My first rounds of test in creating a 16x16x16 cubic grid space went pretty well, for on the fly rendering. To make it run better I will have to predefine objects into meshes. Unfortunately Basic4Gl lacks the few GL commands I need to do this.
Its a shame because its a pretty decent program, although you'll have to read up on OpenGL before using it, otherwise it has a Basic language structure which is easy to work with.I experience a similar issue with Ultimate3d plugin for GM, when attempting to go from GM's 3d to something better with The Crawl game maker, but without the ability to create my own meshes, a lot was changed and the overall dynamic nature of the map generator was compromised.So I went back to FreeBasic to work on some basic reduction procedures(similar to what I used in GM The Crawl). The sample below has no visuals, it just does a lot of background math and array load ups and tells you the results. Found here I still haven't upgraded my GLBasic for 3d, but I was happy to find out I will be able to create meshes in that at least.Heres the results for the Basic4GL test, the frame rates were pretty decent for the amount of cubes being rendered, and for running on a Netbook(got a new MSI, nicer display, 1 inch bigger screen, otherwise the same)
A three wall image
When not plugged in, 3d is compromised for batteries sake, can't override this unfortunately.
When plugged in.Hopefully I'll have a 3d version going in FreeBasic. A nice benefit of using FreeBasic, is that I can easily convert it into GLBasic, although I lose all the fancy DataTypes. You only get Integers, Floats, Strings with GLbasic, which I guess is a minor issue.
In my opinion, the most encouraging 3d Engine port into Game Maker is currently Gmogre3d. It's still in an early stage of development, but the examples render at incredible speeds for Game Maker, (using Game Maker 8). You should check it out.
You can use DirectX 9 or OpenGLBut then I would have to get GM8.
I'm trying to move on to more code based.Although its pretty cool that they have created an Ogre3d version for GM. Irrlicht was the only one(excluding sole GM 3d dlls) for a while.GMOgre looks pretty promising. If it's not too brutal to use, I might give it a shot. Finally a 3D engine that looks nice and (allegedly) has a better framerate.
Also, documentation?Ogre in GM? Really? Cool.
That's a pretty good idea, practice on GM and move onto an actual language.