 DarkBASIC Professional 15 September, 2
Author Company: Enteractive Inc.
Category: 
DarkBASIC Professional 15 September, 2 5 stars (This is amazing!) - I have downloaded the Trial for this ...
File Size: 84.99 kB
OS: Windows 98 / NT / 2000 / ME / XP / VISTA
License: CD-ROM - Time Limit, free to try, 84.99 to buy.
Software Developed by Enteractive Inc.
 Download now (84.99 kB)
 Click to buy with discount via Amazon (84.99$)
Description :
DarkBASIC Professional - 5 stars (This is amazing!) - I have download
DarkBASIC Professional review:5 stars (This is amazing!) - I have downloaded the Trial for this. This programming language is amazing! There are simple commands to do everything related to game programming. Here are a list of features I really like:
1. Loading models and animating them. This is so easy!
2. Matrixes. This is a nice way to do terrain. It also has functions to load heightmaps so you don't have to model your terrain bit by bit in code.
3. newzvalue() and the others. They make it so easy to compute where you will move next. Much better then sin and cosine.
4. Bsp support. It allows you to model huge world and load them and use them as worlds in your game without losing game speed.
5. I'm glad they use the easy BASIC language instead of C.
6. It really compiles your code into machine readable code. Instead of just interperating it. The game will be able to run much faster.
I am really hoping I get this for Christmas. Too bad it costs $90...3 stars (Great expectations leads to disappointment) - I'm an Artist / Animator not a programmer.
I tried learning C++, Java, Unreal Script. No matter how hard I try, I just can't learn it. When I heard there was a 3D game engine around which uses a derivitave of BASIC as the core language, I can't tell you how psyched I was.
So I went to the DarkBasic website and they have DarkBasic, which is cheap, and DarkBasic Professional, which is a bit more, so I figured I'd check out the basic package and start simple.
First thing you find is that there is no real How To Use This Product. There is a help feature of sorts, but code examples are of the cribnote variety: they are not actual working code examples but syntactical representations of code. A college professor with knowledge of basic computer science could decipher it. But if no one has taken the time to explain to you what an X and Y coordinate is, for instance, how are you going to know that X and Y means insert numbers here?
Fortunately I did know a bit about BASIC from my old Commodore 64 days, but even so, couldn't make anything happen till going to the homepage for tutorials. There are a couple on the main page. If you follow the first tutorial, you can toss together a few basic elements into a rudimentary first person shooter game. However I didn't want to make yet another of way too many first person shooter games. I have other game ideas.
So I go in search of more tutorials and there is a mere smattering of unfinished references around. Fortunately, a friend of mine loans me the 750 page book: Beginner's Guide to DarkBasic Programming. Unfortunately, if you took away all the author's attempts to impress you with his knowledge of computer science, it boils down to maybe 20 pages of actual content. (On page 48 they're still explaining how to install the software.)
After getting my hands on what useless tidbit's I could find about as far as documentation, I was starting to get the understanding of how it worked, but still needed fuel for the fire. I marched down to the library and checked out every book on Liberty Basic, GWBasic, Microsoft Basic, etc, and starting translating the beginner's examples into DB. Now I was finally able to make some headway! Before long I was manipulating 3D game content around like I'd been doing it all my life.
I started finding a few bugs here and there, then come to find out, they are no longer doing any updates to DarkBasic 1. It's obsolete. So I got the DarkBasic Professional Demo.
First of all there are some problems with the Editor. It's incomplete. Apparently the guy who was working on that part left the company due to "personal differences" and left them without the source code, so any problems there cannot be fixed.
[...]
I would give this 6 stars on concept alone.
However the the implementaion leaves much to be desired.
For documentation, they get a big fat ZERO
I think this product has a tremendous amount of potential if they would just finish what they started before moving on to another project. They could easily have one of the premiere game authoring platforms if they would just get back on track with their core BASIC engine and stop trying to follow in the footsteps of HalfLife and Unreal Tournament
5 stars (Best in class) - After trying several game engines, in the "affordable" class, DarkBasicPro is the only one without high end limitations. As another reviewer said, it is a wrapper for DirectX. This means you have all the capabilities of DirectX, without the complexities, including shaders, sound, media, collision detection, packaging, etc. And it gives a good frame rate! The package has matured within the last year, and many of the earlier defects have been corrected. (The manual still leaves room for improvement. Buy the Dark Basic book also, and you will be happier!)
Dark Basic Pro now requires DirectX 9.0. And for really fast action games, you will need a reasonably powerful PC. If you find any command limitations, (even though it has over a thousand commands), you can always write your own DLL, and add capabilities, such as Octrees to the engine (which they don't have yet.) There now are several third party add-ons, such as "TreeMagik G2" and other enhancement packs which greatly aid in game construction. Check out the Game Creators web site, and the forums!
There are other game engines which are simpler, and "spoon feed" the process to you. But once you get a little experience, you will be frustrated by the limitations caused by the watered down interface. Dark Basic Pro is not that much more difficult to use, and is tremendously more powerful and flexible.
This is the CD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "Buy Now" button below for around $84.99 USD.
Click to buy with discount via Amazon
    
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