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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / [STICKY] Dark Basic Pro - Out In The Open

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Resourceful
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Posted: 7th Jul 2016 22:45
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DBP is not finished yet

it occurs to me it could be made to build Android files and apple files and html files

the only thing would be as to how much of the addions would help or hert the conversion to such

just some thing to think about

i know the farther along windows go's as in we are now at windows 10
if and when windows 20 comes out there wil need to be a lot of work
on DBP to get i to work with what ever the dorks at ms screw up even more than they have
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zoltar
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Posted: 8th Jul 2016 19:08
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@Hotline

Quote: "my thoughts on what is absolutely necessary to make DBPro attractive again"


Do you mean necessary to be commercially attractive or just enough to be attractive as an open source project?

Nice post. Thanks for answering.

@All

Do you have any further comment? All input is welcome!

P.S. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
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Kuper
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Playing: Planescape:Torment
Posted: 8th Jul 2016 19:47
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@zoltar
I thought about youtube chanel with tutorials as one of the ways to bring new people to community.
DBPro is not so famous as Unity for example and also didn't have any built-in scene editor, so it sometimes not easy for
beginners to start learning it.Anyway, now with AL and physics plugins it is possible to beginner to create something impressive from scratch.

http://anyhowengine.wordpress.com
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zoltar
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Posted: 8th Jul 2016 20:10
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@Kuper

That would be an excellent contribution. Complete, reliable and up-to-date documentation and a proper showcase with the most outstanding games released commercially are needed too.

Do you still use DBP?

Thanks for answering.

@All

Do you have any further comment? All input is welcome!

P.S. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
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Ortu
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Posted: 9th Jul 2016 00:01
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Quote: "

outstanding games released commercially are needed too.

"


That's always been part of the problem though, hasn't it. Dbpro has had a lot of really promising projects over the years, but very very few full length, commercially viable projects reach completion though.
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Hotline
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Posted: 9th Jul 2016 00:57
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Quote: "Do you mean necessary to be commercially attractive or just enough to be attractive as an open source project?"


I think they're both the same thing nowadays. I think selling a software for a certain amount of money is past..It could work for games but for game engines doesn't work.Also releasing a 30 day trial or a demo with limited functionality is also a past for game engines.
DBPro 2.0 should be open source commercial game engine(if you want to sell your games you need a license).This is how all the big commercial engines work.And i must say , it works very well !
Cryengine , UDK , Torque are all open source , but commercial engines.If you are a hobbyist , you can play with the engine , make some cool demos , games , explore the whole engine without any restrictions , but if you work with a serious indie team planning to sell your game, you must buy a license.I think this is possibly the best license ever invented.
[href=forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=191567&b=5]Spark Particle engine[/href]
[href=forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=199163&b=5]Transform gizmo plugin[/href]
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Stab in the Dark software
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Playing: Badges, I don't need no stinkin badges
Posted: 9th Jul 2016 01:32
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At this point AGK2 is more or less as good as DBPro ever was.
It can do Windows , Linux , Android , OSX , HTML5 , Raspberry etc.
The coffee is lovely dark and deep,and I have code to write before I sleep.
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Steele
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Posted: 9th Jul 2016 03:51
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1. What are your expectations, ideas or thoughts on DBPro as open source project?
I don't have any expectations for it. However, if it did take off I'd pick right back where I left off and continue.

2. Are you actively working on the source code fixing bugs, updating libraries or adding new features?
No. While I can program in C++, I never cared much for the language. DBPro I like because I could create all sorts of games quickly. I've made probably twenty, three commercial and the others just playing around seeing what else I can do.

3. Do you still develop games on DBPro or do you already moved on to use another compiler?
I do although strictly as a hobby. I bought DGK a while a go and never could get it to work with PureBasic. The demos wouldn't either although the executable ones that came with it did. All I get is a white background. I never found anyone else who had the problem.

Right now I'm struggling with a problem where it simply crashes without telling me why. I've downloaded Blitz3d and am porting over to it to see if it will work. I like DBPro and have been using it since 2004. It's still my favorite.
Maybe it\'s just a bunch of stuff that happens. -- Homer Simpson
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zoltar
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Posted: 10th Jul 2016 17:32 Edited at: 10th Jul 2016 17:40
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@Ortu

I would really appreciate to have the name or a link to any full length commercially viable projects you're talking about. Could you please help me with that?

@Hotline

Now I get it and I agree. It really promotes engine adoption, encourages development and helps developers to reach a stage where they can comfortably pay for a license or royalty fee.

@Stab in the Dark software

Quote: "At this point AGK2 is more or less as good as DBPro ever was.
It can do Windows , Linux , Android , OSX , HTML5 , Raspberry etc."


In that sense AGK2 seems to be better. DBP only targets Windows, as far as I know. Have you ported any DBP project to AGK2? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Thanks for the input.

@Steele

Quote: "I've made probably twenty, three commercial and the others just playing around seeing what else I can do."


That's great! Do you have a website where I can learn about your commercial projects?

Quote: "I bought DGK a while a go and never could get it to work with PureBasic. The demos wouldn't either although the executable ones that came with it did. All I get is a white background. I never found anyone else who had the problem."


Maybe I'm not following. Do you mean people have been able to use Dark GDK with PureBasic?

Thanks for answering.

@All

Do you have any further comment? All input is welcome!

P.S. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
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Steele
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Posted: 10th Jul 2016 18:06
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@Zoltar
I don't have the website anymore. It paid for the domain itself and DBPro. When the economy went bust, sales plummeted and I had to shut it down. I was also out of a job which made my decision. I'm a developer more so than a marketing specialist so my website wasn't as visible as I would have liked for it to be.

Dark GDK has the PureBasic libraries also. It rolled Pure GDK into Dark GDK. The forum for it hasn't had any activity for several months. If I could get it to work somehow I could continue with my project using PureBasic. I just don't know how to search for this particular problem yet. Like I said, I can import the demo code straight into PB and I get a white screen and yet if I execute the EXE that came with it, it works fine.
Maybe it\'s just a bunch of stuff that happens. -- Homer Simpson
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Ortu
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Posted: 10th Jul 2016 22:53
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https://forum.thegamecreators.com/thread/203894

Some of these are complete, some only WIP
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zoltar
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Posted: 11th Jul 2016 20:49
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@Steele

I was more interested in the games than on the website itself. A few years ago I read somebody was publishing on Steam but I don't remember whether they were using DBPro, FPS Creator or something else.

Even though game development is strictly a hobby for you. Have you ever considered using other compilers?

Quote: "Dark GDK has the PureBasic libraries also."


Now that you mention it I kind of remember that fact. I learned about Dark GDK through Microsoft, several years before I decided to buy DBP, when it was bundled with Visual Studio Express 2005, not sure. Maybe I remember it from that time.

@Ortu

Well, I was hoping for a more specific answer, but thank you anyway.

What are your plans for Sulium? You have a fantastic main character. What's her story? The model and its texture are awesome. You make her look very feminine but with an air of strength and courage. I like you didn't exaggerate her look. Excellent job!

@All

Do you have any further comment? All input is welcome!

P.S. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
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Ortu
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Posted: 15th Jul 2016 03:00
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Thanks man, appreciate it. I had to put the project on hold for a few months due to RL but I've been working on the level editor for it and will hopefully resume somewhat regular updates soon. Keep an eye out!
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zoltar
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Posted: 15th Jul 2016 16:11
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@Ortu

Will do!

@All

All input is welcome!

P.S. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
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Steele
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Posted: 18th Jul 2016 22:08
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@Zoltar
I've considered it, other compilers and may just pull C++ out and grab another engine altogether. I'm looking at several and for the project I'm playing around with it has to be code driven.
Maybe it\'s just a bunch of stuff that happens. -- Homer Simpson
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WickedX
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Posted: 19th Jul 2016 02:18
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I much prefer C++ with direct API programming. I have learned DirectX 9.0, DirectX 11, OpenGL and about four Physics API's among others. Game engines no matter how good, seem to take too much control away from the developer. With all the talk lately about multiplayer and port forwarding, I have been studying the Winsock2 and Universal Plug-N-Play API's. Actually I'm surprised, it doesn't look all that complicated. For the same reason, I would rather program with a compiler designed for the system I'm programming for then a multi-platform compiler. Multi-platform compilers just seem too restricting and/or have a generic appearance.
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zoltar
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2016 20:24
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@Steele

Good luck with your project. Hope you post something about it in the future. Thanks for answering.

@WickedX

I get what you're saying. Most game engines are a byproduct of game development marketed to increase revenue for a game studio between releases. As such, they are designed for a specific development paradigm aimed to fulfill in house goals, thus making them seem restrictive for those unaware of said paradigm and useless for projects that cannot be fitted in it. It all comes down to decide from where to start at the moment of planning a project. Multi-platform compilers seem to be ubiquitous at the moment. They can be heaven or hell depending on how transparent are from the programmer's perspective. Very complex pieces of software that in some cases remind me of the proverb that says: "One who holds on too much, squeezes too little".

Thanks for answering.
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PeteyM5
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Posted: 13th Aug 2016 16:10
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I am not a fluent C programmer as I do everything in Visual Basic and Dark Basic myself. Since the Dark Basic compiler became open source, I would imagine there would be a ton of hacks and tweaks done to Dark Basic Pro already. I would like to personally see some fixes of that had been haunting Dark Basic for many years like the lack of the "ElseIf" statement.

If I were building my own version of Basic, I would consolidate several command structures that almost do the same thing like why do you need "Do-Loop, Repeat-Until, and While Wend."
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WickedX
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Posted: 13th Aug 2016 18:39
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Quote: " I would like to personally see some fixes of that had been haunting Dark Basic for many years like the lack of the "ElseIf" statement."


I think ElseIf would be redundent in a basic programming language and leads to a sloppy programming structure. This snippet show a sgn function written in DBPro compared with the C equivalent using "else if". Not much difference. The snippet is for comparison, this is not how I would write a sgn function in C.



Quote: "If I were building my own version of Basic, I would consolidate several command structures that almost do the same thing like why do you need "Do-Loop, Repeat-Until, and While Wend.""


These basic loop structures are also available in C. The Do-Loop is a basic loop structure, Repeat-Until is a post conditional loop and While-Wend is a pre conditional loop. The structures are quite different.
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PeteyM5
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Posted: 15th Aug 2016 10:57
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Sloppy? I believe "ElseIf" would reduce the number of "Endif"s at the end of the block. ElseIf is considered a vital part of structure programming. Just about all other modern programming languages something that works like a Elseif inside a logic block.



I have been trying to find out where I can download the fully compiled updated Dark Basic Pro, but keep getting bounced back to that open source page.
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PeteyM5
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Posted: 15th Aug 2016 11:07
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Sloppy? I believe "ElseIf" would reduce the number of "Endif"s at the end of the block. ElseIf is considered a vital part of structure programming. Just about all other modern programming languages something that works like a Elseif inside a logic block.



I have been trying to find out where I can download the fully compiled updated Dark Basic Pro, but keep getting bounced back to that open source page.

I wanted to port my Role Playing Game maker from Visual Basic .Net to Dark Basic, but ran into the many shortcomings of Dark Basic like lack of random access to files, no database support, advance string manipulation. It would also be to port the whole thing from Visual Basic to C# since I do not know C and because of the program size, would be really hard to debug after the port. It is currently used Truevision3D to drive the 3D graphics. Like Dark Basic Pro, there has been little updates going on with Truevision3D. I have a licensed version of Dark GDK.Net that I have been attempting to convert the 3D drive code over.
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zoltar
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Posted: 15th Aug 2016 21:49
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@PeteyM5

I'm not quite sure what are you looking for but the following links might be useful.

Here you can find the link to Upgrade 7.7. It requires a valid commercial license.
https://forum.thegamecreators.com/thread/180294

Here you can find the links to the binary releases associated to the open source project.
https://github.com/LeeBamberTGC/Dark-Basic-Pro/releases

Quote: "I wanted to port my Role Playing Game maker from Visual Basic .Net to Dark Basic, but ran into the many shortcomings of Dark Basic like lack of random access to files, no database support, advance string manipulation."


Open an issue at GitHub asking for those features. Is the kind of action that might give a new breath of life to the project.
Good luck porting your RPG Maker!
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WickedX
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Posted: 15th Aug 2016 23:06 Edited at: 15th Aug 2016 23:43
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Most structured programming languages (modern or not) have a Goto statement or equivalent. Does this mean Goto promotes structured programming? This simple sgn function with only one "elseif" clause, to me really doesn't matter one way or the other. The function could even be written as in this snippet. Look no "endif".



What I call sloppy programming structure is a series of three or more related "if then" or "elseif" constructs, sometimes even two. Usually, there is a method to the madness. Every time I download something from this forum and see this, I can reduce the code to use only one "if" statement or sometimes none.

Edit: Just for giggles here is the same sgn function with no “if” statement.

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Ortu
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Posted: 16th Aug 2016 15:18 Edited at: 16th Aug 2016 15:51
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Duffer has made several database plug-ins, and matrix1 provides greater string manipulation and miss of other stuff as well. The beauty of DBpro is its simplicity, its power is in the plugins/third party libraries

There is a dll talk board you might look over.

I agree though that elseif is a standard part of most languages and many people find it useful.

Also agree that the control loops each serve different purposes, it is good to keep each of them.


A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
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Ortu
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Posted: 16th Aug 2016 15:24
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There are 101 ways to skin a cat and a thousand more to write a function in code. The question is should languages be opinionated (users must follow specific design principals, as enforced by the language command set) or free form, where users can write less efficient code, but they can do it in a manner that works for them


A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
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WickedX
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Posted: 22nd Aug 2016 17:02 Edited at: 22nd Aug 2016 18:15
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I think a programming language should follow the “Free Form” model. But, as a programmer develops they should establish a more logical method. I have no objection to the use of “elseif”, I just don't think its lack in DBPro is detrimental.
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evilsourcil
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Posted: 10th Oct 2016 13:36
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Hello, I am a French coder who created some games last few years.
I just created me a website and you might find some.
Including a rts.

http://www.sanselme.fr/index.php?menu1=Programmes&menu2=DB%20pro
Thank you
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Creating Game
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Posted: 1st Dec 2016 19:15
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WickedX your code is no good



best case process 3 instructions: 1 assignment and 2 if
worst case process 4 instructions: 2 asignment and 2 if



best case process 2 instruction: 1 if and 1 assignment
worst case process 3 instruction: 2 if and 1 assignment


Regards
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WickedX
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Posted: 1st Dec 2016 22:33
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I don't know about these open source versions. But, it works flawlessly in DBPro 2.0 and any official version I've tried.
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Ortu
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Posted: 2nd Dec 2016 06:04
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I think he is just saying his method is more efficient


A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium
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