My priorities, vis-a-vis programming languages are very simple:
ease-of-use/accessibility for programming games and text-to-speech
support. All other considerations fall by the wayside.

I guess what I am trying to say is if there is something out there
better than BGT that does those things, I'd love to hear about it.

On 8/26/17, Damien Sykes-Lindley <dam...@dcpendleton.plus.com> wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> While it is possible to implement 3d functionality into the soundpool,
> there’s a huge limit to what you can do with 2d audio. We’re already having
> to shift pitch to represent the difference between in front and behind, the
> last thing you really want to do is to use the same technique to represent
> above versus below.
> Also, the BGT pathfinder only works on a 2d grid, presumably for this reason
> along with memory considerations, meaning that 3D AI is impossible unless
> the pathfinder is completely rewritten as a BGT script, again adding an
> unnecessary layer of abstraction.
> Cheers.
> Damien.
>
>
> From: Paul Lemm
> Sent: Friday, August 25, 2017 5:52 PM
> To: blind-gamers@groups.io
> Subject: Re: [blind-gamers] bgt exclude components
>
> Hi Damien ,
>
>
>
> So I’ve only ever coded/scripted using BGT and not used an actual programing
> language for coding , but in your email you mention that BGT is only  good
> for 2D audio games, although I completely  understand the BGT includes for
> things like the sound pool are only based on 2D audio games, since BGT
> supports 3 dimensional arrays there is nothing that stops people writing
> their own sound pool class which could support the third axis point which
> allows people to create 3d maps using BGT if they wish.  All the above being
> said I still fully agree with you though  that working with a full  on
> programming language will always give you more control   than working with a
> scripting language.
>
>
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> From: blind-gamers@groups.io [mailto:blind-gamers@groups.io] On Behalf Of
> Damien Sykes-Lindley
> Sent: 23 August 2017 21:22
> To: blind-gamers@groups.io
> Subject: Re: [blind-gamers] bgt exclude components
>
>
>
> Hi John,
>
> I’m afraid there are no public updates to BGT at the moment. To be honest
> until I hear any different I’m treating it more or less as a dying
> language.
>
>
>
> There has actually been an entire topic on Twitter today regarding the
> suitability of BGT, and I’ll say here, albeit more detailed, what I said
> there. BGT has its place. But it also has its limits.
>
>
>
> BGT is very good for creating 2d-based audiogames while being friendly for
> beginners in the process.
>
> BGT is not good for general purpose applications. Its speed isn’t optimised
> for it, neither is its size. Most importantly, its library support is
> extremely basic, meaning that in order to use a good 95% of available
> libraries with BGT, they would need separate wrapper libraries.
>
>
>
> When I first started to learn game programming, I started with VB6. While
> that was considered a programming language, it was still very much a limited
> environment. Tutorials were becoming scarce, examples low on the ground, and
> the language itself was dying out thanks to the introduction of the .NET
> platforms. Even DirectX needed it’s own VB-compatible DLL, hence the reason
> many users are struggling to play older games on Windows 7, 8, or 10.
>
>
>
> Believe it or not, my journey with VB6 came to an unceremonious finality
> during the beta testing phase of BGT. From that moment on, anything I wanted
> to do was done using BGT.
>
>
>
> So, to clarify. I started with VB6 (a COM/OLE/ActiveX environment), tinkered
> with AutoIt (a UI automation scripting language which also tried its best to
> serve a general-purpose environment but was far too specifically designed to
> do so efficiently), then moved house to BGT (a gaming platform).
>
>
>
> As much as some people may class these as programming, to me they are very
> much scripting. All sandbox environments, limited functionality, very
> specific purposes, and encouraging software development management skills
> which are not generally encouraged in general programming.
>
>
>
> It’s unfortunate, but a lot of people go through one of two phases: Either
> they switch to a general purpose language rather quickly, realise how much
> better it is, and come to despise the scripting languages they learned as
> introductory tools, or they treat it with unrestrained reverence, use them
> forever and a day, and become so reliant on these scripting alternatives
> that nothing else matters to them, to the point that they will even attempt
> to push these languages far beyond the boundaries of perhaps even twice
> their limits.
>
>
>
> I’m not saying that anyone on this list is at one phase or the other.
> Personally, I’m stuck sitting on the fence. I realise how much better
> general purpose programming languages are, in terms of speed and size
> optimisations. But the sheer size and the tasks that are either possible or
> mandatory with these languages I find all too overwhelming, to the point
> that sometimes finding libraries and compiling them can be a challenge in
> itself, without the extra coding and debugging.
>
>
>
> So while I appreciate some of the benefits of many general purpose
> languages, I have myself become all too reliant on the sandbox environment,
> having used it for the past 16 years. As a consequence, pointers, handles,
> data structures and callbacks on the coding end, and version control,
> package managers, bug trackers, unit testing, automated building and
> dedicated debuggers on the software engineering end, have only entered my
> programming world very recently – a sad situation for any application, games
> included.
>
>
>
> So, the upshot. If you know for an absolute 100% certainty that you only
> want to concentrate on audiogames, and 2d-based audiogames at that, BGT is a
> good option. However if you feel you also want to branch out into end
> product optimisation, 3d-based audio, environmental effects, general purpose
> applications etc, I would give the advice to skip the scripting stage and go
> straight to learning general programming and software engineering concepts.
>
> As far as I’m concerned, scripting languages are hinkypunks. They lure you
> into a false sense of security and then watch heartlessly while you’re
> dragged down by the realisation that programming isn’t as simple as
> scripting makes it out to be.
>
> Cheers.
> Damien.
>
>
>
> From: john
>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 7:48 PM
>
> To: blind-gamers@groups.io
>
> Subject: Re: [blind-gamers] bgt exclude components
>
>
>
> Hi Damien,
>
> Thanks for such a detailed response, that gives me exactly the info I was
> looking for.
>
> Unfortunately it is the base size of BGT I'm looking to reduce (an 850kb
> executable is a lot more than needed for 2kb of code).
>
> Do you happen to know if there's any development being done on it at all? I
> remember Philip had said a while ago he had some updates in the works, but
> that time to work on them was limited.
>
> Again, thank you for such a clear and helpful response. I can't say how
> refreshing it was to get this email, especially since I've been dealing with
> Microsoft support recently.
>
> Best,
>
> John
>
>
>
> From: Damien Sykes-Lindley
>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 13:05
>
> To: blind-gamers@groups.io
>
> Subject: Re: [blind-gamers] bgt exclude components
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> Unfortunately this isn’t possible. These components are part of the BGT
> engine rather than included scripts. Of course since BGT itself is a
> compiled executable, you can’t tell it to reduce its own size. If it were a
> C or C++ library that would be different.
>
> Also, BGT’s version of AngelScript doesn’t do any size optimisation
> techniques like removing code that isn’t used. For instance including the
> sound_pool library and not using it would still include the sound_pool code
> to your final executable. AngelScript is updated much more regularly than
> BGT is, however, so later versions of AngelScript may or may not utilise
> these optimisations. This is one of the reasons I don’t use BGT half as
> often as I used to.
>
> Literally the only way to optimise BGT executable size, is to use less code,
> and compile in release rather than debug mode.
>
> Cheers.
> Damien.
>
>
>
> From: john
>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 5:54 PM
>
> To: blind-gamers@groups.io
>
> Subject: [blind-gamers] bgt exclude components
>
>
>
> Hi list,
>
> I've recently been trying to find ways to reduce the size of BGT
> executables. Specifically, I'm looking to exclude unused sections of the
> engine during compiletime; for example, if I'm writing a program to work
> entirely offline, then there's no need to include the network subsystem.
> Does anybody know if something like this is possible?
>
> I write a lot of small, single-purpose applications that don't need many
> features, so it'd be really useful to trim them down to size, per say.
>
> Best,
>
> John
>
>
>


-- 
Justin M. Jones, M.A.
atreides...@gmail.com
(254) 624-9155
701 Ewing St. #509-C, Ft. Wayne IN, 46802

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