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I am debating between GDK or GDK.Net. My question is how is the GDK.Net implemented? Is it wrapping XNA, MDX or is it marshalling DirectX 9.0?

The reason I ask is because I want to use a tool that will require the smallest downloads necessary. If I have to ask the user to download .Net redistributable and XNA Redist this can add quite a bit to the size of a download?

Also, the GDK.Net says it is based on the Dark Basic Engine 6.2 version, but the standard GDK does not state what version it is based on.

Hi remorse,

The .NET version is based on original DGDK and it is a COM layer on top of it, it does not use XNA or MDX.

Thiago

As far as I am aware, with GDK the user running the program only needs to download your executable, possibly a manifest and other stuff compiled by MSVC++. With .NET it is the same but I think also automatically includes the .NET dll. Not sure about this.

the only diff, besides the languages you code from, is that the .NET version will require you and the end user to have .net 2 or higher installed. it really comes down to: do you want to write your games in c++ (dgdk), or have the option of using managed c++, c# or vb.net (dgdk.net)

My game group has run into the same issues about install size versus whats required to play our games.

XNA is nice, but so far we've had to upgrade each player to Dec 2006 dx9 runtime (if we include the xna dll's in our package), or install the xna runtime distro, so they aint getting them via the games they are buying.

MDX only needs .Net 1.1 installed, but they can have only framework 2.0 or 3.0 installed and it will run. However, MDX dll's are not always installed with the dx9 runtime distro. We've had to force install the dll's with custom installers.

For DGDK.Net, The player needs both .Net 2.0 framework and the DGDK.Net activex dll installed before the player can run your game exe. It comes with a nice installer that registers the activex dll for you, however you have to install the framework.

For the DGDK (c++), the player only needs your game exe and media. It makes a much smaller exe file than the DarkBasic Pro compiler.

For your other question, DGDK.Net is a wrapper to the DGDK libs. DGDK is based on the DarkBasic Pro 6.x engine. (There's a upgrade patch).

IMHO, the DGDK is your best buy for what you're asking.