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It'll probably turn into more of a discussion than straightforward answers, which is probably better, but hey

First one's about physics, I'm wondering whether it would be better to use the GDK PhysX plugin/lib, or to take a whole SDK such as Newton or the PhysX SDK and integrate that into my own project. There's probably pro's and con's on both sides, and my aim is for a balance between features and ease of use, granted the GDK plugin/lib would be far easier to use and integrate, but would it give me as many features as a full SDK? Any previous experiences/knowledge with this kind of thing would be really useful to me.

Secondly, about multiplayer, I've played around with the multiplayer commands in DBPro in the past, with fairly poor results, so I'm not too tempted to use the same ones from the GDK perspective. I'm going for a client/server model for my game and I'm currently looking at RakNet which seems to be a really good and popular choice, anyone had a go at getting that working with GDK? Would anyone have any suggestions to other libs and any experiences in programming multiplayer with the GDK, even with the built-in engine commands?

It's probably best for me to ask around and do a little research before blundering into making a game and failing within an hour of programming.

Any advice appreciated.
Thanks

Physics.
I see an awful lot of discussion about Physics here, yet there are many games that actually don't need physics. I mean, do you really need physics for an FPS? Maybe once in a great while to calculate the trajectory of that rocket you just launched, but for the most part you'll normally only need collision with gravity simulation. Now if you're doing something like Marble Blast, then physics plays a much more important role.

For the most part you just have to decide how important is physics really going to be to gameplay. Then decide from there which way to go. PhysX has the advantage of having a hardware component out there that players can make use of if they have it, and if they don't the software still works.

Multiplayer.
There has been some discussion of using Winsock directly with GDK. A search in this forum should turn up a few things. I've looked at RakNet and it looks awesome. It would be the ultimate for any kind of MMO. When I put together version 2 of my game it will probably use RakNet.

I think Benjamin put out a version of MultiSync for GDK, and you might see if IanM's Matrix1 Utility 28 will work with GDK. Both are excellent librarys.

As for physics the game takes place in space, and some sections of the game will be using gravity as a feature, therefore physics is a feature I want included in the project. I am most likely going to get the PhysX GDK library, but I wanted to know whether anything else would be more suitable, probably not I guess.

With multiplayer, you've pretty much blessed me with alternatives, and I'll definately look into them all (am looking now tbh).

There certainly is a wealth of information here in this forum to help out with any problems you might have with DarkPhysics.

I'm writing a space / land based game as well. Although I may end up using DarkPhysics for the space portion, I haven't decided yet whether or not I'll need it. It all depends on the flight model I end up using I guess...

Look at the MichealP thread about winsock - the king of multisync, Benjamin, and Michael covered alot of ground with UDP direct programming - and I have had luck with Winsock direct in the past with TCP, and they got UDP going, that's how'd I do it. Lean & Mean - Direct to the OS... and the MultiSync lib from Benjamin is reported to work very well.

RakNet is awesome. I have it working with the GDK and it works perfectly.. A big learning curve though, but worth it.

Big Learning curve? Sounds Like WinSock.. Kill the middle man! LOL