Basic4GL to teach you alot of transferable skills in a easy way.
I mean with Pascal and Traditonal Basic it dosnt have some of the Object Orientated Features nor does it have the graphics libaries (Which have helped me when writing for the iphone so basic4gl has been a big help)
And then if you look at Java even the most basic program can end up looking really daunting to a beginner compared to the equivalent in basic4GL
I think as a learning and prototype tool (like prototype or adrino) basic4gl is brilliant
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