I understand the gripe - and frankly - I've been hit too I guess - but I don't have to pay as much for the commercial version as the "free partakers" do - so that's a plus - and as far as confidence - with TGC - Here's my take:
1: Customer Service - like formal posted questions - always get answered for me - or at least responded to.
2: All TGC programming "kits" aren't perfect - but they are pretty inituitive for the most part - and do us various approaches to get to our end - DarkBasic - Simple - funky - works - beginners and advanced people can use, DarkGDK - Let's those wantig more speed performance, flexibility with other C++ based things - like various physics things, gfx pkg's etc, and OOP, and the .Net allows those more concerned with .Net - use it without to much fuss - and it allows those developers create without having to do "all the lowlevel stuff" allowing them to concentrate on content - while getting many C++ benefits.
3: Buy buying stuff here and there - we are contributing to a both a company and a "groundwork" this community can use - that is controlled - keeping it from turning to chaos, a spam haven and pornish ad's etc. In short - it's both a fun and serious place to go to get help, discuss stuff, gripe, whatever - while having regular "magazines" and a place to go to for usually compatible products and models - straight up - a hobby store
4: Other GAME ENGINES!!! Go check them all out - and you'll see things that blow TGC away - and You'll see things that TGC blows away. Then you throw price into it - and you narrow things down to only a few players/products worth it. I've scoped many out - some have a very strange "program flow" - but yield good results - but aren't exactly intuitive - while others - are almost as hard as just using Direct-X directly. Some are just scripting engines. In short - I like TGC because the commands are almost idenctical for DBClassic - DBPro - (DarkSDK)DarkGDK, and DarkGDK.Net or whatever its called. In short - that for my dollar means I now have a prototyping language to test techniques "quickly" and beable to talks apples to apples with people about it - PLUS - once I have a technique "Down" I can move it almost verbatum to DarkGDK (C++) and for me - its faster that way - as iterative testing seems easier for me in DarkBasic Pro.
So - Perfect? No - but any commercial company in this "odd" field - I see why they need to keep thinking creatively to keep revenue going. Shoot - Microsoft does this same thing all the time.... Just think about VS versus VStudio Express - Or how about Microsoft internation software suite they won't sell to us "advanced/welltodo" countries? It has OS+MSOffice for pennies in one "bundle" - What can I do? Microsoft's creed is simple: Sell more software. That's how its done.
If TGC wants to get more people hooked - via a free GDK kit? so be it. I'll have more people to ask for help if I run into a snag!
I'm just rambling on though - but my point it - don't feel "Dented" about buying stuff - Shoot - the more people that are using and buying the programming stuff - the more likely we will see advancements to our arsenal - like DarkPhysics working with DarkGDK and DarkGDK.Net - and other neat things - perhaps updates and documentation to make Vista Users get similiar performance as XP people - who knows.
