2017-06-16 17:03:58

Hello.
I have been looking for programming languages for a very long time to help solve my tasks.
I want to develop an audio game. For example, as Entombed, Manamon, Redspot, STW, etc.
BGT for games such as Redspot and STW I do not really like. To me many people said that BGT net realized very badly.
And such games as Manamon and Entombed I can not imagine how to create on BGT.
I've looked at options with Python and C #, but there's a need for in-depth work with sound, more knowledge is required.
I understand that the more I stand still, the worse, but still I need to decide!
I want to add that in a short time I want to think about creating a game like Return Of The King. I'm 70% sure that it's unreal on BGT!
Thanks in advance!

2017-06-16 17:10:35

Hi there, me my self, am strugling with programming, you are not alone.
Although i don't give up, i keep trying to learn and gain knollage. i believe the more you practise the better you will get.
But to answer your question, BGT is not that bad for making audiogames, it is just a lot easier to use when you want to make audiogames. because it has all the nessiciry libraries that you need, and it is made with the gole of making people produce audiogames.
Hope it helps.

best regards
never give up on what ever you are doing.

2017-06-16 18:02:08

In a nutshell, no.

First and foremost is that BGT is a dead product. Blastbay Studios no longer supports or does any development work on it to correct bugs or other problems.

And secondly, unless you write your game to be completely self voicing or use SAPI such that it doesn't need a screen reader to be accessible, or you can figure out how to program around it, you'd lose most, if not all, JAWS users from being able to play your game because of the keyboard hooking conflict that exists between BGT and JAWS. JAWS users could still run your game, but they have to do it by temporarily switching to another screen reader while playing your game. And some of them simply won't bother, they'll just find some other game that doesn't have the conflict with JAWS and avoid the hassle altogether.

I myself am using Pure Basic to write a couple of games as a hobby. While it does mean that I have to learn and do more work to get the game working, I believe that the knowledge I'm gaining will be well worth the extra work.

2017-06-16 18:17:35 (edited by MeisamAmini21 2017-06-16 18:18:10)

BGT is really nice and simple, but it's an abandoned software. I personally am learning C# and loving it. It's so clean and features like intelisense that decreases typing, and outlining that hides pieces of code you are done with make programming a enjoyable thing to do.

2017-06-16 18:41:39

C # is a good thing. But it has such complicated things as serialization, and I do not know if it's necessary for games.
There are also no examples of games in C #.

2017-06-16 18:51:51

I don't think bgt has been abandoned. Philip is continuing work on it very slowly though.

I post sounds I record to freesound. Click here to visit my freesound page
I usually post game recordings to anyaudio. Click here to visit my anyaudio page

2017-06-16 18:52:23

You don't have to learn things you don't need, just ignore them. In any case choose something you are comfortable with and start. I started to learn programming when I was just a teenager, but because I wasn't sure which programming language to use and constantly jumped from one to another I didn't reach anywhere. Now I'm studying CS50 course on EDX.org, hopefully I'll learn what I need at last. And then I'll jump into C#.

2017-06-17 11:17:54

Many older games don't work with jaws either, haven't tested newer ones not written in bgt. To make matters worse, the jaws eula states:
The JAWS 40 Minute Mode is not intended for commercial use or extended product testing, other than use while waiting for an authorized license or key to arrive or be installed.
So when I develop a game, I should purchase a jaws license to check if it works properly or doesn't. Thanks, but no thanks. If you are using jaws and wondering why games do not work, now you know. IN addition to using a keyhook which probably wasn't necessary at all except for windows 95, they discourage you when you try fixing something in your app that shouldn't have been in jaws in the firstplace. I realize I might have stated my reasons a bit too harsh, but I think it's insane that people just keep asking game developers to fix a keyhook that shouldn't have been theirs to fix in the firstplace.

Roel
golfing in the kitchen

2017-06-17 13:50:16

that is the reason why i personaly don't use jaws. i use NVDA. it is opensourced, so one day when i have enough knollage, i can moddifie it, i don't have to pay a cent or dollar. if i want to, i can donate, but that is not forced to be happening. NVDA works well with bgt development also. no need to worrie about key hooks and so on. it is after all just a personal prefrence!

best regards
never give up on what ever you are doing.

2017-06-17 15:12:44

Hi,
I just came back home and saw this topic. I've tried BGT, and it seems really simple to set up menus and everything than python or any other language. While I also don't have any idea about how would I create a map save it and load it later, but I know if I try I will learn it. Another option available is Unity. It is currently not officially accessible but some efforts are going on. As you may know there exists braillemon, a pokemon port for visually impaired which is created using yoyo game maker studio so I hope that is accessible too. I believe it depends on your personal comfort. Just find a language you feel comfortable with and go after it like mad. But if you kept wondering about which language to learn and jump from one language to another, you won't reach anywhere. I also did that but now I will just pick a language I like and stick with it until I learn it.
Hope that helps you. Will be looking forward to try what game you bring up in the future.

There once was a moviestar icon.
Who prefered to sleep with the light on.
They learnt how to code, devices sure glowed,
and lit the night using python.

2017-06-17 15:40:31

Hi,

so there are many things which need to be said here.
First, it nearly doesn't matter which programming language you use, as long as it supports extensions via e.g. shared libraries, which enables nearly any programming language to do almost everything you want. That's, indeed, the first reason why bgt isn't able to do much about complicated programs or games, it simply doesn't support libraries as far as needed yet. It supports simple function calls to external libraries, but it doesn't support pointer handling and function handler passing, just as an example.
So, the next fact is, and this will probably surprise you, that Manamon is purely written in BGT, which you thought wouldn't be the case right?
BGT is quite simple-minded, it enables you to reach certain goals very fast, like developing audio menus, loading sounds (even encrypted ones), developing and connecting to servers and such stuff, but that's already it. BGT could be quite big right now, at least since it's not paid anymore. Philip just would have to make it open source, people could even kick off building BGT on newer AngelScript versions, which would increase the performance of BGT, without any changes at all, drastically. We could even help developing new features for BGT. BGTs one and only goal is to make audio games development as easy as possible, and that's what it manages to accomplish. Not more, but also not less. So, if you want to develope an audio game just because you can, there's no problem sticking with BGT, it will probably everything you want. If you think about using this game as a starting point for your later career and want to improve even more in developing stuff, not only games, I would recommend learning another, more powerful language first, and yeah, as I stated before already, you'll probably even be able to program an audio game like you want in this language too, but you'll probably need a bit more efford to get going.
Best Regards.
Hijacker

2017-06-17 17:42:29

I also like bgt, but i sometimes don't know what i want to use for programming. i made a menu for my game, and it keeps on resetting to the main menu every time presses enter on the play game option. and the booliant surport is not nice for me aswell.

best regards
never give up on what ever you are doing.

2017-06-17 17:50:20

Although bgt is not that powerful, if you only want to develop audiogames, you can learn it very quickly. Although other programming language are more powerful, if you are someone who tends to give up after a while, bgt might be better suited for you as a beginner, because you can create audiogames way quicker than when you use another programming language. IN addition, many skills across programming languages is universal. So you could use bgt to teach yourself the basics of programming, and then switch to something more powerful. If I remember correctly, learning bgt took me about 3 months, or 4, and when I decided to pick up python it took me about a week to get the basics down, and I didn't spend a whole lot of my free time on it. Ultimately the choice isn't that important. Just start learning something, and if you think it's not powerful enough (bgt) or if you get stuck or demotivated just switch. Thinking about the choice itself only takes time, time you could have spent learning the language itself.

Roel
golfing in the kitchen

2017-06-19 06:37:18

Orco, firstly, as problematic as the keyhook is, it's been a longstanding Jaws issue, and Jaws has been notorious for intercepting keystrokes, partly because it uses loads of custom display drivers as opposed to NVDA which takes advantage of a lot of the built-in frameworks such as msaa, ui automation, etc. So with arrow keys being intercepted, any game, particularly those that used direct input which a lot did, would not run properly if jaws was loaded. Even if you managed to get the keys to respond, they would be slow to respond, and you wouldn't be able to hold them down. Damn near every game manual would say that it is crucial to unload your screenreader. It got to the point where I even wrote a custom launcher in bgt to launch a few of my most used games, but NVDA killed the need for that as that doesn't intercept keystrokes.

2017-06-19 12:39:18

Hello guys,
I must say that reactions on bgt bit surprised me. So I will write few things about it.

For first, if you don't know how to do something, it do not means, that it is inpossible. For example I am getting absolute no idea how to install Bazel for python on my computer, but it can be done someway, I must find it only. And the same is with Manamon, Redspot, Stw etc. no idea how they are made in bgt? Well, answer is simple, learn, learn and learn, by creating but also read some already created projects, Mason has for example one nice collectio on his page, I am not sure if they are showing also network in games, but that is not important, there are still a lots of programming principles to learn.

Yeah, and I can tell you, that it is much, much easyer to develop audiogame in bgt, than in any other language. And I can tell you, that games like Stw or Redspot, which you taked as an example in this topic are very, very easy to develop. Heh, you are probably now saying yourself hmm, what is this crazy man saying? He say that making of such things is easy, and he did not developed anything like it yet?
Yeah, you are right, but must to understand what is development as a skill. Take for example chess. When you begin with chess, you will learn how to open game, how to do some tactics and strategy things, how to end game. Hovever a real reason why you can lost match is not that you don't know something, but that you don't see something. How to prevent it? It is simple, only search for all possible moves, and you are on good way. Heh, this option is little exhausting hovever, when we miss that you will get out of your life until you think about all possible combinations. And that is it, in game development too. I have developed few games in bgt, c++ and python myself, but also experienced developers will agree with me I think that reason why you stop development is not that you don't know something, but that you don't want to do something, because you are tired about making that lot things, needed time is also good reason.

So guys, my answer is simple, be calm to learn bgt, you will stop for the same reason as in any other language. big_smile
Yeah, now more positive, bgt, because is very fast to write will able you to develop more before you get tired, and that is thing which can rescue projects, when all is going okay, you have more motivation to work. As I sayd, all needed bgt have, take stw as an example, it have all needed, and is made fully in bgt. If you for some reason want more speed, for example when loading maps, my recommendation is to learn c++, hovever here you will few weeks learn only basic principles of c++, and next few weeks creating wrappers for routine things, or it was only in my case, I don't know, but I think if I not create wrapper for these stufs, my codes will be few times longer, and few ten times messier.
But do it only if you really need it, I needed that only two times, first was because there were millions of blocks to load to the map from string, that bgt's bytecode can not do fast, and second because I needed ability to use other application like in python's subprocess.

Someone also told here, that bgt can not detect arrow keys from Jaws and it is problem of bgt. Well, this is not true, it is fully Jaws's problem, take as a example Eurofly, it is created in Delphi, and has the same issue.

So, select what you want, bgt is great programming language, and is fast to write, for audiogames the best tool ever created.

Best regards

Rastislav

2017-06-24 10:28:51

I am in fact thankfull to BGT, because my experience with it made me easier to switch to Java that I'm learning right now. Why Java? Because I got employed as a software developer in a company, and I wanna switch to Android development. Secondly, Java is very popular language for business those days. I am unsure can I recommend Java for making audiogames for the PC, but if you wanna make audiogames for Android or web-based games, then Java is your best way to go, because Android SDK uses Java. For PC game development, well in my opinion it depends on game complexity. Manamon is one of the best examples on what you can do with BGT, so if your game is of RPG type or a side-scroller than I think BGT is really enough for that. However, if you wanna build FPS with 3D support, then really switch to Python and use Libaudioverse with Pyglet or Pygame. C# is also good choice, since it's also popular in business environment, and good audiogame examples in C# are Entombed and 3D Velocity.

2017-06-24 11:00:17

Is Entombed developed for C #?

2017-06-24 12:10:12

Yes, although I don't know which libraries have been used for creating sounds and such. Probably DirectX.

2017-06-24 14:19:47

It sure is and he used the native windows frameworks for sound encryption and stuff, as far as I remember that should be the XNA framework which is at work there.