Blitz BASIC is the
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming ...
dialect of the first Blitz compilers, devised by
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
-based developer Mark Sibly. Being derived from
BASIC
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...
, Blitz syntax was designed to be easy to pick up for beginners first learning to program. The languages are game-programming oriented but are often found general-purpose enough to be used for most types of application. The Blitz language evolved as new products were released, with recent incarnations offering support for more advanced programming techniques such as
object-orientation {{Broad-concept article
Object-oriented or object-orientation is a software engineering concept, in which concepts are represented as "objects". Object-oriented topics include:
* Object-oriented analysis and design
* Object-oriented design
* Objec ...
and
multithreading. This led to the languages losing their BASIC moniker in later years.
History
The first iteration of the Blitz language was created for the
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
platform and published by the
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
n firm Memory and Storage Technology. Returning to
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
, Blitz BASIC 2 was published several years later (around 1993 according this press release ) by Acid Software (a local Amiga game publisher). Since then, Blitz compilers have been released on several
platforms. Following the demise of the Amiga as a commercially viable platform, the Blitz BASIC 2 source code was released to the Amiga community. Development continues to this day under the name AmiBlitz.
BlitzBasic
Idigicon published BlitzBasic for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
in October 2000. The language included a built-in API for performing basic 2D graphics and audio operations. Following the release of Blitz3D, BlitzBasic is often synonymously referred to as Blitz2D.
Recognition of BlitzBasic increased when a limited range of "free" versions were distributed in popular UK computer magazines such as ''
PC Format
''PC Format'' was a computer magazine published in the United Kingdom by Future plc, and licensed to other publishers in countries around the world. In publication between 1991 and 2015, it was part of Future plc's ''Format'' series of magazines ...
''. This resulted in a legal dispute between the developer and publisher which was eventually resolved amicably.
BlitzPlus
In February 2003, Blitz Research Ltd. released BlitzPlus also for Microsoft Windows. It lacked the 3D engine of Blitz3D, but did bring new features to the 2D side of the language by implementing limited Microsoft Windows control support for creating native
GUIs. Backwards compatibility of the 2D engine was also extended, allowing compiled BlitzPlus games and applications to run on systems that might only have
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...
1.
BlitzMax
The first BlitzMax compiler was released in December 2004 for
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
. This made it the first Blitz dialect that could be compiled on *nix platforms. Compilers for Microsoft Windows and
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
were subsequently released in May 2005. BlitzMax brought the largest change of language structure to the modern range of Blitz products by extending the type system to include object-oriented concepts and modifying the graphics API to better suit
OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...
. BlitzMax was also the first of the Blitz languages to represent strings internally using
UCS-2
The Universal Coded Character Set (UCS, Unicode) is a standard set of characters defined by the international standard ISO/IEC 10646, ''Information technology — Universal Coded Character Set (UCS)'' (plus amendments to that standard), whi ...
, allowing native-support for string literals composed of non-
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
characters.
BlitzMax's platform-agnostic command-set allows developers to compile and run source code on multiple platforms. However the official compiler and build chain will only generate binaries for the platform that it is executing on. Unofficially, users have been able to get Linux and Mac OS X to cross-compile to the Windows platform.
BlitzMax is also the first
modular
Broadly speaking, modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a s ...
version of the Blitz languages, improving the extensibility of the command-set. In addition, all of the standard modules shipped with the compiler are open-source and so can be tweaked and recompiled by the programmer if necessary. The official BlitzMax
cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software r ...
GUI
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
module (known as MaxGUI) allows developers to write GUI interfaces for their applications on Linux (
FLTK), Mac (
Cocoa
Cocoa may refer to:
Chocolate
* Chocolate
* ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree
* Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao''
* Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...
) and Windows. Various user-contributed modules extend the use of the language by wrapping such libraries as
wxWidgets
wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) is a widget toolkit and tools library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with mini ...
,
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
, and
Fontconfig
Fontconfig (or fontconfig) is a free software program library designed to provide configuration, enumeration and substitution of fonts to other programs. Fontconfig was originally written and maintained by Keith Packard, and is currently maintai ...
as well as a selection of database modules. There are also a selection of third-party 3D modules available namely MiniB3D - an open-source OpenGL engine which can be compiled and used on all three of BlitzMax's supported platforms.
In October 2007, BlitzMax 1.26 was released which included the addition of a
reflection Reflection or reflexion may refer to:
Science and technology
* Reflection (physics), a common wave phenomenon
** Specular reflection, reflection from a smooth surface
*** Mirror image, a reflection in a mirror or in water
** Signal reflection, in ...
module. BlitzMax 1.32 shipped new
threading and
Lua
Lua or LUA may refer to:
Science and technology
* Lua (programming language)
* Latvia University of Agriculture
* Last universal ancestor, in evolution
Ethnicity and language
* Lua people, of Laos
* Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...
scripting modules and most of the standard library functions have been updated so that they are
unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
friendly.
Blitz3D SDK
Blitz3D SDK is a 3D graphics engine based on the engine in Blitz3D. It was marketed for use with
C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
,
C#, BlitzMax, and
PureBasic
PureBasic is a commercially distributed procedural computer programming language and integrated development environment based on BASIC and developed by Fantaisie Software for Windows, Linux, and macOS. An Amiga version is available, although ...
, however it could also be used with other languages that follow compatible calling conventions.
Max3D module
In 2008, the source code to Max3D - a C++-based cross-platform 3D engine - was released under a
BSD license
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lic ...
. This engine focused on OpenGL but had an abstract backend for other graphics drivers (such as DirectX) and made use of several open-source libraries, namely
Assimp,
Boost, and
ODE
An ode (from grc, ᾠδή, ōdḗ) is a type of lyric poetry. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structured in three majo ...
.
Despite the excitement in the Blitz community of Max3D being the eagerly awaited successor to Blitz3D, interest and support died off soon after the source code was released and eventually development came to a halt. There is no indication that Blitz Research will pick up the project again.
Open-source release
BlitzPlus was released as
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
on 28 April 2014 under the
zlib license
The zlib license is a permissive free software license which defines the terms under which the zlib software library can be distributed. It is also used by many other free software packages. The libpng library uses a similar license sometimes r ...
on
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...
. Blitz3D followed soon after and was released as Open Source on 3 August 2014. BlitzMax was later released as Open Source on 21 September 2015.
Examples
Hello World
''Hello'' is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826. Early uses
''Hello'', with that spelling, was used in publications in the U.S. as early as the 18 October 1826 edition of the ''Norwich C ...
program that prints to the screen, waits until a key is pressed, and then terminates:
Print "Hello World" ; Prints to the screen.
WaitKey() ; Pauses execution until a key is pressed.
End ; Ends Program.
Program that demonstrates the declaration of variables using the three main data types (
strings
String or strings may refer to:
*String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...
,
integers
An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign (−1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the language o ...
and
floats) and printing them onto the screen:
name$ = "John" ; Create a string variable ($)
age = 36 ; Create an integer variable (No Suffix)
temperature# = 27.3 ; Create a float variable (#)
print "My name is " + name$ + " and I am " + age + " years old."
print "Today, the temperature is " + temperature# + " degrees."
Waitkey() ; Pauses execution until a key is pressed.
End ; Ends program.
Program that creates a windowed application that shows the current time in binary and decimal format. See below for the BlitzMax and BlitzBasic versions:
Software written using BlitzBasic
*''
Eschalon: Book I'' - BlitzMax
*''
Eschalon: Book II'' - BlitzMax
*''
Fairway Solitaire'' - BlitzMax
*''
GridWars
Gridwars (aka GRID WARS) was a programming contest announced in November 2002 by Engineered Intelligence (EI). The competition was devised to promote EI's product called CxC (a parallel programming language) introduced the same day. Gridwars was ...
'' - BlitzMax
*
TVTower (open source clone of MadTV)' - BlitzMax
*''
Platypus
The platypus (''Ornithorhynchus anatinus''), sometimes referred to as the duck-billed platypus, is a semiaquatic, egg-laying mammal Endemic (ecology), endemic to Eastern states of Australia, eastern Australia, including Tasmania. The platypu ...
'' - Blitz2D (Mac port, BlitzMax)
*''
SCP – Containment Breach
''SCP – Containment Breach'' is an indie horror video game developed by Joonas "Regalis" Rikkonen based on fictional stories from the SCP Foundation collaborative writing wiki. The player takes the role of a human test subject, imprisoned in ...
'' - Blitz3D
*''
Worms Worms may refer to:
*Worm, an invertebrate animal with a tube-like body and no limbs
Places
*Worms, Germany
Worms () is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, situated on the Upper Rhine about south-southwest of Frankfurt am Main. It had ...
'' - originally titled ''Total Wormage'' and developed in Blitz Basic on the Amiga before its commercial release
[IGN]
Worms Blast Preview
on ign.com
Legacy
In 2011, BRL released a new cross-platform programming language called Monkey and its first official module called Mojo. Monkey has a similar syntax to BlitzMax, but instead of compiling direct to assembly code, it translates Monkey source files directly into
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
for a chosen language, framework or platform e.g. Windows,
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
,
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
, Android,
HTML5
HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...
, and
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...
.
Development of Monkey X has been halted in favor of Monkey 2, an updated version of the language by Mark Sibly.
References
External links
Blitz Research subsiteon
itch.io (BlitzPlus, Blitz 3D, Monkey X, Monkey 2)
Monkey X subsite(open source)
Monkey 2 subsiteblitz-research (Mark Sibly)on
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...
(BlitzPlus, BlitzMax, Blitz3D, Monkey, BlitzMax, Blitz3D for MSVC-CE 2017)
Blitz Research website(archived 3 June 2017)
Monkey X website(archived 15 July 2017)
{{BASIC
Amiga development software
Articles with example BASIC code
BASIC compilers
BASIC programming language family
Formerly proprietary software
Free game engines
Free software
Object-oriented programming languages
Software using the zlib license
Video game development software
Video game IDE