Mark Sibly in his blog has posted his new plan.
Some months ago he posted about the idea to port BlitzMax on ‘lots of platforms’. Great idea, for sure!
Now we have some more little details about the ‘plan’ to reach lots of platforms.
First is not ‘BlitzMax to lots of platforms’. Mark has decided to create a ‘new language’ – a subset of BlitzMax, lighter and with less modules – mainly focused on developing 2d game.
Second as the new language is a subset (and it seems to be ‘easy’ than BlitzMax itself) there will be new paradigm/syntax to understand, common to other platforms.
Third. To reach the lots of platforms instead of creating a ‘new compiler’ to each one, Mark decided to create a sort of ‘universal translator’. You write in Bmx2 than the ‘output’ (not the program…) will be translated to the platform to run on (or to be compiled / played on).
A simple but genius idea indeed!
At the moment the translator renders for this languages:
- C++
- C#
- Java
- JavaScript
- ActionScript
And there are already ‘out-of-the-box’ modules ready to run for Win32, MacOS, Linux, HTML5, Flash, XNA, Android.
What does this mean?
Simple you can write a game and you – technically – can render it for internet (Flash, HTML5) for mobile device (Android, Java, HTML5) for a console (Xbox – XNA) and of course for the ‘classic’ pc (Win32, MacOS and Linux).
As Mark said the new language ‘will be targeted at simple 2D game creation’. This is not bad at all – I’m still programming in 2d!!! and there are plenty of game to create!
But I think this is the major limit compared to BlitzMax: the multi-platform design make difficult to maintain the expandability of BlitzMax, this is why BMX2 will be a subset of it.
Of course this doesn’t mean that in future (as already said) some things will be considered standard on all the platforms, for example 3d on HTML is in WIP now, but in 5 years? Only God knows.
For these reasons I think Mark should choose a proper name for his new creature: calling it BMX2 generates only confusion as it’s something different. I like the idea of BlitzLiquid or BlitzMagic… but who knows!
So I LIKE the plan.
I see POTENTIAL for this new language.
I see a MARKET for it.
I see a new FUTURE for BlitzMax itself, not relegated to ‘game platform’ – and free to grow up thanks to its module-design.
What I dont’ like? At the moment its only a plan… 🙁
