Initial impressions of BlitzMax...

The IDE is fucking awful.I'm used to code completion, syntax highlighting, code collapsing, context help, etc, etc... Blitz Max has a few of those features, but ultimately the IDE is poor. The layout is at odds with normal IDEs (think VS or Code::Blocks), so for an old hand it's counter intuitive. The project system is utterly, utterly terrible. It's not intuitive in the slightest and really does appear to be almost actively retarded. The plus side is that the commandline is apparently usable (but there's no apparent info on how to do it), so in theory someone could write a plugin for a better IDE.

I decided that I should code in SuperStrict. Let me note that there's three modes, Unstrict (or so I call it), Strict, SuperStrict. They seem to basically control how picky the compiler is and how well the output is optimised, or so it seems... the BlitzMax demo docs have very poor referencing to it. I think, to me, that is the biggest barrier at the moment... the Demo is bugged, therefore 'fixes' aren't in there, but are in the retail version and that the online/offline help docs are poor. Definitely not suitable for a newbie who wants to basically have their arse wiped as well as an MMO game made for them. I'm lucky in that I'm "intelligent" (not the quotes) enough to figure shit out for myself; a newbie would be less forgiving I see...

But anyway, it does seem as if there's a nice bunch of stuff pre-made for me - not as much as I'd liked (Native XML/CSV/etc support would be nice thanks...), but there's enough of the basics to help me play around... I do, however, get the feeling that given a C++ compiler, a copy of SDL and a GameMonkey engine I could make a 'comparable' system. In fact, I did start it in some way, just got bored... hence BlitzMax I guess :)