there is a good book you can buy on Amazon called HOW TO PROGRAM GAMES USING DARKBASIC or similar.
DBPro can make any kind of game you want if you are prepared to put in the time and effort. Think of DarkBASIC Pro not as "game making software" but a programming language for games. This means that DBPro does not work using commands like (SHOOT GUN) but does the difficult 3D things like loading objects (which you can design and model yourself or use other's models with their permission) and applying special effects to them and so on. The objects can be anything from monsters in a shoot 'em up to tanks in a strategy game to swords in an RPG to bikes in a racing game.
3D shoot em' ups are popular as beginner programs because they are very easy to make (use the LOAD BSP command to load a Quake 3 level, load a gun object and stick it on the screen and add basic camera controls), whereas strategy games generally require more planning (how are you going to manage resources / units etc?).
The first rule of making games is to start simply. You are not going to remake a well known game in a couple of days. I suggest remaking a well known classic or simple puzzle game to get the hang of things (BUT PLEASE NOT, NOT,NOT BREAKOUT!) - the general areas of games are like this:
- 3D objects / characters - either search the web or buy something like MilkShape (£12)
- Levels which can be either matrixes (landscapes), BSPs (the Quake / Half-Life level format), X models (a level designed in a 3D level editor such as cartography shop) etc.
- Collision and interaction (detecting when your characters meet / hit things and respond arropriately) - eg if your player is touching an item and the user is pressing 'U' on the keyboard then pick up the item.
A good tutorial has been written for a racing game called Limit Rush and you can download it from
http://www.darkbasicplanet.com - However the source code that they supply will not work with DarkBASIC Pro as it was written for DarkBASIC Classic, email me if you want the DBP-converted source code.
NOBODY has a forum name as stupid as Darth Shader. I do.
