Blitz Basic

Morri · 09:19, 02 February 15

Hi All,
I've been reading through old AA mag PDF's and was interested to see ads for a basic compiler called blitz basic. I tried to find a dsk image to have a look but didn't have any luck. Both cpcpower and cpcrulez have only got the reviews and scans of the ads.

Does anyone have an image of this program? Any information to share?

Trebmint · 10:20, 02 February 15

Blitz Basic was developed by one of your fellow countrymen called Mark Sibly. Blitz still exists today in that it went to Amiga Blitz basic.. then PC with Blitz3d and BlitzMax, and is now something called Monkey. Actually Monkey is pretty amazing in that it is compiler that works for Windows,Linux,OSX, Android,IOS,Xbox etc etc.

The site still exists called http://www.BlitzBasic.com. I'm sure you can find Mark Sibly email on there and send him a message.

I used to use Blitz3d a lot and developed a few games for it... in fact my longstanding project symstudio (now Unify) is written with it, as it was started about 11 years ago. Ironically thats a PC development system for Symbos... So in effect I've used Blitz to create a compiler like Blitz for the CPC and all symbos machines.

Morri · 20:15, 02 February 15

Thanks for the info. I actually did wonder if the modern blitz had anything to do the cpc version when it came up after googling.
I'll give it a couple of days and see if a dsk file crops up. if not, I might try and contact them and see where it goes. (Although I'd be surprised if it went anywhere.)

Does anyone have any experience/memories of using blitz basic on the cpc?

Morri · 08:35, 03 February 15

Just finished read AA65. Page 7 mentions Blitz Basic being replaced by Power Basic. I have found Power Basic on CPC Power so will have a look.
EDIT: Power Basic was reviewed in AA66, very average review...

Trebmint · 10:13, 03 February 15

Why are you looking at basic compilers? The best imho was the Laser Basic suite, and that was so so.

Morri · 10:38, 03 February 15

Quote from: Trebmint on 10:13, 03 February 15
Why are you looking at basic compilers? The best imho was the Laser Basic suite, and that was so so.

No real plans

but after I made Eternal Light 2 last year using the sprites alive compiler I was just interested to see what else was being offered back in the day to people like myself who don't know any MC but still liked to play around. Try and get an idea of which ones were the best, offered the most features etc... So far, it seems they were all limited in some way or other and your code needed major rehauling to compile properly. Even then, the speed differences could be minimal depending on what calculations the code was doing.

Morri · 10:41, 03 February 15

BTW, I can't wait for your unity release. A cross platform compiler for a powerful multi-tasking OS. Imagine if that was all available back in the 80's.

Trebmint · 11:02, 03 February 15

Cheers, I also look forward to getting unify out. Its not a games language yet

TFM · 17:57, 03 February 15

Quote from: Morri on 10:41, 03 February 15
BTW, I can't wait for your unity release. A cross platform compiler for a powerful multi-tasking OS. Imagine if that was all available back in the 80's.

Well, there was. It was called MP/M and one didn't even need to buy another computer to code for it. And, yes, of course I count GSX in else... uuups!

Trebmint · 23:20, 03 February 15

You can code for symbos on the CPC in assem or Hisoft C (I believe)

Prodatron · 00:06, 04 February 15

And with Maxam of course!

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Blitz Basic