I might do a bit of digging and see what version the average user has. I'm not doing anything particularly cutting edge so I don't really need a lot of the bells and whistles a later version might give me, especially if it means excluding a large chunk of the market.
Sounds good.
OpenGL is just a Render engine, unlike Direct X which comprises Direct 3d, Direct Input, Sound ect , but from my limited experience with it, OGL was pretty easy to use.
Update
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Well, i've had a few issues trying to update Blitzmax with the latest OpenGL stuff.
I thought i had updated everything ok. It was a complicated process, of downloading some files, getting blitzmax to convert those files into a file it could use and then the last bit, which i totally forgot about, to recompile the Blitzmax modules to incorperate the new OGL stuff.
I didn't realise i missed this step until after i'd written my first shader code.
The shader stuff just refused to do what i told it. It would load and compile the shaders, but upon error checking the shaders they were reporting all sorts of error codes.
It was then, after some forum digging i realised i had missed the important step of rebuilding the Blitzmax modules.
Great i thought, that should be easy enough, and i'll be up and running in minutes.
But nope. Turns out i needed to download another programme 'MinGW' in order to rebuild the blitzmax modules.
Ok, i did that, and rebuilt the modules, but at the very end of compilation, it threw up some openGL errors.
Only the errors in the updates i had done.
So, after updating Blitzmax with different versions of OGL, with no luck, i was still getting the same compilation errors, i slowly came to the realisation that Blitzmax was at fault and that i wasn't going to be able to update it the way i wanted.
So after giving it some thought, i've decided to ditch Blitzmax now, after several years of use.
I can't fault the language for what it was designed to do. Modern 2d graphics programming.
To date it has been the best language i've used and i've thoroughly enjoyed my time using it, but i think now, i've outgrown it, espeically where 3d is concerned, so i've decided to move on to pastures new.
After thinking about my various options, i've decided to go into C++ and Direct X programming.
This is quite low level stuff ( Which Prime knows all about ), which i'm interested in and should allow me to build the game engine i want and hopefully provide the speed i'm after too.
I could have used a third party games engine, Something like Unity for instance to get me straight into creating a new game, but i decided i'd rather have total control over what i create, even though it means a much longer development cycle.
Although i've not coded in C++ before, i'm no stranger to C, having spent several years using it before i switched to Dark Basic. I even wrote a software 3d engine in C at one point, so i'm hoping that will stand me in good stead.
So now i'm in the process of making my way through various C++ and Direct X tutorials and slowly getting used to a new way of coding.
Really enjoying it so far.
TMC
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