Thanks!
\o/

-=-=-

Over the past couple of decades, I've been using a series of languages developed by Mark Sibly and BRL.

I first bought Blitz2.0 on the Amiga, some point in the late 90s, and although I was an avid AMOS user, I occasionally used Blitz to do small GUI based bits and pieces.
When I switched over to PC usage, the lack of an AMOS-like was quite worrying, until DarkBasic showed up. I tried my best with DarkBasic, and indeed it was very AMOS like in its syntax, but something didn't quite work between me and DarkBasic.

It wasn't until I got a free copy of Blitz2D on a PCPlus coverdisk that everything fell into place, and I once again started creating wonderfully silly games once more.

From Blitz2D, I eventually moved on to Blitz3D, where I struggled to ever do anything important in 3D, and soon learned that I was probably best sticking to 2D games, but with the powerful sprite sizing, rotating and alpha stuff that Blitz3D allowed.

After that, the jump to BlitzMax kept me prodding and poking, trying new things, and even attempting Linux and Mac distributions of my games.

An eventual leap to Monkey-X gave me iOS, Android and AndroidTV (OUYA!) targets to fool around with, and made iOS games MUCH easier to develop than I'd previously done (having to recode everything from scratch using Cocos2D!)

Over the course of using Mark's series of languages, I've created at least 345 games, and have entertained a heck of a lot of players.
.. With a lot of Freeware!!

But it's time to move on.

Over the past month or so, I've been creating a new C++ based framework. It's not quite ready yet, but it's a starting block to get me off on my own... And it's probably about time I did that. I've been hanging on Mark's coat-tails for far too long!!

Mark is currently working on a new Monkey-2, which you can read all about on his blog, and try out to see if it works for you.
If you're a fan of his previous work, I'm sure it'll suit you perfectly, and I urge you all to give it a try.

For me, I'm finally making that leap to a brave new (for me) C++ world, safe in the knowledge that if it all falls to pieces (which it inevitably will!), I still have a Mark-Safety-Blanket to land on.

Keep going, Mark
Thanks for all your hard work.

Merry Xmas