Re: A question about reasons... think before posting
For me, there are a couple things that allowed BGT to have a pull on me for a while. I am certainly glad with python now, but I will still use BGT occasionally. For quite a few reasons.
1. The chalenge: With BGT, you won't find help on stackoverflow when you want to solve a problem. With BGT, there have been many things I have managed to do that I had been told would be impossible. Things such as writing a scripting engine that is actually somewhat advanced, reading DLL structures, etc. I like using BGT sometimes because it places me in a limited environment and with it's limited dll support and other things, I can try to break it and make it do new things despite everyone telling me how impossible it was. It's just for fun, and if it's stable sometimes I can use it in games like stw, but I feel that it helps me become more intelegent sometimes because in python, you install a lib, you import it and use it, and your done. with BGT, you make a lib, understand the internals, and get it working in a stable fassion and you experience the warm feeling if doing something that others constantly told you wasn't possible.
2. Compilation. With python, you install pyinstaller, compile your script, and hope it works. Same with most other languages. With BGT, you click compile script. Some languages like pure basic have a cool compilation process, but with a lot of low level languages, you could write a small application that is 20 lines of code that took 10 minutes to write or less, then find yourself spending 2 hours trying to make pyinstaller work with a phinicky library.
3. Executable size: With BGT, you get pretty small executables that you can send to people and they can just run and play. With pyinstaller, you get executables with a size of at least 4 MB. It's not a huge deel, and languages such as CS and CPP can make quite small exectables, but it's just something else to be considered.
4. Code protection: With BGT, you compile and send, and you have rather little worry of someone decompiling your code and steeling it. With python or CS or nearly any other language that does not compile to machine code, which is a lot, code protection usually takes a vast amount of creativity.
5. Existing tools: When making a small sidescroller, BGT just has everything you need to get working quick. With other languages, you need to implement your own sound, keyboard, networking, sound protection, etc etc.
6. Speed: BGT is generally fast. In some cases, faster than some operations in languages like python. You can cythonize sure, but you just askd for potential reasons to stay with it, so I'm just trying to provide some ideas. In languages that are just as fast or faster, you usually need to learn a lot more to get them to work.
7. Ease of use: With BGT, you make a main function, you make a sound object, call the load and play_wait methods, and there you go you got a sound player. This as well as other game tasks are much harder in other much larger languages.
8. All together: When you combine the above reasons together, and I'm sure I could come up with more but I am out of time, you got a pretty quick language that compiles easily, is easy to learn and use, has tools and somewhat ok protection, etc. You can see how to someone who just wants to make a quick game, it does exude quite a pull.
Like I said, I now use python and other languages and I am very happy. I am not trying to worship BGT or anything lol. I hope I dont's tart any arguments, I hope I have somewhat satisfactorily answered your question.
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