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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / DB VS DBP

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LForet
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Posted: 3rd Jul 2003 19:18
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what are the exact differences between DB and DBPRO. Is DBP powerful enough to make a professional type game (Space SIM)? (I tried DB about a year ago. It just wasn't enough.)
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Fallout
23
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Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 3rd Jul 2003 19:40
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DBP could make a professional quality commercially releasable space sim. Yes. You just need to learn to be very efficient in how you create the game. Its not fast enough to rival AAA game by a long way, but you dont need all the bells and whistles of a AAA game to make a great game.

Machine: P4 2200, 1GB RAM, GeForce4 64MB, Audigy Platinum
http://www.breakbeat-terrorism.co.uk
(It's not all about the coding)
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MrFantastic
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Posted: 3rd Jul 2003 19:55
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What do you mean by NOT "Fast Enough" ? I've heard many describe DBpro as this.. not really sure what it means.

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MrTAToad
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Posted: 3rd Jul 2003 19:55 Edited at: 3rd Jul 2003 19:57
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With DBPro you can also use my plug-ins at http://www.nickk.nildram.co.uk
Whilst you can use them with DB + DarkMatter, I dont really provide support for that way.

Good news everyone! I really am THAT good...
http://www.nickk.nildram.co.uk/ for great plug-ins and other exciting things - oh my, yes!
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Fallout
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Posted: 3rd Jul 2003 21:05
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Not fast enough as in frame rate. You make a game as technically complex with the same polygon count etc etc. of a AAA game, and db will crawl at 10 FPS or something. You cut these technical aspects down and reduce poly count etc. and you'll find it is fast enough as in frame rate runs respectably.

Machine: P4 2200, 1GB RAM, GeForce4 64MB, Audigy Platinum
http://www.breakbeat-terrorism.co.uk
(It's not all about the coding)
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Shadow Robert
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Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 3rd Jul 2003 21:41
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in db it isn't the polycount which is the problem... its more how you structure your code.

alpha is very intensive (ghosting), so are matricies...

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Rob K
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Posted: 3rd Jul 2003 21:58
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In DBPRO the speed is certainly fast enough to make an A* title, as long as you optimise your engine as much as possible. DBP's speed is fine, not as fast as Blitz perhaps with very high object counts, but still fine. Yes there is still room for improvement, but most of the speed issues are down to YOU, the coder. If you code well, and you ensure that the engine doesn't have to deal with unnecessary data then it'll run just fine.

I can get a Quake 3 map up and running at well over 200FPS (120-odd on a GeForce 3 PC, which would still translate into something fast enough even on a low-spec PC), if that isn't fast enough - I don't know what is.

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Fallout
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Posted: 4th Jul 2003 00:54 Edited at: 4th Jul 2003 00:54
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What do you mean a Quake 3 map up and running? A complex Q3 style game, or just displaying the map and moving round it?

Remember, Q3 is nowhere near a AAA title by todays standards. In my opinion, you couldnt make a game such as Battlefield 1942 in dbpro and expect it to run quickly.

Machine: P4 2200, 1GB RAM, GeForce4 64MB, Audigy Platinum
http://www.breakbeat-terrorism.co.uk
(It's not all about the coding)
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CloseToPerfect
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Location: United States
Posted: 4th Jul 2003 17:00
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the speed of dbpro in 3d seems to be affected really bad by what type of graphics card your using. more so then most commerical games. with a generic 3d card I can run bf1942 just fine, but most of the 3d games or programs I try made wit dbpro just crawl.
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Rob K
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Posted: 4th Jul 2003 17:17
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"Remember, Q3 is nowhere near a AAA title by todays standards. In my opinion, you couldnt make a game such as Battlefield 1942 in dbpro and expect it to run quickly."

But the engine is still current, it has been used in games such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

"with a generic 3d card I can run bf1942 just fine, but most of the 3d games or programs I try made wit dbpro just crawl."

Maybe, but my old RivaTNT 2 card can still cope with DBP quite happily, and that isn't exactly new technology.

When you say "Generic", what card exactly do you mean?

I've played BF1942, and I think that DBP could certainly cope with the level of GFX, but you'd have to put a lot of work into optimising it. Of course, if you throw 2000 objects on screen, set the camera range to several lightyears and do polygon collision checks for every single one of them every frame it will run about as fast as a lathargic snail. I expect the BF1942 team spent a very long time keeping the workload to a miniumum. Whilst some of that responsibility lies with the renderer (which we have no control over), some of it is the responsibility of physics / AI / collision code which we could control.

Of course, there is one gigantic gotcha! - Currently the HIDE OBJECT command does not remove the object from the rendering system. Create 2000 objects, hide them all, and there will be no speed change. I really hope this is addressed soon (Lee certainly mentioned it in his diary).

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 4th Jul 2003 21:35
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BF1942 is hardly what i'd call good graphics, i mean its alright but not good.
Pro could handle it, but you'd have to rely more and more on your own code than the builtin functions - as the builtin functions are just sluggy to be honest. Matricies for example still eat up alot of power for no good reason.

DBPro is capable of handling alot of complex things, however coding them right now is a right pain in the ass as you don't have anywhere near the same depth to program with as a professional title in C++ does... and even the core language is running on an interpretive function level rather than native, which is why PureBasic beats it hands down in that dept.

i hope that DBpro eventually just uses DirectX as a plugin engine rather than a core base, the language is taken down a notch to ASM rather than staying at the interpreter level.
i know that it is now compiled and it does make a huge speed boost over DB - but really it is still all being interpreted.

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shwuckie
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Posted: 4th Jul 2003 21:50
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having an celeron 500 with a nasty pcchips combo motherboard (dont ask why i got that dreaful thing, it was neccessary at the time.... drat it all) i have noticed a fair increase in speed with dbpro over db, which i am very happy about, if only everything was working in it properly!!!

optic blast! megablast! have a blast!!
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Rob K
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Posted: 5th Jul 2003 01:40
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"Matricies for example still eat up alot of power for no good reason."

Yup, matricies suck, so I don't use them. Once Kevil produced his memblock matrix code, I've never looked back.

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Rob K
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Posted: 5th Jul 2003 01:46 Edited at: 5th Jul 2003 01:48
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"i hope that DBpro eventually just uses DirectX as a plugin engine rather than a core base, the language is taken down a notch to ASM rather than staying at the interpreter level.
i know that it is now compiled and it does make a huge speed boost over DB - but really it is still all being interpreted."

Could you explain that... it really doesn't make sense. When you type in LOAD OBJECT for example, DBP subsitutes it with a CALL to the LoadObject DLL function, which in-turn has a CALL to the Direct3D functions. In no way does that fit with the definition of "interpreted".

AFAIK

It works like this:

LANGUAGE LEVEL > TOKEN LEVEL > ASM

We program at the language level, fast interpreters work at the token level (normally a sort of cryptic symbol code which can be interpreted more easily by the runtime) and compilers produce ASM.

"and even the core language is running on an interpretive function level rather than native, which is why PureBasic beats it hands down in that dept."

I have an alternate theory... PureBasic is just a much better optimised compiler. Compilers are like sports competitions, you can always go one better. From his DBDN diaries, I know that Lee redid several aspects of the compiler during early development to make it faster.

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 5th Jul 2003 03:56
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i don't think its an asm level language yet, seriously.
i think the whole language is just a very cleverly setup DLL function setup...

kinda like DBP Compiles like so

DBA -> C++ -> Win32 Exec

whereas PureBasic compiles like

pb -> ASM w/Win32 or Unix or Amiga Executable link

rather than your code being translated into direct ASM for standard operators and Arrays etc... all thats happening is that they're using C's stuff.

however as the operators and arrays etc are being created using functions there is a large overhead caused, perhaps its not exactly huge but its enough to offset speed of such a product.

i'm not saying that no doubt some of PB's speed is down to a better compiler, but PB's code without any plugins runs over 4x faster than DBP's code without plugins. It would also greatly explain the bloatiness from code, you can compile this in pb



and it'll come out at 7.03kb
whereas the same code in dbp



comes out at 291kb

if you want to know how quick one runs compared to the other then just read what the .txt's produce

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Mike Johnson
TGC Developer
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Posted: 5th Jul 2003 17:38 Edited at: 5th Jul 2003 17:39
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Raven - DB Pro code is converted to ASM and then built into an executable file. It's not an interpreter.

Mike
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Dave J
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Posted: 5th Jul 2003 17:54
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's been said about a million times and yet people still don't believe it. Classic was an interpreter but Pro is an actual compiler.

"Computers are useless they can only give you answers."
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Rob K
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Posted: 5th Jul 2003 18:30 Edited at: 5th Jul 2003 18:31
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"rather than your code being translated into direct ASM for standard operators and Arrays etc... all thats happening is that they're using C's stuff."

The core DLL is compiled in regardless because it contains several essential functions, such as DBP's WndProc

Reading Lee's dev diaries, originally he did make heavy use of CALL for basic operators but these were replaced early on. Arrays are partly dealt with my DLLs, but IIRC quite a bit of it is in as pure ASM.

It is also worth noting that with some of the loops in DBP, a call to the WndProc is automatically thrown in which slows things down a bit. That is why FOR...NEXT loops are faster than DO...LOOP loops.

This is the first time Lee has produced a compiler, and it is probably not very smart at all as far as compilers go. PureBasic on the other hand is extremely advanced.

Do you want Windows menus in your DBP apps? - Get my plugin: http://snow.prohosting.com/~clone99/downloads/tpc_menus_103.zip
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